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The writer
Name: Ruby Shaw
Age: 18
Gender: Female
Physical description: A short and bouncy redhead (not naturally), with the figure of someone who was in a lot of sports and athletic clubs for the past several years. She's got weather beaten skin and some muscle, though by far her most beautiful - and at times frightening - trait is her eyes. Piercing and a deep brown, a determined look about them.
Personality: Ruby can be described in three words: energetic and easily distracted (the and doesn't count). She's very spunky and a go-getter, except for the fact that once she gets going, she either gets distracted by something else or her enthusiasm just peters out. She'll start a ton of big projects but usually never finish what she started or just throw something together. However, she's got big ambitions and needs to learn that to achieve things she desires requires work and not just talent.
History/background: Ruby's parents would have been considered to be upper middle class in today's society. They never spoiled their daughter but Mr. and Mrs. Shaw tended to believe in very positive reinforcement. They applauded her when and where she tried, and rewarded her even when she didn't achieve success - her successes were hugely praised and rewarded though. While this was a good and loving way of running things in their opinion, it soon became apparent that their encouragement to just 'try' as much as she could to get rewards ended up negatively impacting their daughter.

It started with Ruby just seeming to try to do way more things than she'd ever actually succeed in. She joined every club in school and did her best in them. Then, slowly, her definition of try became more and more vague and soon she was just randomly joining things and just ignoring them or turning out shoddy work. The most effort she displayed in anything was sports, which the girl had a natural talent for. And while she did work and attend every practice - they held her interest - she never excelled at any of it and was average at best.
Why they applied: Now that Ruby's graduated high school, she's determined to make her mark on the world, and college just won't do it. She's decided to be a writer and she's turned her attention to the workshop to get a leg up on the rest of the literary community. After all, if one attended a writing workshop by such an amazing author and publishes something from that workshop, it's bound to get at least some attention, right? Particularly because of all the secrecy surrounding this.

Transformation process:
* Writer - Ruby as her short and bouncy self. Probably grinning like a maniac and scribbling in a notepad or jumping for joy or something. The girl's a walking balloon of nutty (honestly, her character might just make more sense than she does in the long run. Or at least be more intelligent).

* Stage 1 - It all started with her face itching. And then she started to feel stretched - like her skin was pulling down and away from her body as her legs and arms and torso were being pulled longer. The muscles she'd gotten from all the years in sports at school were starting to deteriorate, leaving her thinner but still energetic. It was then that she'd looked in the mirror long enough to realize she was rapidly gaining a growth of hair on her face, pure white and soft. The skin her muscles had stretched out were now becoming a little saggy and wrinkly as she became longer and thinner. It was just all too awful.
(Stage 1 Summary: She's starting to grow the beard, and rather quickly, as well as becoming less muscular and taller than before. Wrinkles will be forming where there was once muscle and she's going to look a bit older)

* Stage 2 - She's got a particularly long beard now that she's quite proud of, spending a lot of time a day grooming it (though she isn't sure anymore if this desire to groom her beard is from her old self or her character). Her head hair remains long and dyed red as before, though her roots are starting to come out their usual deep brown, but she's not concerned. The wrinkles have come in more fully now and she's a good deal taller. Fashion is stuck somewhere between his usual clothes and hers - wearing jeans, spangly wizard nightshirts as tops, and leather jackets as well as curly toed shoes. Still, she's at least embracing her changes.


* Stage 3 - ???
At this point, depending on how Ruby learns and grows as a character, she could decide she has learned enough to write and respect her character and continue to tell stories for some time. However, it could also end up being she decides that the stories that still need telling still need that character and she's not done her story. It all depends on how she learns and grows.