Nobody's story is your story

  I keep scrolling through writing blogs, looking at random advice from professional authors. I can't tell you how many hours I've spent reading the archives of my favorite author's blogs.

  I've seen a pattern though.

  I like reading about authors stories, how they got published, where they got the idea for a certain book I liked of theirs, and I realized, no author has the exact story.

  Some of the authors spent years writing books they've never published. Others had only written one book, and that was the one that got published. Rick Riordan had gotten an adult's novel published before Percy Jackson came in to view. Christopher Paolini, J.K Rowling, and Stephanie Meyer all had only written one book before they were published, the one they published, and look at what wild successes those stories were.

  Then you see many authors, like Ally Carter, Suzanne Collins, Ally Condie. They had other books out before they really had a huge hit with specific ones.

  But then there are the other authors who've written a plethora of books before they were published. 

  I sometimes look at how an author's life has turned out and try to match that up with mine. I find myself thinking, so, if they had written three books that were never published, but then got a bestseller on the first one that was, then that means the one I'm writing right now will never get published, and I have to write more. Or, they tried to get published in high school, but didn't and were eventually published when they were in their twenties. That means, I won't get published until I'm at least twenty-six or something... 

  But then I snap myself out of it. 

  Because their life isn't my life. 

  It never will be.

  I don't know where I'll end up in the publishing industry down the road. I could strike up luck with the series I'm writing now, or maybe I won't. 

  I could be a bestselling author by the time I'm twenty-one, or I could try my whole life and never get anything published. 

  There's a world of possibilities out there. 

  So just because one author did one certain thing, and another author did another, doesn't mean that's how every author's story is going to turn out. 

  My dream is the same as theirs and countless others. 

  I just have to be patient, write my best, and find out where it leads me.