Who are you?
I’m Ciera Burch, I’m a children’s author, specifically middle-grade and young-adult novels, and I’m based in Washington, D.C.
What do you write?
I write both contemporary and (slightly) spooky middle-grade and young-adult novels and am the author of Finch House and the upcoming Camp Twisted Pine.
I got started writing early on in elementary school, mostly copying the plots of books and other stories I loved and adding in things I thought were fun, like taking the plot of The Parent Trap and making it weird with magic. For a while, I mostly wrote YA, since I was a teenager when I got more serious about wanting to be a writer and that was what I knew and loved. But when I became an indie bookseller, I rediscovered my love for middle grade and the sheer scope of adventure that can be found in middle-grade books. I very much love writing for kids, especially when I get to hear their thoughts on a certain choice I made or the character I wrote. They have a lot of opinions on their reading material, and I love hearing it!
Where do you write?
I write in my apartment in D.C. While still technically in the city, it’s right on the edge between D.C. and Maryland and is in a pretty quiet area that makes working from home comfortable. I have a desk in the section of my living room that I’ve claimed as my office, and it faces the windows, where I get a great amount of natural light. I rarely sit there, though. I’m usually typing away on my laptop on the couch, where I can still soak up the natural light.
If I am at my desk, I have a Bluetooth keyboard that resembles a typewriter in both look and sound that I use with my laptop as a screen. I tend to switch back and forth between using the classic Word and the Scrivener software, as well as the notes apps on both my phone and laptop.
When do you write?
I write most often at night; the closer to or after midnight, the better. I’m a big night owl, and I just find I have much more energy and creativity when it’s dark out than I do during the day. I don’t set a time limit, but I do use the Pomodoro method that breaks time up into blocks of 25 minutes, with a five-minute break between each block and a 15-minute break after every 4 blocks.
Sometimes, I have publisher deadlines, and sometimes, I have self-imposed ones, so depending on whether I’m ahead or behind or just having fun, I can write as little as 500 words in a day or as many as 14,000. And yes, my hands did hurt after the 14k word day!
Why do you write?
I love writing and stories and characters. Writing is the lens through which I’ve always seen the world—I turn everything into a story in my head. Even before I learned to write, I’d ramble while telling my mom stories about my day, pausing to describe how something looked or felt or smelled, even if it wasn’t important to the overall “plot” of what I learned at school or if I passed my math test.
As a kid, there weren’t a lot of books or media that I enjoyed that had people like me or my family in them—just going on adventures or learning magic or talking to animals—and when I got older, I realized I could help solve that problem, at least in part, for Black and brown and queer kids who might feel the same.
Putting art into the world that acts as a mirror for kids is a big motivation for me, especially because I was inspired by the writers and creatives who came before me and by my peers, who showed me that it was possible.
How do you overcome writer's block?
By doing literally anything else. Sometimes it’s listening to music, sometimes it’s playing a video game. I might call my grandparents or text some friends or go on a walk or cook dinner. Anything that I can do to fill up not just my creative well but my personal one helps recharge my brain and return my words to me when it feels like they’re too far out of reach.
Bonus: What do you enjoy doing when not writing?
I love playing Dungeons & Dragons. It’s a new type of storytelling for me, with collaboration and a focus on mechanics and dice rolls, and I’ve become absolutely enthralled by it. Roleplaying a character is so different from writing one and it’s been great to be fully, deeply immersed in a story while also not being solely in charge of what happens.
My thanks to Ciera Burch for today's interview.