I’ve been stowing away story inspiration as long as I can remember. Newspaper and magazine clippings, photographs, interesting word combinations, poems, funny product packaging, song lyrics, art of every kind, a few lines of overheard conversation, and a zillion other treasures too numerous to count. They’re stuffed in folders and organized in binders, they’re saved to my phone and secret Pinterest boards; and as I flip through them for my 5-minute writing exercises, I’ve been noticing something: they’re all weird. From the wild-haired cat who looks like he fell out of Wonderland, to an obituary for a woman who ditched seven fiances, to the mural above that looks like a trippy dreamscape, I find the unusual inspiring. I like to imagine the meandering course characters have charted to get to that spot, and where they might go from there.

As writers, we’re encouraged to brand ourselves. She writes fantasy, he writes thrillers, they write comedy. I can’t figure out my brand. I write in multiple genres for both middle grade and young adult. But maybe “weird” is my thing. As I look through the things that inspire me and skim past projects, there’s that thread. Everything I’ve written–from MG high fantasy to YA contemporary–has a touch of the strange.

How about you: how would you define your writing brand?

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