She’s A Bestselling Author
Have you ever had a song stuck in your head, turned on the radio or clicked “play” on Spotify and that song started to play? This happened to me yesterday morning. I kept humming “Fireside” by Chase Rice as I got ready for work. It’s a catchy song, the kind that will get stuck in your head for a while. When I got in my car to head to the office, I waited for Spotify to connect to the Bluetooth, then hit “shuffle” like I always do. “Fireside” came over my speakers. I smiled.
I like to think there is a little bit of magic to moments like that. The universe syncs up to give us a little nod, or something is just a little too coincidental to be a coincidence. I came downstairs this morning to pour my first cup of coffee for the day and a cardinal was perched on the fence in my backyard. He perched there for a while, a bright pop of red against a gray early summer morning, and I felt in my bones that he was sent there as a hello. Cardinals have a lot of meaning in my life, after all.
I’ve always found a lot of magic in writing. Some of my earliest memories are of me laying on the floor with a notebook, writing stories about horses and princesses. I begged for a typewriter for my eighth birthday. My parents found an old clunk of a thing. It was big, brown, and ugly, and I was delighted. I taught myself how to type – it came intuitively, I remember my mom saying – and would type short stories every evening after school. In third grade, my class was learning how to type on the computer using the go-to “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” sentence. Seeing as I already knew how to type, I went off script and typed out – and then printed out – an entire retelling of Aladdin while my classmates plucked away at the keys with two fingers.
I got in significant trouble for that. My entire third grade experience deserves its own post.
The yearly Young Authors contest at school was something I looked forward to every year – I even won/placed a few times! – and my English Honors teacher announced to the class once that I was “gifted” after reading a piece I wrote out loud. Never underestimate the power of an encouraging word on an otherwise weird fifteen year old. A few years later, I discovered fanfiction at work one day and a whole new world opened.
I started my first original manuscript after years of writing fanfiction – something that may never see the light of day – in Edinburgh, Scotland in the summer of 2016. Countless fanfictions and original works have poured out of me since, even a few scripts.
Finally, in January 2024, I became a published author.
A self-published indie author, to be exact. I’ll write all about why I decided to go the self-pub route soon.
It’s been wonderful.
Hard.
But wonderful.
My debut novel, Off The Record, was my “f*ck around and find out” release. I had no idea what I was doing and even less of an idea of how to do it. The paperback release was delayed a week because I had no idea the cover design layout was different from the ebook design which, in hindsight, is so obvious. If I spend enough time on Threads or in Facebook groups or on Reddit, I’ll learn I did everything with Off The Record exactly wrong. I haven’t run any ads. I didn’t pay for a professional cover design. I didn’t have beta readers or send out ARC copies. I didn’t even use a professional editor for book one.
F*ck around and find out, y’all.
The book hasn’t gone viral on BookTok, but it has sold more than 150 copies and has more than 25,000 page reads. Treads/Facebook groups/Reddit would tell me that’s great (even though I did it all wrong). I’m certainly happy with it. I was hoping to sell 100 copies over the entire lifetime of the book, so I’ll take it.
In the middle of self-publishing my first book and editing my second one (more to come!) I’ve also been writing Fourth Wing fanfiction and one piece in particular has taken on a life of its own. The community that’s formed around it has bolstered me, made me start to daydream about really, truly getting to write full-time. Or rather, it’s taken a long-held daydream and made it into something that feels like a real possibility.
I was recently doing some self-reflection and working to gain some clarity around life goals and direction. I was creating a list of who Sarah 2.0 – or whatever version we’re on right now – is. I wrote things like “She wakes up early to have quiet time and journal” and “She prioritizes her health” and “She has freedom of both time and finances.” As I was daydreaming about this next version of myself I want to grow into, I wrote something down that stopped me in my tracks:
She is a bestselling author.
As I read those words, I felt it in my bones that this is what I want to do. I want to write. I want to tell stories. I want to sell books, but I also want to make the connection of a story. I want the reader to feel like they live in the worlds I build. I want them to believe the characters I create are real, living beings. I want them to root for them, cry with them, celebrate with them. I want to give them the escape I love so much when I pick up a book I can’t put down.
It was the first time I admitted that truth to myself. I think it’s something I’ve wanted for a long time, but kept it buried for one reason or another. I always say that fear is really good at providing an excuse not to do something, and fear has fed me all kinds of things like “no time,” “not enough money,” “I’m not good enough,” “It’s too hard” when it comes to publishing my writing. My favorite has been, “I don’t know where to start.”
So I didn’t start for a long time. Then something shifted in me and I went to my go-to philosophy of “f*ck around and find out” and started doing just that. I figured out how to publish Off The Record one step at a time. When I met a hurdle, I figured out how to get around it. I ignored all the “expert” advice on Threads/Facebook/Reddit and did what felt like the next right thing. Finally, my book was published and the dream started to bloom.
A lot of the things I wrote on my Sarah-whatever-version-we’re-on-now list are things that can be implemented and formed into habits quickly. I can go to bed earlier, wake up earlier, make a budget, start finding and creating space in my schedule. But I can’t become a bestselling author overnight. I have to start somewhere, though, and so, here we are, starting, one rough draft, one round of edits, one book release at a time.
Going for it meant not necessarily letting go of some other dreams and ideas, but reprioritizing them. It took me some time to be okay with shelving a big idea I’d been daydreaming about for a while. I only have so much time though – see that freedom of time thing above? – and I’m choosing to prioritize my writing career. That decision feels really, really good.
In what felt like a serendipitous moment, I was listening to one of my favorite faith-based speakers, Annie F. Downs, talk about her experience of living in New York City for two months. Her AFD in NYC podcasts, bonus episodes for her That Sounds Fun podcast, have been re-released this week as she leads up to an announcement. It’s my first time listening to them and they have resonated deeply with me. Today, a Friday, she re-released the final episode before her big reveal: AFD in NYC – Seize The Day. She discussed exploring the Met one more time before heading back to Nashville where she lives full time and at the very end, she dropped a strong word on chasing your dreams. To hear that while I was typing this post felt like a sign to go for this dream with abandon.
We only get one chance at this life. We’re only here for a little while.
Why not go for it?
So I’m going for it.
One rough draft, one round of edits, one book release at a time.
