I write the kind of books I know I'd have loved back then. Now, more than ten years later, I have 13 published novels and hope to write many more! I love writing for young readers, because really, I feel I am writing for my 13 year old self. So this book, my third novel, taught me the most important lesson: Never give up trying.There is always another story to tell. I was so intrigued that I ran home and began writing about her, and an hour later, had finished the first chapter of Origin, the book that just one year later would be published all over the world. It was during that walk that a picture popped into my mind: a heartbroken girl trapped by glass walls, surrounded by jungle. In fact, the day I gave up on that book, I took a long walk through the woods to feel sorry for myself and wonder why I'd wasted so much time on a hopeless dream. I truly thought it was the best thing I could ever write, and so I thought my lifelong dream of becoming a writer was over. It was soundly rejected by every agent I sent it to, which was a really tough time. Whereas my first novel taught me how to finish a book, this story taught me how to let one go. This fantasy story was very, very dear to me, and I worked hard on it for four years before trying to get an agent to help me publish it. In college I wrote my next novel, The Heiress of Rhiangar. It was a huge step forward in my writing journey! That book will never be published (it wasn't very good) but I learned so much about writing and, importantly, about how to finish a book. Sometimes I would write for five or six hours a day! It was called Tirel and was about a boy who found out he was the lost prince of a magical kingdom. It took me a full year, and I worked on it every day after school. I wrote my first novel when I was 13 years old.
I still have those little trophies sitting in my office! In third grade, I won the Young Georgia Author Award for more fan fiction I wrote-this time featuring myself and the Hardy Boys. I would even skip recess at school to go to the library instead! My favorites were the Hardy Boys, the Phantom Tollbooth, any books with dogs or horses, the Redwall series, and everything by Jean Craighead George. fan fiction! My preschool teacher read my story to my class, and that was the moment I knew I wanted to be a writer.Īfter that, I wrote and read constantly. So you could say I started my writing journey with, yes. The ending made me feel pretty sad (I won't give away spoilers-you will have to read it yourself to see why!) so I decided to write a "sequel" to the story that made it happier. I've known I wanted to be an author since I was four years old, and I read the book Danny and the Dinosaur.
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