When I first started blogging, I attended a conference on how to be successful as a self-published author. “Wow!” I thought. Imagine being discovered and having my book become a best seller. Even better, imagine writing a novel that turns into a movie… Divergent? Hunger Games? The Diamond Guardians? They all sound good to me…. However, I think the conference was a best seller for the author hosting the event because everyone’s experience is completely different.

The most important thing I have discovered is that you have to want to be in the writing industry because you undeniably love to write. If you choose to write because you think your book is more special than any other person’s book, then you need to be prepared to face disappointment (unless you get lucky).

You have to write because it’s a passion. Never set your limits low. Always aim towards your best seller because it will happen one day. When it happens, it will not be because all of your friends and family have bought your book, but because there was a spark in the book that lit your readers’ passionate hearts on fire.

I love reading books that captivate me from the moment I read the first line. In fact, the first line of my book, The Diamond Guardians, is “I was no longer a girl who lived in the mountains of Topanga”. My character, Katrina, has already had changes to her in the first sentence that will ironically be something that she has to combat throughout the young adult novel.   The first line is the beginning. It is the moment that you have the undivided attention of the reader.   It determines whether the reader will yearn to read more of your story or if they will move to the next book.

It is also very important to make your characters come to life. I know it’s hard to do that when you write fantasy fiction or science fiction like myself, but it is possible. The world you create may not be real, but the characters are the core part of your world. They are the ones that make the unreal world become a possibility in the minds of the readers. I think it is very important to build the people in your world as much as it is in creating the world itself.

As long as you love to write, keep writing. You are able to share a priceless gift to others through your stories and ideas that will captivate some and infuriate others… a writer’s life.