4 January, 2012
"Ah yes, come in, come in. The night is cold. Please, come sit by the fire.....
Those are the opening lines of the story "Children of the Stars" written by Courtney Taylor. Courtney is an aspiring writer, a girl who likes to wear hats and the newest intern at HCAM.
Courtney came to HCAM from the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts where she majored in English Communications with a concentration in creative writing, but her writing days began much earlier than that.
"In eighth grade, I met one of my best friends, " said Courtney, "and somehow she was interested as well in writing and she would write all of her own stories. From there, I decided that I was going to write my own stories."
And she's been writing stories ever since.
"Ideas just come to me and I run with them, " said Courtney.
Her story, "Children of the Stars" was first published in college in her school's literary magazine, Spires. That story and another, "Desert Run", have been published as e-books as part of the Barnes and Noble Pubit service, an on-line self service web portal that allows aspiring authors to self pubish their work for sale through the Barnes and Noble E-Bookstore.
At HCAM, Courtney uses her writing background to write and edit video and news segments, and while not creative writing, the experience has helped her with her own work.
"It helps me to know what to look for, " said Courtney. "Because then I know, this is relevant, this is relevant, I don't need that, and that can help me with my own writing."
Courtney credits her love of reading and her friends for contributing to her writing style.
"Definitely reading," said Courtney, "all the stories that I did because they helped feed my big imagination. And definitely the people I've met because I have a good group of friends and we all like to come up with stories together. We all put our minds together and see what we can come up with."
Courtney is working on her latest project, writing stories for a series of YoutTube videos with another HCAM Intern, Nimish Thapar. For now, she's learning new ways to use her writing skills and is having fun along the way. Ultimately, she would like to edit.
"What I would like to do, actually, is to edit," said Courtney. "I'd like to be able to edit to help people with their work; it helps them out and it helps me out. And of course, I want to publish a full-on manuscript."
We hope that Courtney's experience at HCAM will help her get to where she wants to go, and in the meantime, we'll continue to enjoy working with her in the studio. You can get to know Courtney better by reading her work. Visit her page on the Barnes and Noble Pubit site.
