Lilly Stone

Holding her debut novel “Lorida,” senior Lilly Stone poses with her self-published novel for her senior photos. Stone said that she is optimistic about what her future holds in the literary world, and is proud of how far she has come despite the odds. “It doesn’t take a special skill set to write a book, and you don’t have to be anyone special to do it,” Stone said. “If you have the drive and motivation, you have to just keep pushing yourself to write even when you don’t feel like it, because, in the end, you will be proud of what you’ve accomplished.” Courtesy of Lilly Stone

Starting by picking up a journal and pencil when she was just a kid, senior Lilly Stone has had a dream for writing her entire life, but now is making it a reality. Using her imagination to guide her, Stone is a self-published author with her first book entitled “Lorida.”

Stone started writing her now-published book during her freshman year with one of her friends, having no idea that she would one day be able to publish it.

“My friend and I thought it would be funny to write a book where all the characters in the story were based on people we actually knew,” Stone said. “I just never lost the interest in writing it.”

Once Stone had completed the first draft of her book, she got an editor to assist her in the revising and rewriting process to give her book a professional format, so that one day she could publish it. Within this process, she had to find someone to help her write the query letter, which is the paragraph on the back of the book, as well as her synopsis, which is a summary of major events that take place in the book. Stone had concerns, being a young author, that she had to take into consideration.

“After a year of editing, I was initially trying to find an agent, but I was really worried about being taken advantage of since I am a young writer and this was my first book that I was publishing,” Stone said. “That being said, I decided to self-publish my book “Lorida” through Amazon. I am definitely glad that I chose to self-publish so now that I can go into college as a published author.”

Following this three and a half year process of writing her first book, Stone still has much to write in her future as she is planning on writing two more books to complete a trilogy and continuing to self-publish them.

“After I self-publish my first three books, with the experience that I accumulate from that,” Stone said.  “I will get an agent to help me publish future books that I write because I will know then what to look out for and be more aware of any red flags that other people show.”

Now being a published author, Stone has had a passion for writing since she was young and her imaginative mind has followed her ever since. 

“I realized pretty early on that I wanted to write books,” Stone said. “I remember reading books as a kid and feeling so drawn to this form of expression. I loved every little detail of it and falling into the writing process.”

This drive continues to follow Stone, though it from a very light-hearted place.

“When my sisters and I would play games as kids, we would create very imaginative games where we would go to different worlds and on all kinds of adventures,” Stone said. “I thought deeply about the games that we would play and the worlds that we would travel to, so I started writing about them and created stories out of them. I remember writing countless stories down on my iPod touch in my notes app whenever I could because I just knew that I wanted to write all these stories down. I needed a way to bring to life the curiosity that I felt and the imagination with that and I didn’t know then like I know now, that was why I wanted to write.”

Her passion has only grown as she has, as Stone writes about everything in her daily life. In order to avoid the writer’s-block that she faces, Stone keeps up with all these pieces of writing so that when she finds herself stuck, she can go back to all the previous information she has collected. 

“I journal a lot and write pieces of inspiration down because when I find myself unsure what to write about, I remember how it feels when I’m beyond accomplished about something that I wrote,” Stone said. “That’s what helps me to keep going even when I don’t want to write.”

She continues to inspire people, but more specifically, little kids every single day with her broad imagination and even got to share that with a group of Elementary school kids.

“I got invited to go to this school in Leander called Oak Ridge Academy to talk to all the kids about self-publishing,” Stone said. “All of their parents ended up purchasing my books after hearing about it, and they have my book in their school library now. After hearing me talking about my experience with self-publishing and being a young writer, all the little kids from the elementary school were telling me ‘I’m going to go write a book now’ and it was a great experience for me.”

Now that her future is approaching, Stone plans on going to Oklahoma University after high school to major in journalism with hopes of furthering her writing career. She aims to inspire others with her writing to start writing themselves. 

“It doesn’t take a special skill set to write a book, and you don’t have to be anyone special to do it,” Stone said. “If you have the drive and motivation, you have to just keep pushing yourself to write even when you don’t feel like it, because, in the end, you will be proud of what you’ve accomplished.”