Bio:

Stories are my fascia. They are how I understand the world. I write them in the hope that I can give them back to The World in gratitude for all that The World's stories have given me.

My first authoring efforts were dictated to Dean, a kindly, patient undergrad assigned to notate my words in blank books made from wallpaper samples when I was four and in kindergarten. I have continued telling stories, illustrating, annotating them ever since. (These days, however, I write them down myself.)

At about the same age, the realization that songs told stories affixed me to the radio. In 1980, I'd settle my Fisher-Price tape recorder beside it, tune in and await the chance to grab the songs I loved best so that I could listen to them again and again. And I have continued listening, chasing songs, hunting for hidden stories, and mining sounds ever since.

Art, nature, and human behavior increasingly captured my imagination as I grew. By 1985, I'd replaced my ambition of becoming a veterinarian for that of being an Artist of some kind or another.

After graduating from Berklee College of Music, I pursued work as a recording engineer and life by composing - but soon felt stymied creatively. Recording work didn't leave time for much else, and I found myself struggling to compose music the way I wrote words. Attempting to force a thing to be something it isn't is, of course, a bad idea. Thus, when I decided to let my ideas exist just as words, lo, my frustration, it did abate and my attempts to create, they did come unblock'd. :)

Then came the hard part. The writing part. The 'changing day jobs so that I could focus on writing' part. The 'going back to this thing that once came naturally and learning the craft of it' part. The 'learning to chop wood' part. Four years later, I think I've come to the 'learning to whittle' part. As 2012 ended, I'd completed drafts of three picture books and a first draft of a middle-grade fiction novel, all of which I hope to have in shop-able shape in the near future.

I feel fairly certain that if I'd majored in English, I'd be pursuing music right now.

I'm a slow-growing tree, but find my time has been well spent.

Thank you for visiting!

Heidi Hendricks

Writer
Associate
Member since 2013
Region: New England: Central (Massachusetts)

Contact Information

Email:  hahendricks@yahoo.com
Current Location:   MA

Published In Children's Market: No