Across the country, there are very few high school students who can call themselves a published author. After starting in December of her sophomore year, months of hard work have led to the release of “The Art of Madness,” which is now available to buy on Amazon and on the Barnes and Noble website.
With the publication of her book, Ella Sherry completed a lifelong dream of hers.
“I’ve been a writer since first grade, it’s always been my dream to publish, but I had a really big problem with actually finishing longer length stories. I would always start them, and then I could never finish them, so I’d just sort of abandon them.”
The secret to success turned out to be an outline, something kind of foreign to Sherry.
“I had never done that before, because I feel like it just constricts you, like you can’t do anything. But I knew I wanted to finish, I knew I wanted to publish, so I did outline, but I kept it very general, very broad so that I could be very flexible with it.”
“I was surprised when she first sent me the draft, because she asked me if I would read something of hers,” AP English Language teacher Angela Mogilefsky said. “When I received it, I was actually pretty shocked as to how long it was, how much there was, how much of her heart and soul was in it, and how well written it already was.”
Sherry is one of two students who have ever presented a finished book to Mogilefsky, making her accomplishment even more impressive.
“Sometimes it feels like as English teachers, we’re teaching this lost art of reading and writing in society today. So to see that somebody has taken the time and care to put together a piece of writing, especially one of this caliber, it’s well written, it’s very thoughtful, and it clearly took a long time, is really nice to see.”