Balancing Live as a Professional Author and a Highschool Student

Writing is my go-to rainy day activity, it keeps my mind sharp and helps me make sense of the intricate world around me. Writing gives me a sense completeness while opening gate ways into limitless possibilities not grounded by finite human ability or the physical world.

During the school year, my schedule consists of going to school at 7:30 am to attend a zero hour class, Hi-Tones, before preceding with my school day. Then hour worth of study time after school before Track practice at 4:30 pm and be home by 6:45 pm to do homework before bed. It hardly leaves time for scholarship writing, managing Philosophy Club and studying for the SAT, let alone writing my sequel. As a teen author pursuing an IB diploma, proper prioritization is the key to managing this organized chaos of daily living while maintaining time for myself: which I often spend brainstorming ideas for fancy stories.

When it comes to my priorities, my academics are typically at the top of list; but I can not afford to ignore my professional writing career now that I have started. My solution to this is simple: apply what I learn in the classroom to my fancy stories. This solution serves a dual purpose. First of all, it helps me to retain the class content more comprehensively than I would otherwise be able to; and secondly, this method would assist in making my fancy stories more believable and thus engaging for my audience. This method fits well with my spontaneous writing style, because I am constantly adjusting ideas before I finally write them down when I'm inspired to do so.

Writing for fun has definitely been my most time consuming hobby aside from running. It is a major outlet for relieving every day stress and has given me an advantage for applying for scholarships. Although many scholarships are for teen writers who have not been published, my novel has allowed me to apply to the literary category of the Davidson Fellow Scholarship, because it is a significant project with potential for a positive impact. I encourage young speculative or science fiction writers with a completed manuscript (even if it is unpublished) to apply to this unique opportunity.

As far as my personal writing goals, I intend to expand The Place Between Nowhere: Blank into The Place Between Nowhere trilogy. I am actively working on my sequel and it will likely be ready for publication by 2028, taking my intense academics into account. It certainly doesn't help that I am swamped with important extracurriculars like Driver's education and studying for the SAT, since I intend to enter college to study either Biochemistry or Speech Language Pathology. That however, is another matter entirely.

Aside from writing my sequel, learning to promote my book has been a major headache. Especially when it came to keeping up with social media, like Instagram (Alitaverse_26), youtube (The AlitaVerse) or these blog posts. I have been trying to stay consistent with posting, but due to school that hasn't been much of an option. For me, this means that during the summer I will need to make up for lost time. However, even in the midst of my busy schedule, I have found that directly visiting book stores and selling my book copies to my local community members has greatly helped me to build an audience; not to mention that my family members have been tremendously helpful in pitching my novel to their local libraries and bookstores. Thanks to my Nana in particular, my book is now able in the Grants Pass Library. Being an active high school student and professional author has certainly been a challenge, but I can not see my life having gone any other way. I can't wait to see where the next few steps will take me.