INTERVIEW: KATHRIN HUTSON • 69 all. The other students ripped it to shreds. I don’t think any of them had a single positive thing to say about it, and honestly, neither did I. It was my worst writing moment in that I didn’t actually try and submitted something I knew was complete trash. On the other hand, it was one of the best learning experiences I’ve had in my career, because up to that point, I’d never experienced the complete bombing, with very little sympathy or sugar-coating, of something I’d created. It made me realize that not everything I wrote turned into gold on the printed page, and that blow to my ego was exactly the right force and size. I still don’t always write gold. But I’ve definitely found that balance between hard work, dedication, and skill.
Q: You also formed an editing company with services focused for indie writers. How did that come about and does that detract from your writing time? A: I started my editing and writing services company in 2015, six months before I published Daughter of the Drackan, my first book. To tell you the truth, it was my husband’s idea. I’d edited a research proposal and finalized research paper for one of our friends. I’d offered it freely, as my weirdly eclectic resume of jobs up to that point (including being a personal assistant, handling all the administrative work for a computer networking company, becoming the sole person in the medical records department of a personal injury law firm, and serving “tables” at a movie theater/restaurant) had given me such a wide range of experience with editing documents beyond what I’d learned in college with fiction. I didn’t go easy on our friend’s paper, but he accepted all my changes for major revisions with more excitement than I’d expected. Then he ended up receiving the Second Best Presentation award at the William V. Moore Research Confer-