Some people collect stamps. Some people collect cats.

I collect… pen names.

If you’ve ever tried to keep track of Alexandra Heep, Helena Parx, and Lexa Drane, let me assure you: I can’t always keep track of them either. It’s like hosting a small, eccentric literary committee inside one brain—each with opinions, deadlines, and wildly different aesthetics.

But since today, November 15, is I Love to Write Day, let’s rewind the tape to where this all started.

**The Content Mill Era:

Where Writing Dreams Wear Steel-Toe Boots**

Before the stories, the crystals, the health science deep-dives, and the parade of gnomes, I began in the content mills.

And listen—content mills get treated like the fast-food drive-thru of the writing world: quick, cheap, and allegedly not “real” writing.

But let’s set the record straight.

Content mills were my dojo.

My training montage.

My keyboard boot camp, complete with invisible sweatband and epic background music.

They taught me speed.

They taught me how to meet impossible deadlines.

They taught me to navigate clients who seemed to believe 500 words on “10 Reasons to Refinance Your Goldfish” was both normal and necessary.

Most importantly, they taught me the gritty, overlooked skill every writer secretly needs: writing even when you don’t feel like writing.

But here’s the part no one warns you about:

When you turn something you love into something you need to survive, your heart doesn’t always keep up.

Sometimes the muse goes on strike.

Sometimes your keyboard starts feeling like a tax form.

Sometimes you reread your own sentences and think, I used to enjoy this, right? Right??

When Writing Became Mine Again

Eventually, I crawled out of the mill rubble and realized that my creativity hadn’t died—it had been doing push-ups in the dark.

And once writing stopped being a survival mechanism and started being an expression again, something wild happened: it expanded into three branches. Three voices. Three themes. Three pen names.

**Pen Name #1: Alexandra Heep

(The One Who Talks to PubMed for Fun)**

Alexandra is the health detective. The myth-buster. The chapter-builder.

She writes books that ask harder questions than most doctors do and uses metaphors sharp enough to cut through medical jargon.

She’s the voice that turns complex biochemistry into clear, witty explanations.

She’s the one who says, “Stress reduction? No. Strengthen your stress tolerance,” and means it.

**Pen Name #2: Helena Parx

(The One Living with Gnomes, Cats, and Possibly Sentient Evergreens)**

Helena wandered in with a glitter-dusted imagination and just… stayed.

She writes the Gnomeward Bound series, where Princess Gracie the cat narrates magical adventures involving golden hats, glowing groves, Baby Spruce, and gnome politics so sophisticated they could probably run a small country.

Helena is whimsy with a backbone.

She’s the part of me that believes magic is real and sometimes—just sometimes—photogenic.

**Pen Name #3: Lexa Drane

(The One Who Draws, Rhymes, and Rhythms Reality Back Into Order)**

Lexa handles the coloring books, the whimsical poetry, the illustrated worlds.

She is the heartbeat behind the nervous-system poems, the alpaca coloring book, and anything that feels like a deep exhale wrapped in art.

She’s the voice that emerges when words don’t just want to be read—they want to be felt.

Three Voices, One Writer, and a Whole Lot of Ink

Are three pen names excessive?

Probably.

Are they confusing?

Sometimes.

Do they ever argue over who gets which ideas?

Absolutely.

But each one represents a part of the journey back to loving writing—not just as a skill, not just as a job, but as a living, evolving creative identity.

Because the truth is this:

I didn’t fall back in love with writing all at once. I fell in love with it three different ways.

**Today, I Love to Write —

Not Because I Have To, But Because I Get To**

Writing for survival taught me discipline.

Writing for passion taught me possibility.

Writing for three pen names taught me that creativity doesn’t shrink to fit a box; it grows new rooms, new wings, new hallways.

So on this “I Love to Write” Day, I’m raising my metaphorical pen to everything that shaped me:

-the mills, the deadlines, the burnout, the spark returning. The gnomes, the gems, the cats, the medical chapters, and the glorious chapter of being a writer many times over.

If you love to write, even on the days that you don’t, you’re already in the club. And if you’re confused by my three pen names? Don’t worry. Some days, so am I.