How old were you when you began to write?

I didn’t start working on this project of mine until the summer I was going into seventh grade. I had to get surgery on my foot… and I was was just really bored. I had this idea in my head and I thought might as well write it down.

Who or what inspired you to write a book?

I’ve always loved to read. I don’t have a favorite author, I just have always loved reading. I’ve always made up stories in my head, as a child I would play with my dolls. The stories got really elaborate sometimes. [Writing] has always interested me.

About how many words does your book have now and how many would you like for it to have?

Right now I have a word count of about 99,000. My friend said the average word count was about 100,000, and I’m only halfway done.

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Sophomore Cece Torres has been writing since third grade and draws most of her inspiration from “Avatar: The Last Airbender” and anime. photo by Lucy Hoop

Where does most of your writing take place?

It usually takes place in my room, by myself. I’ll light a candle sometimes.

Is there a certain time you write?

I usually try to write in the evenings. School time is usually my ‘I’m not going to get a lot done’ [time]. Summertime and vacation time is when I usually get a lot of it done,.

Who or what has been your biggest influence?

I have had influences from other books, media and shows. There really isn’t one more than the other. I think it’s mostly fantasy books, anime. If there has to be a biggest influence, I would say the show ‘Avatar the Last Airbender.’ At first I didn’t realize how much things influenced me until I re-visited them.

Without spoiling anything, what will your book be about?

It’s fantasy, it’s going to be a trilogy and the guiding principle for the whole trilogy is ‘what is happiness?.’ There’s a lot of the concept ‘is this good or bad’ as well.

What is your background with writing?

I have been reading practically since day one. I think there was a phase in third grade where I just started writing a bunch of random things.

Why do you want to write a book?

I love the idea of creating my own world. I want to construct this beautiful world and show things. It just makes me happy. When I’m building the world, it just feels like I’m immersing myself in my imagination, it makes the world around me seem better yet worse at the same time.

Have you experienced any setbacks?

I had written probably 30,000 words, and for some reason it just deleted. My mom brought me back up and told me ‘it’s going to be even better now’ and I think it is. But then it happened again, this time at 60,000 words. But luckily this time it wasn’t the entire thing. But six months of work was deleted.

What has been your greatest accomplishment?

I think when I did reach 90,000 words and I thought ‘I can do this.’ Over the summer I tried to get a lot done. When I began this summer, it was at 50,000 and over the summer I managed to write 40,000 more words.

If you could give advice to someone who wanted to write a book, what would that be?

Don’t think your ideas are stupid, because a lot of that is what has been holding me back with my writing. You can have a dumb idea and pull it off exceptionally well. If you execute it perfectly, no one’s going to care about the initial idea. Don’t let yourself hold you back.