When Did You Write Your First Novel/Comic vs. When Did You First Publish?

[stella]

Hey everyone!

Writing and publishing are two very different milestones. Some of us start creating stories early but take years to finally put them out into the world.

• When did you first start writing your own stories?
• And when did you finally take the step to publish one?
• What made you decide it was the right time?

For me, I’ve been creating characters, plots, and entire universes since I was a teenager, but I never actually wrote them down—I was too focused on my studies. Publishing came much later for me!

This the new chapter of my novel

Read Diamond in the rough :: Chapter 02 | Tapas Community

[eternityoz]

I'd say the groundwork for Origin Zero probably first surfaced in my head when I was around 13(?) For a few years, I allowed the ideas to just bounce around in my head, telling myself that I'd start when the story's course was more planned out (subtle foreshadowing: it never became more planned out, only longer as I kept adding more and more concepts over time).

I believe I first began publishing about a year and a half ago for the "first tapas draft", which I grew unsatisfied with before even finishing the first arc. I scrapped that one and took a break for a few months before coming back and trying again, this time getting through about three arcs before I eventually disliked that one too.

Starting on Christmas Day of 2024, I began publishing the current version which I now am actually happy with compared to my original drafts, but without them, I would never have even known to take the story and writing in this direction.

In terms of deciding when it was the right time, there was simply a moment as I was nearing the end of 2024 when I realized I had been procrastinating for far too long and had been allowing hesitancy to overcome my desire for making this novel a reality. I actually made a New Year's resolution to start officially writing chapters for the beginning of 2024, but ended up neglecting that until the very end of the year XD

Read Origin Zero | Tapas Web Community

[MelancholicOtaku]

I began writing cringy fanfics in Highschool lol it was my escape from the ups and downs of life. Depression has always been something that I struggle with. Writing gave me meaning and joy. It still does I love creating new worlds each different from the last one. I took a break from fanfics and a year later picked up the pen again to write my own stuff. My novel The Lost Forest is my current project and that was born from a short story I wrote for a writing group. I loved the world so much that I knew that I have to finish it. Life is short so I don’t want to regret not writing The Lost Forest. More importantly I’m having fun figuring out where to take my novel interacting with fellow creators and readers.

I write because I am a writer and why not share my stories with the world.

I published The Lost Forest in 2023

Read The Lost Forest | Tapas Web Community

[ambermdo]

I was in high school when I first came up with my characters. For years they went through design changes. I think I started writing stories after using my characters in a fractured fairy tale for a high school creative writing class.

[ArtGremlin]

I had one other story cooking before I created and started posting my first comic sometime in 2022 (August) which was but I never actually wrote it down. There were a few stories I wrote for school a long time ago or weird little books I made with my sister when I was maybe 6-9 but I don’t remember them too well. Actually the one old story I remember was this one called “The Book of Wishes” and I think it was actually pretty good. From what I remember this kid gets transported to this pocket dimension where an old lady gives him this magical catalog that can give him anything he wants at the price of not being able to contact other humans. It was pretty good for a 13-14 year old’s writing.

[wolflu66]

In the past, most of my works were fan creations.

Although I occasionally had some original characters and stories, I never drew them out.

The work I started publishing at the end of last year (Roars and Whispers) is one of my few original creations, and the complete story outline has already been finished.

I hope that going forward, I can see it through to the end and complete this manga.

Read Roars and Whispers | Tapas Web Community

Read LU+ Art Book | Tapas Web Community

[jwabeasley]

When did you first start writing your own stories?
And when did you finally take the step to publish one?
What made you decide it was the right time?

I've been writing my own stories and creating my own comics in some fashion or another as long as I can remember. In high school, I would talk the ear off of anyone kind and patient enough to pretend to listen - I also made a handful of 4 panel strips and would draw the odd orphan comic page here or there. I also got into DMing for TTRPGs in college which helped me test story ideas against a live audience. I made several private comic pages and concepts, but none of them were ready for prime time. That said, I can't NOT make comics in some form or another.

I had a handful of comic pages on Deviantart in ~2012 for a story I'll never finish. I lacked the discipline and planning to really carry it through. Don't think I'd call that publishing, though. I also made 30 pages of a prototype Etherwood in 2021 - but it wasn't right. I learned a lot by making those mistakes.

Etherwood (https://tapas.io/series/Etherwood/info) is my first published comic, and I've been posting it for a year and a half. That's 11 years of false starts and personal failures of one kind or another before I was ready to publish to the public!

TBH the right time would have been 10 years ago - but I wasn't capable of making Etherwood then. It was finally ready for release once I developed the discipline to do a page every week without fail for more than a year - I built a 72-page backlog before beginning to post!

[stiatent]

For me its been since age 9 I started creating original stories which vastly evolved overtime. The one that became the current Comic series was around 2008 but my dream was always to make videogames so always saw it as a Video-game (studied game design too).

And when did you finally take the step to publish one?

Around 2016 - I enrolled in a business startup course and they wanted us to make products reflecting the local culture, and my product was a small unrelated Slice-of-life comic based on my home country Trinidad. Published hard copies of this series as part of the program and sold it at local shops. Through this experience, I felt confident to convert my story ideas into comics but knowing the cost that would go into publishing mass hardcopies kept me from immediately doing so.
2017-2018, a friend (who studied game design with me) told me about Tapas and that's when web comics seemed like a great avenue to do so.

What made you decide it was the right time?

2021 - was during covid. Being home from my fulltime job during the lockdowns and having time on my hands made it a right time to start. So happened the situation in the story was also Covid-ish too, the 'superhumans' in the series are carriers of a virus and anyone within a certain radius will become infected and transform into monsters (almost like maintaining social distance during covid). Seeing people so interest via the comments and likes kept me motivated and I continued to keep it it. I'm ̶n̶o̶t̶ a Sick Boy!

[Leyelle]

I published my novel chapter by chapter as I wrote i. I wrote my first novel in November 2023 and completed it in January.

Read Damsel in the Red Dress :: Damsel in the Red Dress | Tapas Community

[2DLenzy]

When did you first start writing your own stories?

Wrote a ton of cringey stories since age 16, maybe earlier. Been drawing since age 4 and actually tried a few comics, like a silly superhero comic called Acorn Man. I also made little booklets for comics I made throughout my childhood. Still got them somewhere.

And when did you finally take the step to publish one?

2019?, during Covid, I got the idea for a comic and worked on it for a few months. I then got the idea to try to publish it online just to see what happened. I spent another two years working on it before I actually published it in 2022.

Now, I'm gonna start publishing a novel on here soon, technically my first online, and read by anyone other than me, lol! Gonna be interesting to see how I handle working on it and a comic at the same time. Might be a total disaster but we'll see! XD

What made you decide it was the right time?

For the comic, I didn't. I was actually about to publish in 2021, but then waited a year out of anxiety.

The upcoming novel I plan to release in June, bc summer starts then (in the Northern Hemisphere, that is) and there's a lot of fire-related stuff in it, so why not pick the hottest season?

[Lensing]

I started drawing comics at the age of 8 and started writing at the age of 11.

Published my first diy printed comic at the age of 14 which was in 1989.

[kyupol]

Been writing stories since I was about 7.
Started drawing comics around age 15. I had a little sketchbook only read by the handful of friends I had.

Started uploading on geocities circa 2001... digital coloring by ms paint. Manually drawn and scanned.

And the rest is history...

[Mohini9000]

Haru and Tsukasa had its origins in 2019. It wasn't until 2024 that I started to publish my first episode, and since it took more than 5 years to do so, they went through many changes.

Read Haru and Tsukasa | Tapas Web Community

Read Haru and Tsukasa :: campfire | Tapas Community

[yaziroburrows]

Oh gosh.
I starting writing when I was about 11 (when I learned books were written by people lol) and I've been consistently writing every since! (I'm 32 now)

I self published my first novel in 2017 under a pen name, but got disheartened pretty quickly even though it did decently. Around 2020 I got into writing fanfic and pulished about 6 fanfics over on AO3 before shifting focus back to my original writing and working with an indie publisher in 2022 to publish my first trilogy. I had never really gotten into web novels or writing online until around this time last year, when I began ghostwriting for a romance novel app, and now here I am LOL

For me, the right time was when I stopped caring if it could be a career and just started caring more about sharing my stories. I write SO much now and so quickly, because I'm just writing what I want, without worrying about it being marketable. I am finding my work isn't super popular, but there ARE people who like it.

And thats enough for me ^_^

[annuskabriar]

technically, the first story i wrote was one when i was seven. put it down in writing and drew pictures for it and everything. i mean, i never finished, because #adhd, but ive been writing stories my entire life. my comic specifically - the first story ive ever published - i started conceptualizing in fall 2019, though the world its set in is much older and is my long term worldbuilding/passion project. originally i was going to wait another year or so, but then made a lot of progress in the scripting over nanowrimo and decided it was ready to start being published and i was also impatient and didnt want to wait longer aha