Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Andrew Stevens. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Andrew, thanks for joining us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

There’s a lot of writing advice out there, and I mean, a LOT. But anyone who really knows what they’re talking about will tell you that you should listen to none of it, but also, all of it. Makes sense, right? Well, let me explain.

Like anything in life that you want to get good at, there’s always advice, but the main way you learn is by doing. I think a lot of aspiring authors can get tripped up on the “aspiring” part, focusing on all the things they don’t know how to do, all the techniques they think they need to master, all the right words and sentence structures, that they forget the most important part–the writing itself.

Writing is like a muscle. The more you use it, the stronger it will get. True, there are things you can learn along the way to hone your craft, but if you don’t just start writing, knowing all of that is mostly pointless. For me, in my own writing journey, I had the skills. I’d written a lot over my life, but I’d never sat down and dedicated continual progress toward any long-term writing goals. For me, I needed to strengthen my writing muscles through daily, repetitive actions. And once I finally got that through my head, I found that I just didn’t feel right if I wasn’t writing. Or, at least, if I was doing other less important things when I could’ve been writing instead.

It certainly is a journey. I’ve still got a lot of lessons to learn, and I’ve devoted a lot of time to YouTube and scouring the internet for writing advice, but this is a lifelong journey that I will continually work on over time. The key thing I must remember is to never stop writing, because that’s the only way that everything I’ve learned will actually make me better.

It’s easy to let doubt get in your way, but the truth is, everyone has doubts. Take a look at anyone who’s made it to where they are and you can bet, without a doubt (hah!), they had many doubts to overcome. Learning to push past those doubts and not let them slow you down is one the most important skills you can learn to help you move along toward your dreams.

Andrew, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My journey into writing goes way back–back before I graduated high school in a small town in northwestern Oregon in 2004. I don’t remember exactly when my passion for creating began, but as it blossomed somewhere around middle-school, it started in the form of writing. While I liked to draw early on, I never really had a knack for it. But words were something else entirely. I found I had a way with them, and so they became my tool for creating the worlds I dreamt of in my mind.

Over the years, I started several stories, and even made some decent progress on a couple. I also wrote dozens of other ideas and short stories, but I never really did anything with them. They mostly just stayed in my mind, or in notebooks, and with the rise of personal computers (yes, I’m that old), they eventually migrated to the digital. However, even with all these ideas and started projects, I never had the resolve to finish or do anything of consequence with them. Because, along with the rise of computers, so too did I take an interest in gaming.

I’ve always been a sucker for a good story. When I was younger, that meant I read a lot of science-fiction and fantasy. As the rise of PC gaming came about, I found myself entranced by games like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, the Legacy of Kain series, Dark Age of Camelot, World of Warcraft, and so on. These RPGs (role-playing games) were some of my favorites, because they all shared one thing in common–story. And not just story, but they brought to life fantastical worlds like the ones I had imagined in my head.

The problem was, while I immensely enjoyed experiencing the worlds others had built, it made me complacent in creating my own. I still had ideas, and I developed a few more ideas over the years, but I still had nothing to show for it.

Fast forward to 2022. We were mostly through the pandemic, and unlike many others, I’d yet to develop a new hobby or passion like so many others did. I continued to do things the way I always had. But then, John came along.

John was a good friend I’d met several years prior. He went through some things in his life, and ended up finding his true passion along the way. That passion was coaching–life coaching to be specific.

When John reached out to me, it sparked something that had been there for years. I knew I’d wasted my life on a lot of things that weren’t productive, and I knew I was shying away from my creative gifts. As John and I discussed all of these things, it quickly became apparent that I needed to revisit my writing. And along with that, as a goal (because setting goals is important), I was going to write a book; like actually, really WRITE A BOOK!

I started around March of 2023, and I wrote. One word at a time, one paragraph at a time, until slowly the words became pages and the pages became chapters and finally, in March of 2024, all of that became the first draft of ‘When Blood Burns’ – the first book in the series I’m calling ‘Cycle of Awakening’. The story actually started a couple years prior as a prompt-based contest on Vocal. When the time came to pick what I was going to write, that idea stood out to me the most. And I’m so very glad I stuck with it, because I think I’ve started something really special.

I don’t know where things will go from here. Writing a book and getting people to buy it, much less enjoy it and give you decent ratings, are entirely different things. But I have faith because I know that I’m doing what I was meant to do, and even if most of the world never sees what I create, I will be happy knowing I am finally following the passion inside me.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

For me, it’s living in alignment with who I’m supposed to be as a person. It’s a gift I’ve had for as long as I can remember, but I also squandered that gift for so many years. Creativity is a part of who I am. Neglecting that part of me for so many years left life feeling a bit off at times. It’s a part of a whole, so I never felt truly unhappy, but I always knew something was missing. I always knew I had these things inside me that begged to be set free, but I kept them caged and barely fed them. Once I set this part of me free, it unlocked the true potential that had laid dormant for so long.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

Of course, most authors have the goal to sell books and build a fanbase. And while those are goals of mine, I’m trying to focus on growing this part of me I’ve neglected for so long. I’m excited to see where it goes, even if some of my books don’t take off like I hope they do. So, for now, my main goal is to just explore this creativity I’ve just begun to bring to life. It’s a part of me I want to see thrive, and it’s got a long way to go, but fortunately, we have time. Of course, none of us knows how long we have on this earth, but every day I’m living more fully me is one less day of regret of living in rejection of who I’m supposed to be.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.join-the-awakening.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/astevenswrites/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/astevenswrites
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@astevenswrites
• Other: https://www.threads.com/@astevenswrites

Image Credits

Rachel St. Clair, Sutthiwat Dechakamphu, Joze Groselj