I've always wanted to be an author. For as long as I can remember, I would stain my hands with ink from hours of writing out fantasy novels in my spiral notebooks. In all my years of writing, though, I still haven't published a novel.

Like many hobbies, writing is a labor of love. Even though it's time-consuming, there is a surprisingly large number of writers who continue on to become full-time authors. They're like me, I suppose: their dream is to become a bestselling author.

I first tried my hand at writing a novel when I was fifteen, and I spent night after night trying my hardest to make something I was proud of. This is where my book started to form. I remember the nights I spent in the dark with my fairy lights plugged in, watching my word count rise fondly.

My novel had a lot going for it. It was a dystopian, a genre that books like The Hunger Games and The Darkest Minds brought back into popularity. I thought my characters were really fleshed out, too, and that my narration was amazing because the story was told from three perspectives.

So, if it was so awesome, why is it that it's not sitting on bookshelves in every home?

It was bad.

I set off writing chapter one in December of 2012 and I had finally rested my keyboard in July of the following year. That seems like phenomenal progress for such a young writer, but in reality, it wasn't. I was moving too fast for my own good, and nearly every plot point was convoluted for the sake of plot twists. It started to stray away from the main plot line and became a soap opera with no real story.

Once I realized this, I spent all my time trying to fix every problem in the novel, and eventually, I set the project to the side. I never actually finished the book. It still sits in a binder on my shelf, and sometimes, I'll flip through it, remembering how much I loved the characters in the story.

It's so close to being finished, with only the last few chapters needing to be written. My dream of being an author is so close, and if I just spent a week writing the ending, I could call it completed... but I can't do it.

At this point, even if it was somehow published, I would never be proud of this version of it. In order to be proud, I would have to completely rewrite it.

Nowadays, I consider this novel to be a summary of how much I've changed since high school, both in personal beliefs and writing skills. At fifteen, my characters fought for things that I completely disagree with now, and my writing wasn't developed enough to really make anyone care for my motley crew of protagonists.

It's now 2018, and I've learned a lot. I've graduated college with an English and Creative Writing degree, and I've spent a good portion of my life writing. Still, though, I have nothing to show for it. There's no novel or collection of works with my name on it; the only thing I have is a poetry award from 2014.

I'm happy to say, though, that while I didn't finish a novel, I've learned a lot. The most important lesson is that I've always got room to grow. At fifteen, I thought I was the best writer I could possibly be. Every word that came out of my pen and onto paper felt like pure magic, and now, as a college graduate, I know that there's more than that in writing.

For the first time in a while, I am writing a novel. While I've always been writing, it's been for creative writing classes, or it's been flash fiction; this current piece is a novel that, I can proudly say, is one I'm hoping to publish within the next year.

Back in 2012, I was just a kid. I may have wanted my novel to get published, but I didn't know the extent of the effort that would have been put into it, and I don't know if I would have followed through with it. It wasn't the right time, then. Now, though, I have a new project that I'm proud of.

This is going to be my first novel.