Agonies of a Young Author

When I was young- namely a bare two years ago- I was obsessed with the idea that I needed to be a child prodigy, and publish in my teens. Each birthday, I would set a personal goal. "I will be published by 17... by 18... before 19..." I was determined to follow in the footsteps of Christopher Paolini and Amelia Atwater-Rhodes. At the very least, I figured I should be like Jane Austen (my authorial superhero) and be able to write my personal Pride and Prejudice at the age of 21. And I DID become published (before 19, I think, but I can't even remember- see how meaningless it turned out to be?) but I compromised a part of myself to do so.* Now I'm wiser. I realize that figures like these are very very very rare. There's a reason I could only name two teenage authors like this, and I had to go back 200 years to pull out the Jane Austen reference. Even she had room to grow. She wrote only the first version of P&P at 21, then stuck it in a drawer for almost 20 years.