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Daily Inspiration: Meet C.W. Allen

Today, we’d like to introduce you to C.W. Allen.

C.W. Allen

Hi C.W., thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
My parents (and several generations before that) were Utah-born, but my childhood and young adult life took me all over the country. I claim many origin stories – I’m a Nebraskan by birth, raised Texan, a Hoosier by marriage, and now a Utahn.

I knew I wanted to be a writer when I read Ellen Raskin’s novel The Westing Game at age twelve. I was instantly captivated by the role dramatic irony plays in the story. The use of an omniscient narrator means that the reader knows things the characters don’t, and we get a bird’s-eye view into the way their misconceptions about the situation and each other clash. It’s also a puzzle mystery, where the reader gets to collect the clues and secret codes along with the characters and see if they can beat them to find the solution. That book opened my eyes to the acrobatic tricks words can be nudged into. It wasn’t just an interesting plot – the words were woven together so tightly that changing a single one might break the entire thing.

Based on that anecdote, you might assume I whipped out a pen and got right to work on my own stories, but it took some time. On the road to becoming a writer, I took a few detours as a veterinary nurse, an appliance repair secretary, and a homeschool parent.

Five years ago, I finally settled in the high desert of rural Utah with my husband, our three children, and a noisy flock of orphaned ideas. Someday, I’ll finally finish building literary homes for all of them. (The ideas, not my family).

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
I started getting serious about honing my writing skills when my children were babies and toddlers. The space and brain cells to collect my thoughts were scarce, let alone the time to sit in front of a keyboard and offload ideas from my brain to the page. It was an intense and rewarding stage of life, but it wasn’t conducive to the uninterrupted focus writing requires. Now that the kids are older and I can count on a good night’s sleep, all the ideas that have spent years percolating are ready to go down to business.

For better or worse, the publishing world thrives off of tradition. The dance steps necessary to sneak into the party, jam your foot in the door, and catch someone’s ear are somewhat antiquated. To convince a publisher to listen to you, you must know enough jargon and in-culture norms to seem like you already belong there. Moving to Utah was a transformational step for my writing career because as soon as the boxes were unpacked, I connected with Utah’s writing community, where I learned to navigate publishing’s obstacles. I joined the League of Utah Writers within the first couple months of living here, and I worked my way up the ranks as a local chapter president, a state board officer, and now as the organization’s President-Elect.

My friend and former League President Bryan Young has a saying: becoming a writer means signing up to have homework every night for the rest of your life. The only way to get better at writing is to do a lot of it, and molding an idea into something satisfying to read is a long and often solitary process. Building the necessary skills takes years of slogging away at the keyboard. Publishing finished writing often pays very little; all the first drafts and false starts required to produce something worth publishing don’t pay. It takes thick skin and a healthy discipline to persevere long enough to see results.

Because they all go through this self-inflicted trial, writers are an incredibly generous and tight-knit community. Although I have a college degree in an unrelated field, I have no formal education as a writer. I learned everything I know about writing well and creating a niche for myself in the publishing world from other writers who were willing to share their experiences and pay the favor forward from their mentors. This tutoring and fellowship came in settings ranging from huge formal writing conferences to small, humble gatherings in the back rooms of local libraries and even in online communities. In 99% of cases, these writers share their expertise in their free time, on their dime, simply because they love the art of storytelling and want to help others learn the secrets of taming words.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I like to quip that I write long stories for children and short stories for former children. That means I wrote a series of novels for kids ages nine to thirteen, and a bunch of my short stories appear in books that collect work from multiple authors around a common theme.

The guiding principle for my novels is that I want to celebrate what’s special about being a kid. The characters face their challenges by coming up with solutions an adult would never think of or wouldn’t be able to pull off. For example, all the grownups overlook the secret codes posted all over town because they’re disguised as nursery rhymes – since nursery rhymes are for children, they are dismissed as unimportant. With the help of a rogue grandma, they discover that kids make ideal secret agents because they’re consistently overlooked and underestimated.

I find that a lot of popular media – cartoons especially – only manage to let kids win by making all the adults around them unbearable idiots. I wanted to find a better way to craft a kid-centered story where the characters succeed because of the qualities that make a child’s perspective unique rather than lowering the bar for success.

Of course, it’s not all about the drama of solving mysteries and saving the day. I want readers to have fun, too! The magic of writing is that you get to tell precisely the kind of story you want to read, and that’s exactly what I strive for: writing a book that twelve-year-old me wouldn’t be able to put down. So, of course, I had to sprinkle in a dog sidekick, floating hovercraft, shapeshifting swords, secret hideouts full of spies, a flock of dodos, a couple of robot stampedes, and a castle with secret passages hidden behind the paintings.

My stories for adults encourage readers to rediscover the way they viewed the world as kids, even though the banality of their daily routines has worn off some of the shine. Is that an ordinary rabbit scurrying through the sagebrush, or could it be a killer jackalope? How might social media companies be tempted to use our data two hundred years from now? What if all the senior citizens in town expressed dissatisfaction with the status quo by going on a crime spree? How did the Utah Monolith get into the Moab desert? (Hint: it’s not aliens). The situations might be unrealistic, but the ideas explored along the way still feel familiar, like the struggle of balancing your boss’s goals and expectations with your morals or finding a way to relate to a child or grandchild when you feel like you don’t have anything in common.

Becoming a published author has introduced me to my second love: public speaking! Many people consider the prospect of facing a crowd nightmare-inducing. Still, I feel right at home talking about the craft of storytelling and all the interesting tidbits I picked up during the research required to write my books. I teach writers at gatherings like the Quills Conference, Storymakers Conference, and the Life, the Universe, and Everything Symposium (LTUE), as well as talking to elementary and middle school students about what it takes to write a book and all the cool history I discovered along the way.

One of my favorite presentations teaches kids about the history of secret codes and spycraft. From the Spanish Inquisition to the American Revolution, from telegraphs to computer coding, the principles that make codes work have dramatically impacted the world as we know it today. I never miss a chance to geek out about history and share what I’ve learned with anyone who will stand still long enough to listen.

When I’m not telling my own stories, I’m hard at work helping the writers of Utah tell theirs. I serve as the President-Elect of the League of Utah Writers, helping writers of all stripes get their words into the world since 1935. We have chapters meeting locally all over the state and chapters that meet online or cater to writers of specific genres, like romance or screenwriting. The League of Utah Writers is a nonprofit run entirely by volunteers, so we’re donating our time and talents to boost each other in every stage of our careers, from hobbyists to expert professionals.

I’m honored to work alongside our talented executive team to coordinate our two annual writing conferences and collaborations with other nonprofits like Utah Humanities. Utah has always been a hub for literary excellence, and I’m proud to help keep that torch burning.

Let’s talk about our city – what do you love? What do you not love?
One of the first things I noticed when I moved to Utah was the unparalleled space and freedom. I live in the West Desert, surrounded by public-use land. In every other place I’ve lived, all the natural spaces were privately owned or administered under strict usage restrictions by a city, state, or national government.

But here, as long as you respect the space and leave it as you found it, you’re free to explore all the natural wonders Utah offers. From hiking through lava tunnels and slot canyons to marveling over ancient petroglyphs, there is never a shortage of amazing things to see and do. Where else could you play in sand and snow on the same day? I love exploring Utah with my family.

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