Freelance Content Writer, SEO Blogger, Ghostwriter – squareONE

Sometimes we feel it’s too late, but it’s never too late to start, or is it?

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

What is holding you back from writing that book? For so many aspiring authors, it’s just the fear of not being good enough. What if it just doesn’t cut it, and you get rejection after rejection, or what if you self-publish and it goes disastrously wrong? As for myself, I don’t know the first thing about that.

Those are my thoughts, constantly, every day, when I stare at the blank page or when I’m in my car, and I have the characters, the plot, and the ending all figured out, but I can’t just get it down in the form of words because of this crippling fear. It’s the feeling I get when I scour the comments on writing group platforms of writers struggling, and I imagine that I am one of them. My heart sinks just a little bit more.

I am not sure if I am good enough, and of course, the only way to find out is to write it, submit it, and see if it gets published. How harrowing is that, to work for months, sometimes years, to create something from down deep inside of you and send it out to be rejected not once or twice, but over and over. I am not sure if I could recover from that.

I think I have three books inside of me; I have them all thought out, everything. I know the setting, I know what my characters look like and the way they speak, and I know what kind of emotion I want to evoke in my readers. I know out of the three, one will be non-fiction. I seem to have it all figured out, except I have just not started putting words on the page, because that’s when it all of a sudden becomes very, very real.

I have studied Stephen King’s method of writing and John Grisham’s and many other authors who profess that, at the end of the day, all you need to do is produce a number of words on a page and let the story flow from your being.

Sounds easy, doesn’t it? I can imagine it takes everything from inside of you to give birth to something you will present to the world.

So here’s the thing, I have decided I am not going to die with a book inside of me. I will not do it, and I sure as hell am not going to die with three inside of me.

Even if no one reads my words, my stories, I will write them. They may not see the light of day, but guess what? They will have a life of their own, and at least I won’t say goodbye to this world thinking, Darn, I really should have written that book. I have a lot to learn before I start this journey. I guess that’s just the way I am.

I want to be prepared before I start writing, such as knowing how many words are in an average book. And what kind of formatting should I use, and is it okay to use Google Docs or MS Word? What are the pros of self-publishing versus publishing, and what about agents? I have so many questions; I need to learn much more than I do right now.

So, any other aspiring authors or those who are more established, please enlighten me with your expertise. Are there any individuals I should follow to learn more about the process of bringing my book to life, or is there any advice on how to start small?

Please comment below, would be so grateful. Are there any medium publications I should join right away? Please let me know. Thank you!

Oh, and yeah, it’s never too late to start!

Originally published for New Writers Welcome on Medium on August 27, 2025