Power of writing facilitates others to see through our eyes. Jordan started his writing career with writing screenplays at age fourteen and soon evolved to spread his imaginative thoughtful writing in a form of novels. He came up with an adventurous sci-fi series Reflection in which the main character has autism. His aim is to spread autism awareness via his fantastic book series and this character will help readers understand of autism spectrum. We want to congratulate Jordan for his talents and awareness.

How did you start your writing career? Which aspect of writing do you like the most?J: When I was fourteen years old, I started my writing career with screenplay writing because I wanted to help make traditional 2D hand-drawn animated movies, but then after four years, I switched to novel writing because it allows way more flexibility in the stories, characters and creativity.
The aspects of writing that I like the most are definitely the creativity, the characters and the imagination involved. The main character I use is to help readers understand the Autistic spectrum as well.

How did you get the idea for your book series Reflection? How challenging is it to involve your reader in a fantasy series?J: The idea of the Reflection series started off as one fascinating image. After that, I kept building on that image until the buildup formed into a lengthy story with unique characters and an astonishing fantasy world. Creating a story is very relatable to constructing a giant jigsaw puzzle, with the process also involving morphing several puzzle pieces in order to fit into the puzzle, which symbolizes editing a story, until the whole puzzle is complete, which represents the whole series fully finished and published.
As for how challenging it will be to involve the readers in a fantasy novel series, I won’t know until the series is published. I do hope I can give readers a better understanding about what it is like to be autistic.

Which program/activity steered you towards creative writing during your school days?J: Actually, it wasn’t a program/activity that steered me towards creative writing, it was the lack of traditional 2D hand-drawn animated movies in the cinemas that directed me to it. You see, I have great passion for animation, especially traditional 2D hand-drawn animation, so I became determined to use new exciting stories to bring it all right back into and keep it in the cinemas again. That’s why I started with screenplay writing.

Which piece of literature has inspired you the most and why?J: Out of all the fictional pieces of literature I’ve read, I actually don’t recall them inspiring the Reflection series that much. However, I did get inspiration from movies and video games like Final Fantasy, James Cameron’s Avatar and Jim Henson’s Labyrinth. The Spiderwick Chronicles did inspire me to divide the Reflection series into five books instead of having it remain one huge book, which greatly helped. So an immense thank you to you Tony Diterlizzi for your wonderful stories and works, which I greatly enjoy!

What are your other hobbies?J: The other hobbies I really enjoy doing are movie watching, birdwatching, looking at artwork, video game playing, baking, reading graphic novels, especially when I’m doing them with family and friends.

What do you like to do when you are with your friends/family?J: When I’m with my friends and family, I really enjoy going to amusement parks, water parks, aquariums, aviaries, restaurants and cinemas and doing my hobbies with them, too.

Can you give tips/advice for those in our community who are interested in creative writing?J: I’d be delighted to. One big tip is that if anyone is planning to write a series of books, I recommend they write out a whole very well-detailed synopsis of the whole series and keep editing it until they’re fully satisfied with it before moving onto writing the series. Then they write out the whole series as a rough draft and make any necessary edits that they notice need editing, like getting rid of plot holes. Then as they edit and publish each book one after another, they can make side notes to further edit and improve any of the sequel books that aren’t published yet (I recommend labeling each note for which book it’s for to avoid confusion).

Any special message for our community?J: Here’s a message with a poetic edge: “Don’t be shy, let your imagination fly.”