One of my biggest goals growing up was to be a writer. I loved writing my own little stories and enjoyed studying English Literature throughout my school years. Life got in the way in my latter teenage years so I spent most of my time battling anxiety and trying to lead a “normal” life.

I went to university to study computing and only after that, did I decide to have a go at writing my own novel. I’ve always had a multitude of ideas for books that I wanted to write, but I decided to start with one that was more like a test run.

Facing Charlie was my first ever novel and it’s about the challenges of facing anxiety while also trying to build a normal life as a new adult. I loved writing the story. For obvious reasons, it was easy for me to connect with the characters and the plot.

It took me a few years to finally decide to publish it and multiple drafts where I had long breaks in between. But I reached a point where I felt it was the best version of this story that I thought it could be.

I tried to go down the traditional publishing route. I submitted to multiple literary agents but sadly, none of them wanted to read on. That was a little demoralising – not going to lie. However, it also gave me the push I needed to go down the self-publishing route.

I formatted the book, created the front cover and then published Facing Charlie in 2022. Every year since, I’ve made sure to publish a book. The next one was Who Are We To Be (YA Dystopian Fiction), then Dear Jane (Epistolary Mystery Thriller) and this year was The Meet Cute Curse (Rom-Com).

I’ve ran Amazon Ads and had some success with sales. I made a bunch of content for social media which drove a decent amount of traffic. I even managed to get two of the books into a local, independent bookshop.

The truth is though, it’s meant I’ve lost my love of writing a little bit. There’s so many books being published regularly that even as a reader, I’m struggling to keep up with everything I want to read.

I’ve not been able to build a reader base yet and I feel as though I need to focus less on the writing and more on the marketing. I really wanted to hear people’s thoughts on the stories.

Honestly, as a self-published author, I feel a level of imposter syndrome. Yes, I’ve written and published books but because it hasn’t gone through the traditional system of people saying it’s worth reading, it almost feels as though it doesn’t count.

Next year, I’m planning to take a little break from writing so that I can realign my values. Of course, as with any artist, you want people to enjoy what you create. But you create it because there is a need within you to get something out. I should write books because I want to write them and if people read them, great. If not, that’s alright too.

I think that in a world where we see success stories all of the time, it can be easy to see yourself as a failure for not reaching the same successes. I do believe in life there is a reason for everything and that everything happens as it’s meant to. Hopefully, the same will happen with my writing.

All art forms are important and material success, or even the validation of others shouldn’t dictate what we do with our creative talents. It’s about being able to be your authentic self and let your gut guide you.