My Story: how I got to be a writer
So, I see that you're curious to know how I made it into being a writer. Or perhaps you're here in hopes to feel inspired, or seek out some advice or maybe not. Whatever your reason, I hope you'll be able to take something away with you from reading my story.
So, let me start from the beginning and tell you how I came about being a writer...
​
It all began in 2016 while I was still at college. Every day at the end of the day, I would sit in my room and write down how my day was. I had a little notebook which eventually became my diary. I always wondered if my mum ever had the curiosity to look into it, but she didn't want to know. She said 'there are things which I'd rather not know because once I do know them, I cannot un-know them'.
​
And so I continued writing. I wrote mostly about teenage stuff. I wrote how boys would never look at me, and how I had to chase them all the time to get their attention and all the crappy emotional things girls went through at the age of 16. I also wrote about my family struggles, about how unfair it was that I had to deal with culture clashes and how I couldn't do certain things because my parents would say things like 'that wasn't the way we raised you,' or 'that's not our culture it's theirs' etc.
2017 came and I decided to create an Instagram account to publicly share my journals/ diary entries because I knew there were people out there who were possibly going through the same experiences which I was going through. It was only a couple of years later that I realised my Instagram page was growing and so I began moving on to bigger things.
Towards the end of 2017 and moving onto 2018, my college was coming to an end. And so I was forced to begin thinking about my next step. You know, typical things like what I wanted to do, or what job I was looking for, or even what university I was considering going to ect. All these questions at the time were very confusing for me. But I knew one thing: I wanted to get my writing out there. I wanted to share my experiences and the things I had always kept to myself. And fiction allowed me to do that. So I thought, what if I wrote a book? And if I did, what would it be about?
​
2019 finally came and that's when I released Two Brothers At War- a bad boy romance, an erotica novel. As you can tell, it took me almost 3 years to write my first novel.
The process was long but worth it. I began by writing my manuscript (over 35'000 words!!!). In the process of doing so, I had my sixth form teachers checking my writing because I knew that I needed help. I was still a student myself so I was still in the process of learning and doing my A-Levels. Luckily, I chose the English language as one of my subjects and that obviously helped me. But I also had my sister who had read a lot of erotica therefore even though she wasn't a writer, she knew the conventions of that specific genre. I then looked into literary agents, publishers, and applied for those who were open to submissions and shot my shot. Eventually, I got a few callbacks. Unfortunately, the financial plans which they offered me were not suitable. And frankly, I wasn't ready to invest much money into it, so I denied the offers. Maybe if I hadn't denied them, I could've been famous. Who knows?
In the end, I chose to follow the path of self-publishing. I realised that traditional publishing wasn't for me at the time, so I decided to go for something I had a bit more control of. And it worked! The royalties started to come in and I became a self-published author.
​
Over the following years, I decided to educate myself further and took a degree in Creative Writing. That journey opened many doors for me and set me off on little journeys and soon I found myself releasing another book: Love Confessions- a short collection of love confessions, told by strangers who have never met.
​
So, this is my story. This is where I began, and it is where I am now. It is not where I want to be, nor where I want to finish.
​
I hope one day, you'll wake up and see your potential too.
​
E. J. Manso Henriques