When you get into high school, thinking about what you’ll do in the future becomes a high priority. Becoming an author is an exciting, creative, challenging, and fun career. Some students, like freshman Carolyn Klink, plan on being authors when they leave high school.
“I would like to be an author,” Klink said. “I think it’s something I’m good at. I have the skills, but I definitely have a lot more to learn. But I think I would really enjoy it.”
Others, like sophomore Maxwell Berent, prefer not to be authors when they grow up. “No, even if I created the greatest book ever to grace the face of the earth, it still might not reach any sort of acclaim,” Berent said. “So no, I wouldn’t do it professionally unless it really took off.”
Just because some people prefer not to write stories as their job doesn’t mean that they don’t like writing. Some people write for fun, like Berent, while others do it as a career, like Klink.
Many people spark their interest in someone or something, like Isaac Snyder (‘27). “I was inspired mostly by The Lord of the Rings,” Snyder said. “When I read that for the first time, I loved it and wanted to create something similar.”
It’s amazing how people can inspire others without even knowing it. Furthermore, Snyder has published a book before, The Rise of Iltorin, the first book of The Master of Lightning Series, a trilogy that he is currently working on.
Others were just inspired by reading in general, as Henrik Parker (‘26) explains. “When I was younger, I read all the time,” Parker said. “Engaging with books so much has really ignited this creative spark in me and inspired me to constantly write.”
Reading can do wonders for people; it’s inspiring and makes people want to create books until it’s a fun obsession. Though it can be inspiring, it also takes lots of practice.
“Just start writing; it’s not going to be good,” Klink said. “Your first draft is for you to tell the story to yourself, and it’s for you to get your ideas on paper.”
Creating your first story can be tricky and hard, but what you need to do is lay out your ideas so that you can be the judge of what needs to be changed and fixed. Eventually, you’ll get used to this, and it’ll be a piece of cake.
In order to make life a lot easier, authors use a variety of different techniques to make writing their first book easy.
“I kind of just made a basic plot and added the details in as I sent,” Snyder said. “This time, I’m trying to plan out most of the details and just get everything figured out before I actually do the writing, and then maybe I’ll add a few little things here and there.”
Authors generally use special techniques to start writing their books, but some people have outstanding imaginations and can continue a book without any outlines or summaries.
“The hardest part is always getting started,” Parker explained. “It’s a massive roadblock, but once I’m over it, everything flows pretty naturally.”
Unlike Parker, the hardest part of creating a book for Berent is getting to the end.
“Usually, I start with a premise, and I think of the first few pages and the ending,” Berent said. “The main problem with this is that when I get to the middle, I tend to slow down and stop writing.”
No matter where you are, whether you’re a beginner or an expert, writing is full of excitement and frustrations; it’s full of creativity and adventure. All you need to remember is “Have faith in your writing,” Parker said.
