Writing a book had been a dream of mine for as long as I can remember. I had attempted to write a book many times throughout my life. The first attempt dates back to elementary school, and I still have the unfinished manuscript somewhere in a box. Of course, it was a terrible story 

Writing a book had been a dream of mine for as long as I can remember. I had attempted to write a book many times throughout my life. The first attempt dates back to elementary school, and I still have the unfinished manuscript somewhere in a box. Of course, it was a terrible story set in a Kingdom Hearts-like world with a lot of "attacks." Well, my love for writing fighting scenes hasn't changed since then; I just hope that I've gotten better at it.

But let's get back to Stella. As I mentioned earlier, writing a book was a dream for me, but after 2011, it also became a promise. You see, I had an aunt named Rebecca who worked in a bookstore. She was the one who introduced me to the beauty of reading in the first place. At that time, I always shared with her my terrible Kingdom Hearts-like book, and she would smile and listen to me. We made a promise that one day, one of MY books would be sold in her bookstore. Unfortunately, she passed away in the same year. Since then, I never had the actual courage to finish a book. That's why completing Stella is such a significant achievement for me. This is why you read about her in the book, and this is why it took me 12 years, to fulfill that promise.

Writing this book was a once-in-a-lifetime experience for me. Apart from struggling to finish the book, which I did a lot XD, reaching 30k words made me fear that the book would be too small and wouldn't even count as one. I hadn't realized that at this mark, I had only written the beginning. Two months later, at 50k words, I was quite sure that the book was nearly finished and that I could maybe go up to 60/65k. The same thought occurred when I started writing the ending at 74k.The moment I finished the first draft was at nearly 93k words. Currently, in the second draft, I am over 100k words. For readers who don't know how many pages that would be, approximately 200 to 250 words are on a page. This means 100k words translate to 500 to 600 pages. Realizing that I had written a full-scale novel just made me lose it. I laughed and cried for nearly half an hour after writing "the end." I haven't visited Rebecca's grave since then, but I will, armed with a hardback version of my published book as a gift to her. That is the one thing I still have to do to truly finish Stella. Besides the rewriting, but at least for now, I really enjoy it.

So, what can you learn from this? Write the damn book. It may seem like you could never make it, but as long as you keep writing, you will MAKE IT! And you will love it. Oh yeah, one last pro tip: record yourself while writing the last chapter because I did. I just love the two-hour-long footage it gave me. But you can see it for yourself (in a edit version, cause 2hours GUYS!)
"A girl who fulfilled a promise, after more than 12 years."

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