How I Chose The First Story to Write and Publish

My Journey Towards Being a Fiction Author

If you are like me and have been writing stories for years and years and have now decided to take this seriously and actually get a story published, like a real life author, read on! I’ll be sharing the path I have taken so far in deciding which story to focus on for my first publication and the rocky path I’ve gone down to come to that decision.

So Many Stories. Only One to Finish

I have plethora of stories at varying stages of partially written tucked away within a ‘writing’ folder in my OneDrive. These half-written tales of varying genres and lengths have been works of instant inspiration and hyper-fixation that eventually fizzled out. Every so often, one or more stories would be dusted off and added to, until the whole thing became too overwhelming or I got stuck in a plot hole, forcing the stories to lay dormant again.

I have been on this path for many years. I stopped and started many stories with no end in sight until I finally decided that it would be my goal to make sure that at least one of these stories would be seen by the world’s critical eyes.

A Mindset Shift

But first, I had to step outside of the crippling ‘I can’t do this’ mindset, and realise that I can do this. Anyone can do this. It’s just a matter of making a decision to do it, skilling up in the craft of doing it and having the persistence to see it through. But I didn’t find this mentality through sheer willpower alone. My first step on this path included reading Substack articles like this one from current and aspiring authors and even people from various walks of life sharing their own views and epiphanies on the world and how we view and interact with it.

Along with Substack, podcasts have been an excellent source of information and encouragement. From writing, plotting, and storytelling tips and advice to inspiring chats with successful authors who share their own messy paths towards publishing their novels. Hearing about everyday people who don’t have literary or creative writing degrees publishing their stories was a huge wake-up call to me. If they can do it, I can too.

Finding community too has been amazing. On Substack, Facebook, Threads, Tiktok and Redditt. So many platforms with so many writers wanting to lift each other up and share their knowledge about writing and the publishing industry.

I also realised that I needed to focus solely on what brought me joy and fulfilment and not worry about other people’s opinions and expectations for me. I used to wander, what would people in my real world think of these weird stories I write? How would they judge me? Would they look at me differently? I realised that didn’t matter, especially if I added a pen name to my stories. My personal life can be completely separate from my author's life.

While it would be nice to ‘make it big’ as an author, I am not putting unnecessary pressure on myself to make any decent money out of this. If I look at this as a hobby for myself that I undertake purely for enjoyment, then any sale, and anyone who chooses to read my stories is a win.

But why not just write for me then? Why get my stories published? The idea of someone else getting as much enjoyment out of my stories as I get from writing them is the reason I want to publish. People may hate them too, and that’s fine, but for those who do and actually got something valuable from the stories, that’s who I write for and that’s why I do it.

Picking my First Story to Publish

I almost went down a completely different path for my first published story. It was a passion project of mine where I spent a lot of time building out a complex world, outline, characters and plot for a Sci-Fi space opera style story called Flash Captors. However, in time and after asking a few questions in writing communities, I decided it was not the best path to go down to step my toe into publishing for the first time.

I got a lot of advice about going for a simpler storyline with a solid market for my first attempt at publishing because there is a lot to learn about the publishing process, let alone how to write a well-crafted story. That’s why the first story that I’ll be publishing will be my coming-of-age rom-com story titled ‘Y2K LOVE’.

Origins of Y2K Love

Y2K Love was my first completed story. Well, the original version was written as a JukeBox Musical inspired by the musical movie ‘Rock of Ages’. The idea came from my love of musicals along with 90’s and 00’s nostalgia and realising that a lot of Australian tunes of that era were hardly ever played on the radio anymore. I loved the idea of these lost Aussie songs being re-discovered and listened to again by a whole new generation and by people outside of Australia.

I also loved the idea of it being set in the year 2000. The tipping point into a new millennium. I think that year in particular is the perfect complement to characters experiencing the pivotal transition from teenagers into adulthood. Exploring and looking back on a lot of the technology, fashion, trends, dialogue and nostalgia was another big reason for choosing this year as a focus of my story.

From Musical to Novel

The painstaking work of turning this script into a novel has been a slog, but an enjoyable one. Writing this story as a novel allowed me to dive deeper into these characters, and see how their minds work and the motivations behind their actions. I was able to build upon the bare bones of this script and make the story richer, go deeper into my characters and add new dimensions to the story I’m telling.

Additional scenes and songs were added to fill plot holes, and paths for characters in this story were adapted and changed to ensure that the storyline stayed true to the characters along with the theme I was pursuing.

Throughout the journey of writing this, I have been reading and listening to audiobooks in this genre, and others along with absorbing writing craft knowledge, all of which helped plant some ‘aha’ moments within my own story. Whenever I got stuck, I sought out external inspiration for support or simply let my mind wander during everyday tasks. Allowing my mind to quieten and think up ways to keep moving my story forward and tie off loose ends has been excellent for me to hit the ground running whenever I had the time to actually sit down and write.

Your Writing Journey

So tell me, what does your writing journey look like? How has it shaped the writer you are today?

Let me know in the comments below or share it in your own Substack and tag me so I can read it 😊.