When I hear the question “How old were you when you started writing?” part of me wants to run away. I always enjoyed writing and engaged in writing many fictional stories as I grew up (in notebooks, on paper!), but it wasn’t until I was 19 that I decided I wanted to write “for real” and possibly make a career out of it.
19! To many, that will seem young in comparison to when they started. Others pride themselves in knowing they’ve always wanted to be an author. It’s those stories that have, at times, made me feel bad about not having that same crystal-clear childhood dream.
In the end, it doesn’t matter. I’m 31 now, and writing is such an important part of my life. I may not be a published author—yet—but I am definitely on my way.
So, how did I get here?
In the year I turned 19, I spent a year studying law before deciding it wasn’t for me. I was enrolled in a double degree with a Bachelor of Arts (with psychology in there somewhere) and somehow (I don’t recall how) I made the connection with my overall joy for writing and wanting to pursue… something… in that field. I dropped the law and psychology parts of my degree and focused on arts. I can’t say what I was aiming for (teaching? Publishing?) because I don’t remember. I do know that’s when I started dreaming about being an author.
Then, I started writing a novel “for real” and became an admin of a Facebook writing page, running writing contests and giving out free critiques. And so I became semi-serious about it, writing novels that are completely non-viable now. Except for one project (a YA) which I planned when I was 20, wrote the first draft of it in the month I turned 21, and then continued to re-plan and re-write over the years. This turned into a novel which ended up landing me an agent back in 2022, thought after being submitted to a dozen publishers (AU/NZ), it wasn’t acquired.
But before I dive into that story, let me go back to the writing process—a haphazard one broken up by bouts of depression and early motherhood.
I would write in seasons, a few months on, a few months off (sometimes a full year!). I wrote a dystopian (edited, albeit poorly), a YA for NaNoWriMo one year (never edited again and is completely lost in an old, broken laptop), and the YA novel which I re-wrote several times.
For each rewrite, I would start a new document (and eventually a scrivener file for the last one), and while I kept most of the main characters and overall storyline, I was always re-plotting it.
The second last time I re-planned and re-wrote the novel I was pregnant with my first child, and once she was born that life took over for a while. When she was one, I fell into a very serious depression, so I definitely did not care about writing then. But after that, when I was better, I dove into re-planning the novel and this became the beginning of my best, strongest, and longest writing season (still going!). It brought me my first viable novel and launched me into this place where writing is part of me, and I cannot imagine having more than brief periods away from it.
After I came out of that last depression, I was determined to get myself to a place where I could live, rather than just survive. In September 2020 I began re-planning the novel, committing to just sitting down and writing a journal entry as a foundational habit to then link the writing back to. There were many days I would open my laptop and write the date, and the time, and the words: “I’m here to write but I don’t feel like it”, then I shut the laptop and did something else. But each day I kept showing up to write that little journal entry. Eventually more often it became “I’m here to write and I don’t feel like it, but I’m going to try do it anyway”. Sometimes I would write for 2 minutes, sometimes 5, sometimes 10. At this point I was planning the novel, so at times I would just write down a few ideas. It all counted. Over time it got easier to do more. I began to get excited about it.
It was April 2021 when I began writing the first draft. This means I had spent six months planning the novel! (In contrast, my WIP I spent about three weeks planning before I began to draft). I had definitely built momentum. I finished the draft in July and then dove into edits over the next few months. By February 2022 it was ready to query! Well, as ready as I knew how to get it at the time.
And so, I began querying. But not the type of querying I know now. I had no idea Query Tracker was a thing, and I didn’t realise I was “allowed” to query agents internationally… I was only searching for literary agents in Australia, and there are not many! So I sent out 5 queries to start with.
It was two weeks later when I received a phone call from an agent, what?! He very quickly squashed my excitement by letting me know he wouldn’t be taking it on, but said he had to call me because he didn’t want to just send off the form response. We talked for about ten minutes, and he told me how he thought the work had a lot of potential but still needed some development. He made a few suggestions, including to get a manuscript appraisal to help with more editing. I looked into it, but chose not to invest the money in it just yet, since I could still send a few queries; besides, I was pregnant with my second child due at the end of July.
I was planning to send more queries, but I think I only sent 2-3 more before I got sick for about 6 weeks straight (three different illnesses including a brutal 3-day gastro bug that was particularly horrible while pregnant…) and then was in the hospital at 34 weeks pregnant when my waters broke early, then had baby 10 days later. She was a preemie and in NICU, then there was adjusting to life with her at home.
She was about six weeks old when I decided to send my YA off for a manuscript appraisal. When I got that back, the report was super positive! There wasn’t a whole lot I felt I could work with in terms of edits (some being that they didn’t resonate), and then I saw an AU/NZ agent who I could query, so I sent her a short pitch and also mentioned getting the appraisal. She requested the full novel and asked to see the appraisal too. Then, two weeks later, she offered to represent it! I won’t go into details, but I will say she only gave me very light edits to do before submitting it to a batch of 12 AU/NZ publishers. I was super confident at that point.
Only, all the publishers rejected the novel. Most of the feedback mentioned how limited the YA market is in Australia, and there were definitely some lovely comments amongst the rejections. The last rejection came in June 2023, and the agent didn’t want to submit it anywhere else. At this point I was well into my WIP anyway, so it didn’t bother me too much. I never shed a single tear over those rejections, but I definitely felt disappointed here and there.
However, that WIP made me see how much my writing had improved, and when I looked back on my YA, I could see so much I could edit, ah! One problem was a heavy lack of setting detail, with so many dialogue heavy sections. I went through the novel and added a bunch of detail in, editing a few other things here and there. I was still happy with the plot though, and still am now after receiving a new round of critique from a very talented agented author who has given me a bunch of edits to do. My writing skills are so much better now that I could have done a full edit myself first, but I wanted to see if the plot still held up, before diving into those line edits. And, thankfully, it is, and now I have extra clarity and direction for line edits, some scene edits, and a few edits to a couple aspects of character. And yes, more detail adding. I’ll dive into this when my WIP is complete (or perhaps between rounds of beta reading/critique).
I am really happy the novel wasn’t acquired, because even if an editor had worked with me on these needed edits (possibly not, possibly many of the rejections were because of how much editing was needed, though no one said this), I have been able to get to a much stronger place with my writing that I would much prefer to launch my author career from.
Now I’ve got a women’s fiction I’m querying that has had 15 requests (14 US agents, 1 UK agent, no Aussie agents [my old agent passed on this project]). You can read about that on my Querying Journey blog post.
Sure, I would have loved to be a published author before I turned 30 (I’m getting close to 32 now!) but everything happened as it did for the best. My mental health and my experience with motherhood have both influenced my writing so much, and if I had been in a place to write as well as I can now any sooner, then I probably wouldn’t have the stories I have now for my women’s fiction novels (the core of my YA is there from my experience with high school bullying).
Sometimes, when things don’t work out, it really is for the best. This is certainly the case for me. In the end is that the journey has led me to so much growth.
