Hello, I’m Erica and I constantly change my mind about everything!

Let’s start at the beginning…

I love stories. And I know this love came specifically from my mom. She always let me buy any books I wanted and I can still hear her voice reading to me as I fell asleep at night.

It was only a matter of time before my love and appreciation for the written word manifested itself into writing my own stories some day. It started with poetry. Then I dabbled in script writing in high school. By the time I graduated college I moved on to bigger things like writing full length novels then entire series of novels! Now-a-days…

I have a problem with buying books…

Well, is buying books really a problem? I guess it depends on which books you’re buying. In my case, it’s not the which but the why of it all. I love buying entire series of books I already own. Especially, if they are special editions. Don’t ask me how many versions of Harry Potter sets I have. You probably wouldn’t believe me. I’m also in the middle of collecting my third set of Terry Pratchett Discworld books as well. Yeah…it’s an issue.

And as for everything else. Well, I’m a compulsive buyer of things. If someone recommends a book and I look up to that person, well, I better damn well buy that book. Does it really matter if I’m probably never going to read it? But I digress…

My obsession with LeVar Burton is real…

It’s not a problem, or anything. I mean, I’m not stalking the man! I just truly appreciate that he’s ā€œgrown with me.ā€ And by that I mean, he read to me when I was little with Reading Rainbow and he continues to read to me today well into my late thirties with LeVar Burton Reads. I highly recommend his podcast if you haven’t heard of it. You’ll thank me later. It’s my love of the podcast that actually gave me the confidence to continue with my Friday Fiction podcast!

I’m a work-in-progress when it comes to starting projects…

I realize in some cases it’s not good to start things and finish nothing. But a lot of what I start sort of doesn’t have an end date. They are more along the lines of…do it till you don’t want to anymore then stop? If that make sense?

Let’s take a step back.

Because I love writing and for a time I felt long-form novels just wasn’t for me, I decided to embark on short fiction writing. And I gotta say I appreciate it so much more. It’s where writing Friday Fiction came from and what eventually morphed into me reading my short fiction, recording it, and uploading each one as their own Friday Fiction 2.0 episodes.

You can find them here on my Substack by the way…

I’m the most consistently inconsistent person you’ll ever meet…

I swear it! You can try to say ā€œNo, Erica, I’m way more inconsistent than you are.ā€ But I’d have you beat. I mean, I try to build habits. Should I mention I do own Atomic Habits by James Clear and I subscribe to his 3-2-1 newsletter? Where was I?

Oh, yes, my inconsistent ways. I say I’m going to write a short story every Friday. Do I? You’ll soon find out the answer to that question. I plan on write some ā€œnon-fictionā€ ā€œhow-toā€ stuffs twice a week (Mondays and Wednesdays). That lasted almost half a year? The list goes on and on with me. I say I’m gonna do a thing then I don't do the thing.

What the heck is a digital writer anyhow?

Well, depends on who you ask? Really, we are all digital writers in one way or another. In its barest of definitions it’s the act of writing words on some digital device. Whether you share what you’ve written to one person (via email) or thousands (via twitter) then congratulations, my friend! You are a digital writer!

But there are intentions that come with being a digital writer and I like to tack on ā€œcontent creatorā€ on there as well. I just use them interchangeably. It just means I like to create content for you to consume and one of the many types of content I enjoy creating is writing digitally. Get it? Got it? Good!

Other ways to stay connected

I won’t bore you with the details of the places I tend to hang out. I’ll just mention the highlights and you decide if they mesh with your daily hang-out spots, ok?

Twitter - I’m on this tweeting threads kick that I (try) to do daily. My threads range from helpful how-to stuffs to my all time favorite musical numbers (ok, maybe I haven’t tweeted this thread yet, but it could happen!)

Twitch - I’m on again off again with this. 7 years ago I was on fire with my streaming. Now? My computer just can’t handle it. But, when I get a new one, watch out world! I’m gonna be streaming my writing again soon, real soon. Plus, you get to be all productive and crap with me and ask me anything you want, too.

Happy reading,

Subscribe to Pen to Paper Stories

My journey with storytelling. I write short stories on the occasional Friday.

People

Erica Drayton
I tell tall tales all the time.