Meet JJ Reider
JJ writes about what interests him. He has spent his entire life running away from the title of "poet," that was until he got tired and it finally caught up to him. He has since come to terms with it. Otherwise, he can be found writing one novel or another while dreading the day he has to go back and edit them.
My Story
I started writing in high school after my favorite teacher told me I had talent. At the time, I wasn't really good at anything, so finding out I had a real skill gave me something to grasp onto. I wrote a lot of poetry, and it was pretty bad; much of it is still tucked away in obscure folders in the deepest, darkest recesses of my hard drive. With a lot of my poetry, I tend to take the Emily Dickenson approach: someone can publish it when I'm dead.
​
My writing has come and gone through various phases of my life. Generally speaking, I usually only write in the worst times of my life. It's as though it's a coping mechanism, or a way to process information so I might grow. I am trying to change that and to write when things are going well in my life as well.
​
My wife and my son put up with my writing, as it does tend to consume a lot of time. Together, we have three cats, one of which dutifully sleeps beside me as my word counts increase. She must be some sort of guardian of prose. Whatever it takes to get that first draft written, amirite?