Summers Always Make Me Think Of The Prisoner

I talk a lot about the inspiration behind my writing and the process, but I’ve never really talked about the first time I shared my writing publicly. Before the snippets shared to Tumblr or my Heirs of Tenebris trilogy and To Sway a Flame, there was The Prisoner. And yes, you guessed it, I started sharing it during the summer months sometime after graduating high school! Naturally this time of year makes me reminisce about how nervous I was to share my writing with others, but I knew it was a step I needed to take on my author journey. After all, if I couldn’t share a short story I’d wrote in class that my teacher loved, how could I ever be expected to share my novel?

At the time I first shared The Prisoner, a story about a young boy who’d been imprisoned for stealing yet dreamed of captaining a ship and sailing the sea, I was just starting to proclaim that I wanted to be an author. It was a dream I’d only recently began to actively pursue, but a dream nonetheless…until I realized that meant sharing my work and potentially being in the public eye. On top of that, I had to face the fear that people wouldn’t like it. Granted, the majority of my readers at the time were family and friends, there was still this apprehension that strangers on the internet would rip into my writing (a fear I still hold to this day and will likely never go away). To my shock, though, they loved it! My family wanted more, and I somehow had to turn a thousand words or so short story into an actual novella with a plot and character development and resolution.

But thanks to the reception of The Prisoner, my confidence as an author grew. This single short story paved the way for me to share bigger projects with the world and seek publication, leading to my Heirs of Tenebris trilogy and—more recently—To Sway a Flame. I can’t help but be a little nostalgic when I think of The Prisoner and the summer I agonized over what to do with this little boy and his dream of sailing. Even though it was terrifying to hit “post,” if I had never done that, I may never have pursued my writing seriously.

If I have learned anything, it’s that you’ll need to take steps on your author journey that otherwise scare you or fill you with apprehension. The important thing to remember is to have a community around you to lift you up, celebrate your victories, and encourage you in times of doubt. You don’t have to start big or hit “publish” the moment you decide to share your writing or to become an author, but you do have to start somewhere. And the best “somewhere” is a with a group of people who are the most likely to lift you up and help you along the next steps of your author journey.