I don’t know if this is common among writers, but I’ve had unrealistic expectations about what becoming an author would be like since I was ten years old. I’m not sure why but I thought that age 16 was practically adulthood. As such, I thought I’d be in college (due to a miscalculation of how many years I had left in grade school compared to how old I was) and that I’d have my first novel published, which would quickly receive global acclaim.
As I got older, instead of realizing that 16 is not adulthood or that I wasn’t close to publishing a book up to my standards, I kept putting more pressure on this idea. Next thing I knew, I was a couple weeks from turning 16 and I realized that I had nothing published, nor was I finished writing anything. I wasn’t going to meet this lofty goal that I had for myself. I didn’t realize that it wasn’t realistic for me, and I didn’t think that I would be published someday. Instead, I ended up with an existential crisis.
I wondered what I, a fifteen-year-old, had been doing with my life up until that moment. What was my life’s purpose if I wasn’t close to making my dreams a reality? Was all that time I spent writing just wasted moments when I should’ve done something else? Could I call myself an author if I still wasn’t published?
I tried to write my novel quicker, expecting to finish it and send it out to at least prove that all those moments weren’t wasted. I ended up not finishing the novel before I turned 16 and I remember crying the night before my birthday, thinking that I was a failure.
It took a while, but I did eventually realize that most people don’t publish a book until they’re much older and that I was still in a place of learning my craft. It was okay for me to take my writing slowly, because I’d be happier with what I’d produce when everything was finished. And I could still publish my book young. However, even though I reframed my thoughts, part of what made me feel better was adding the goal of publishing a book before graduating from college.
Suffice it to say that this didn’t happen either which sparked another existential crisis in my final semester in 2020. The end of college is often stressful for people and leaves many wondering what they’re going to do without added expectations from their youth. And my younger self certainly didn’t anticipate that a pandemic would further make these questions stand out.
I’m still not completely sure what I’m doing but I do know that I want to be published someday and that writing is what I want to pursue. And, this time, I didn’t set a goal for when all this will happen for me. Of course, I have hopes that I’ll be published in the near future, but I also understand that many circumstances have to line up before that is possible.
The truth is, it really doesn’t matter what age someone is when they’re published. It’s a truth that has been difficult for me to accept, thinking that I have to be published as soon as possible for anyone to think my work is remarkable. Looking back, if I had finished my novel before I turned 16, I doubt it would have been published. My writing, while decent for someone my age, definitely wasn’t where it is now, and I think I would’ve been embarrassed by it down the line.
The most important thing is whether I like what I’m writing. And I like my work better nowadays in comparison to high school or college. I think that puts me in a better place to handle the publishing world and do what I need to in order to fulfill this dream.
