As writers of Her Campus, some of us write for fun and some of us write to work towards our career, but all of us write because we love it. When I transferred to Illinois State, I decided to major in Creative Writing in hopes of pursuing my lifelong dream of becoming an author. I’ve been writing short stories for fun ever since I was in the second grade, and I knew then that I wanted to be an author someday. As I grew older, my short stories began filling entire notebooks, and then they turned into novellas on Wattpad. After I graduated high school, I began writing my first novel. When the time came for me to start college, I joined the Creative Writing sequence at ISU and then joined Her Campus for even more writing experience.
In Summer of 2024, I stumbled across an ad for a writing challenge through Bookleaf Publishing in India, called The Write Angle. When you sign up, you have to write a poem a day for 21 days, and at the end, they’ll publish it as your very own poetry book. All it took to enter was a $50 registration fee and then I was off writing my poems! Honestly, I’ve never been super into poetry, but as I was writing, I found it exciting and evocative to come up with hidden meanings and beautiful phrases that captured my thoughts, feelings, and experiences. There were times when I’d write multiple poems a day or barely even one, but my poetry seemed to transform as the challenge progressed. It felt more like art than the typical storytelling I was used to in my prose classes, and that made the experience that much more rewarding. By the end of the challenge, I had 44 pages worth of poetry that would one day live on someone’s bookshelf instead of an unread, Google document on my laptop.
I designed the cover myself on the Book Cover Maker app by Desygner. Then, after I submitted my poems, I eagerly awaited the first print proof of my book. Over the course of several weeks, I worked with a publishing consultant to make changes and prepare for publication, then I just had to approve the final draft and I was good to go! However, when my book finally went live, it was only available in India. I had to opt-in to global distribution and wait about 60 more days for publication, but in return, it’d be available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Finally, this January, I searched my name on Amazon and came face to face with a listing of my very first book, The First Flame.
This whole process was a major shift in my writing career. Following publication, I worked towards advertising my book. I made my professional author profiles, posted about it on all of my social media, hung up flyers, and even talked to local businesses about hosting a book signing in the future! Although it’s not the first novel that I’ve always wanted to publish, this experience gave me the chance to step into the publishing world and get a taste of how things work. I’m already working on my next poetry book with Bookleaf Publishing, and as graduation nears, I’m beginning to think more about how to pursue finishing my first novel!
I cannot even describe the feeling of seeing your name across the top of a published book. For anyone thinking about writing their first book, I highly encourage you to do so, even if it’s just a small project. If you’re into poetry, Bookleaf’s writing challenge is an easy, amazing opportunity to get your work out there without the fear of being rejected. Although the profits may not be as high through this challenge, just being able to have something officially published is enough of a reward. This is just the beginning for me, and I cannot wait to see where my writing will take me next!