From fanfiction to college graduate to author, I retrace my journey of creative writing of all types.
My “origin story” is not that uncommon.
Like most writers, I started writing at a young age. I was introduced to the craft as a hobby that was shared between friends.
Say what you’d like about fanfiction, but here’s my hot take: it’s a great way to dip your toes into the creative sphere. Not confident at all in your writing skills? Fanfictions got the groundwork to build from, and a thriving, supportive community to boot.
I still remember that spiral yellow notebook. I was old-school when I started. Yeah, the internet was a huge thing, but we didn’t have them 24/7 in our pockets. It wasn’t easy to lug around a laptop in-between class, and it would’ve given me a lot of side-eyes if I had tried. It wasn’t common at the time.
I hid the story in the back of that notebook and realized about a week later that what was meant for class notes ended up being just for the Dracula fanfiction I tried to write.
My first attempt was terrible. I’m so glad it never got to see the light of day.
But you know what makes me grateful that it existed at all? It led me into writing out an entire story about vampires. It made me curious to write my own stories, even if I thought at the time the only audience would be me and my small group of writer friends.
What I didn’t expect was how much I enjoyed the process of writing, even when I thought, “Wow, this is terrible; no one should ever read this.”
But my curiosity grew. I wanted to get better, so I learned. I started understanding the craft. I learned how editors viewed fiction. I wrote horror and thriller shorts and tried my hand at novel writing. I went down the rabbit hole and within half a year, I became the go-to editor of my friend group. Our love language was us chucking our manuscripts-in-process at each other’s heads. Literally. I still have the hard-won bruises to show from ’08.
That first vampire manuscript got eaten by a virus when it was nearly completed a year later. Pro tip I wish I knew then: have backups of your writing. Everywhere. At the time, I wasn’t upset (much). I didn’t think being an author even crossed my mind at that point. My goal was just to get through to graduation.
Most of my stories up until that point were short stories, if I was not co-writing fanfiction with a friend. Behind Closed Doors is the earliest and longest story I had buried within me, and at the time I had “completed” it, the story was nothing like it is today. It was titled, “Patient 49”, and that was the first time when I looked it over in my early high school days and thought about becoming an author – or at the very least, pursuing an English degree.
Most of my support group was my small circle of friends, and the small circle of writers online through platforms that were meant to share original work and collect feedback on it. Wattpad was a very short lived platform for me – it gave my computer a virus, and ate everything I had for Behind Closed Doors at one point.
Pro tip, have an anti-virus software installed on your computer.
Pro tip, have an anti-virus software installed on your computer
And also, have about 12 copies of your current works-in-progress at any given time spread out across different things – USBs, the Cloud, Google Docs, Word, whatever you work with.
It’s like a piece of you gets ripped out when all your hard work is gone.
I didn’t automatically go for an English degree when college came around – it’s very hard to motivate yourself to go for something when your support system dwindles and those who linger tell you your work is “too dark” and wouldn’t get picked up by an agency or any publishing house, for that matter. Not to mention the fact that many authors had that particular career as a side hustle rather than doing it full-time.
So, I got my AA degree and decided to take a gap year overseas. In 2020.
2020 was an… interesting year, to say the least. I would love to say that I sat my happy ass down and wrote for a good portion during that time, but I’d be lying.
2021, I went back for my English undergrad online, and that was when I met C.R. Cook. We hit it off immediately, and we both encourage the other to, at the very least, pursue self-publishing our books. After graduation, I traveled around Europe for two years as a freelance ghostwriter and editor, with my day job being a part-time nanny. I then realized that childcare? Not in my cards as a career long-term.
I have the skills but I don’t have the long-term strength of endurance for that field of work.
And it wasn’t until 2026 when I decided to go fully into making the author thing happen. I was also making the transition into going fully into copywriting at the time, so why not?
So, now I’m learning marketing, on top of the writing craft, the editing, the formatting. It’s a learning curve, for sure. But I am finding the process extremely fun at times (not the formatting though… that just gives me headaches). I will be the first one to tell you I cried when my author proof came, and I was shaking with excitement from the first author royalty payment I received.
It was to prove to myself that I could do this. I’m not expecting an instant bestseller hit, and I’m not expecting everyone who comes into contact with the books I write to love or share them.
What I was expecting of myself was that I would do it for the child who was told she wouldn’t make it as an author, just like she was told she couldn’t be so many other things.
And now I am. I can rightfully call myself a published author.
Pro tip for fellow authors thinking about publishing their work: embrace the imposter syndrome, try it out, do the thing scared if you need to.
embrace the imposter syndrome, try it out, do the thing scared if you need to.