How I started writing: A note by Serena Light

Having grown up in a European country and returning back to my hometown with a new language and social conventions, to say I was overwhelmed would be an understatement. I was nine-years-old in a foreign place, with no way of communicating with people because my grasp of English was minimal at best, and I could not speak the mother tongue without messing up somewhere.

It took me years to get a grasp of the language and the people and the difference between here and the place I had recognized as home.

By twenty-thirteen, I felt like I was walking in a dark body of water, struggling and weighed heavy.

That was when my cousin introduced me to an anime and another introduced me to the Percy Jackson series. In a desperate attempt to connect, to feel real and human. To say I obsessed would be an understatement. I had dug my nails into these works of fiction and refused to let go. This desire to cling to it led me down the path of fanfiction like any teenager you find nowadays.

I can still recall how I had written word after word, silent in my endeavor, closing the tabs any time someone came in my room and refused to share the work with anyone at that age. A year down the line, I realized my work did not sit close with the actual canon. Not how the character would act, not what they would say, and it occurred me to that as the original creator’s characters, they were divergent. However, like my characters, they were working.

Much like any self-respecting person who poured a year's worth of effort into these two books and realized I had in me to make an original work of fiction, I deleted them.

That’s right, you read it correctly. I deleted two works of fiction that had a word count of +100,000. A decision, I later came to not fret over because I couldn’t even recall what it was all about at that point.

By 2016, I had my first official and complete book. A Mafia thriller named Mr. Regnante. I had forgotten about it if I’m being honest. Once it was written and completed, I just got on with other works of fiction. Until — of course, there is an “until”, I have a point here — I received an email from another online platform asking to publish my book on their site.

I had to read the letter about four times before I could believe my eyes, stumbling through tabs and opening the book on Wattpad, and felt like gauging my eyes out after reading the first time. But then, as a person, I was inherently lazy and decided, “okay, I don’t need to read it,” and just ctrl-c and ctrl-v the whole book.

That contract offer though, is what made me realize that I had it in me to write. To many, I could be considered a novice, but I consider myself an intermediate — a passion for writing and reading — and want to write blogs that help self-published authors like myself to not feel alone in the wide expanse of the web. I want to aid them with finishing their manuscript, celebrating that endeavor, before moving onto the much-dreaded task of editing. Before finally, helping them, and myself, navigate the world of self-publishing.

I am Serena Light, published author of the loved online Regnante Series, and this is how I do things.