Welcome to who’s on fourth where we interview one member of the yeah write community and the interview will publish the fourth week of each month. Next in the series features Arden Ruth interviewing Emily of Plenty Plenty.

yeah write on yeah write: Arden interviews Emily

In 2014, Emily crash landed onto the yeah write scene and we couldn’t be happier to have her. Though her busy life sometimes gets in the way of participating lately, we can’t help but acknowledge her exceptional writing and the stories she brings to us when she can.

I started my blog just as a creative outlet, to balance the writing that I do for work every day. So far it’s mostly been a place to put my entries for the microstory challenges, but I’d love to expand it into a place where I also post essays and other forms of creative writing.

That sounds like an excellent idea…

As you can see by taking a quick glance at Plenty Plenty, Emily spends much of her time at yeah write hanging out at the microstory grid. She crafts 42 words so well, they’ll stick with you for days. I still think of Fast Food at times. Something about it just keeps coming back to me. Emily views our 42-word microstories as tiny puzzles and believes some of her best writing has come out of the ultimate questions we pose.

As for our virgins out there, Emily has some sound advice to keep your writing true to yourself:

Write what you know. And, when all else fails, tell it like you’d tell a friend. As writers, the minute we start trying too hard to sound a certain way, we lose our voice. And nothing is more important than that.

I bet many of us would say that we’ve been writers for as long as we can remember, right? But how many of us can say we’ve been writers before we could even write? Emily can, for one.

I’ve been “writing” since before I could even hold a pencil. When I was very young, my mom would fold construction paper together to make little blank books, and I’d dictate stories to her — and then I’d illustrate them with crayons and markers. My first “book” was titled “The Day the Snake Escaped from the Zoo.” It was five sentences long and very action-packed.

Sounds like quite the nail-biter! When Emily isn’t weaving intricate 42-word tales, you can find her in Ann Arbor, Michigan where she lives and works as a (wait for it…) writer and editor!

I work full-time for a statewide digital media company called MLive, covering “life and culture” (so, history, travel, food, pretty much all the fun stuff) in Michigan. I’ve been writing about Michigan and the Midwest for more than a decade now, since my first internship at a regional magazine in northern Michigan during the summer of 2003. I love where I live, and I love writing about where I live, so this job is pretty perfect for me.

On top of that, Emily is also a full-time student. She’s currently taking classes to hopefully go back to school for a physician’s assistant degree. When she isn’t studying or working though, you can find her tilling away at her vegetable garden (which is pretty incredible, by the way – I’ve seen the proof on Facebook).

Though Emily freely admits her creative writing has taken a bit of a hit as of late, due to all the busy, she hopes to jump back into our pool as early as May, once life calms down a bit. I think I can speak for all of us here at yeah write that we’ll be pumped to have you back, Emily.

Thank you for letting us get to know you a little better here at yeah write, Emily! We are so happy to have you in our community! Make sure you follow Emily’s blog, Plenty Plenty. You can also follow her on Twitter & Facebook.

Oh, you want more? Well here are five things you never knew about Emily:

1. She’s tall (just shy of 5’9″).
2. She sings impromptu made-up songs all. the. time.
3. She has two tattoos; one is a secret because it’s really embarrassing (spring break, age 18).
4. She used to struggle with massive impostor syndrome; she doesn’t know how that changed (sometime in the last couple years), but now she gives zero fucks. She does her best, and if that’s not good enough, then OH WELL.
5. Pretty much every problem that arises in her life can be solved, at least temporarily, with a slice of chocolate mousse cake.

Are you ready for the yeah write #263 weekly writing challenges that opened this week? You still have time to submit! Your badges await in the sidebar. Grab the code, paste into the text or HTML view of your post, then submit your post to the grids for a little friendly competition. We’re glad you’re here. Grids close at 10pm ET tonight. Good luck!