Year: Senior
Majors: Editing, Writing, and Media, International Affairs
Hometown: I am an Air Force brat. My family currently lives in the Tampa Bay Area. I’ve lived in Oklahoma, Louisiana and I was born in Bedford, England.
Her Campus (HC): How did you get interested in writing? What was your first story (published or otherwise)?
Melissa DeHart (MD): I started writing poems when I was eight and moved on to stories when I was thirteen. Now I write mostly stories with a few poems here or there. Mostly I like to write fiction stories, ranging from twenty to a couple hundred pages. I found that writing fictional stories was more entertaining and fulfilling as compared to playing video games, etc. I have a very broad imagination and it’s difficult to jot all my ideas down, so I currently have over a dozen in-progress works.
HC: Tell us more about your published works.
MD: I self-published a book in high school which you can find here. I also had short story that was published last fall in the Barking Sycamore’s online newsletter which you can find here.
HC: How did this lead into your freelance editing? What exactly are you doing for that?
MD: I am currently taking a course by Dr. Bruce Bickley and was inspired to try to find a niche in order to simultaneously practice my editing while helping others that may be struggling with their assignments. I put a few posts up on Facebook pages advertising line editing and interested individuals message me and we go from there.
HC: What are your plans for the future writing/editing-wise?
MD: I hope to be a copyeditor for a large publishing company such as Random House or Penguin Putnam. If possible I would like to publish more novels in the future or work as a writer in National Geographic or an equivalent publication.