Niki asked Shannon Messenger:

At what age was it that you wanted to write novels? How much practice-and time- did it take you to accomplish such AMAZING work?

Shannon Messenger Awww. Thank you!

Um...I can't remember the exact age that I knew I wanted to write novels, but I know it happened after I graduated college. Before that I'd been very focused on screenwriting. I was actually a film major in college.

But I slowly came to realize that screenplays didn't really suit the way I wrote. Screenplays and books are two very different things, and my style paired much better with a longer form, like books.

As for practice and time, it definitely took a lot of both. I started studying screenwriting at 16, and man, those first screenplays I wrote were BAD. They got better as I went through film school, but still, by the time I graduated I'd realized that I was never going to be a GREAT screenwriter. So I decided to try writing a book, foolishly thinking my screenplay training would cross over. Some of it did, but a lot of it didn't. Like I said, screenplays and books are very different.

To give you some idea of how long it took me to figure it all out, you should know that the published version of KEEPER, which is the first book I ever wrote, is actually draft 20. So yes, I wrote it 19 other times before the version you've read, and yeah, most of them were seriously bad. But I learned from each one of them and eventually figured it out. That's the only real secret to writing: practice, practice, practice!

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