Many students have aspirations that they want to accomplish or see through. What they might not realize is that regardless of age, these aspirations can be accomplished. Sabrina Richter is a junior at SPHS and soon, a published author. She started the process of writing her book around May 2023 and now all her hard work will pay out.
“Well I’d always wanted to write my own fantasy stories, because I took inspiration from authors I love like Tolkien, so it was just the ‘what if’ idea sort of came to me one day, a couple of years ago, and sat in my head for a while. And about nine months ago, I built a plot out of that ‘what if’ idea,” Richter said.
Richter’s book, Gift of the Fallen, is written in the genre of medieval fantasy and has aspects of espionage.
“It concerns sort of a sacred meeting between two countries, and a spy being sent to that sacred meeting against the laws of said meeting. It’s sort of an espionage mystery in the medieval fantasy setting,” Richter said.
Writing a book is not an easy feat. It involves many hours of writing, research, and everything else needed to make a good book. For Richter, this process took some time.
“When I look back, I think, you know, ‘How could I have started this knowing how many hours just the sheer number of hours I put into it’ but, to be honest, really discovering the plot for the first time and writing everything out and doing that first draft, was a lot of fun and it was something I would genuinely look forward to when I got home from school. And over the summer it was just something I would spend hours doing. So even though I look back and I’m like, ‘Wow. I put so, so, so many hours into this.’ It was really a lot of fun,” Richter said. “I would not say that the process is easy but it is worth it if you have that good idea. I ended up having a sort of love-hate relationship with it because it was just constantly on my mind while I was working on it. I didn’t want to do school, I didn’t want to go to my job, I just wanted to keep editing. Maybe it wouldn’t consume everyone’s life, but it sort of came to the forefront of my mind 24/7.”
Different things go into writing a book. First, second, and third drafts of the book are written. Editors and graphic designers have to be found to help perfect the book.
“So I wrote the first draft, which was just the basic plot. Had a couple people read that, they gave me some advice. I wrote a second draft which is basically rewriting the whole thing, so, another 120,000 words basically written. Then I looked into editors and this was around last December so the first process took me a good number of months. Looked into editors, put out a job posting on Upwork, a freelance website. Then, I worked on the third draft for the whole month of December and that sort of polished it up, had a couple of people read it after that. Then I sent it off to my editor who I hired. Throughout the whole process I was doing research into where to publish the book, where to get a cover design artist, which I found in one of my friends, so they’re working on that. Yeah, so it’s a mix of just sheer writing and research.” Richter said.
Anyone could have that great idea in their head. But for those who want to write a story but do not have a plot in mind, Richter had some advice.
“Don’t force it to happen. Think about it in your free time, just think about what elements you want in your plot, how much time do you have on your hands to make it happen, and you know, I knew when I had thought of my plot that I was going to do something with it so I think, any aspiring authors, will, if they have that good idea, really want to pursue that rather than making it a sort of forced thing,” Richter said.
Now, nine months after the start of the process, Richter’s book will be published. Gift of the Fallen will be available on Amazon around mid March.
