I was a junior in high school. The summer before school started, I had been reading a LOT of poetry–and writing a little too. So, I decided to take a Poetry Independent Study with one of my favorite high school English teachers, focusing on reading and analyzing poems. Just me, my teacher, and a big bible-like book filled with classics. Heaven!

This decision changed everything. If I could give one piece of advice, it would be to take advantage of these opportunities! If you have the ability to learn more about a subject of your choosing, do it. 

It wasn’t until a few weeks into the semester that I started sharing my own writing with my teacher. I was nervous, of course. I had rarely shared my personal writing with anyone. 

We had been reading mostly classics, and some modern poetry, such as Rupi Kaur’s “Milk and Honey.” I got a lot of inspiration during my first years of writing poetry from her. My teacher noticed that my writing held a similar style to Kaur’s. My poems were short and did not rhyme–easily digestible. So, she suggested I put together a book of my own. 

“If Rupi Kaur can do it, so can you!” she said. 

I didn’t take her suggestion as seriously at first. In the early stages of writing my first book, “in the absence of the sun,” I was only planning to give my family copies as gifts. 

But then, my teacher brought up self-publishing. “I think you should do it,” she said. 

As a high schooler, I didn’t even know entirely what “self-publishing” entailed. I mainly thought if you wanted to publish a book, you had to submit it to a publisher. And your chances there were slim. 

But then, as I started to look more into it, I realized the vast world of self-publishing. And I discovered Amazon Createspace, now Kindle Direct Publishing. 

It baffles me how simple it was to set up. And it was free! I couldn’t believe it. All I had to pay for was an ISBN–and even that had a free option. The more I got into the process, the more I realized I liked being able to create the book on my own from the ground up. 

Don’t get me wrong–I wasn’t 100% set on self-publishing from the start. But, there were many reasons why I ultimately settled on self-publishing–one of them being that I could do things on my own time and terms. 


And I’m SO glad I did.