How I Got Published By Taking Michael Clifford To Prom

Part 2: Writing the Imagine

It took me a long while to regain composure. When I finally stopped crying about getting the email, I decided to read it a little closer. A very particular line stuck out to me:

We loved your idea about Michael Clifford taking you to prom!

I blinked slowly, taking a deep breath. Okay. I was fairly sure I remembered the details of that one. I'd daydreamed my fair share of celebrities taking me to prom, anyway, so I didn't think it'd be too hard.

The deadline was in about two weeks. Not bad to write a 5,000 or so word imagine. I mean, I wrote 2,000 word chapters every––

I dropped my phone again. A two week deadline finished at around Christmastime. This first week I had two massive finals every single day, and the next week was FamouXMas.

If you were a part of FamouXMas while it happened, you'll remember that it was no. joke. You saw me posting a chapter every single day of the week leading up to Christmas morning, and on that morning I released not one, but eight chapters to finish it out. The entire FamouXMas week totaled out at 25,000 words.

But little did you know that I was staying up until 5AM every night researching everything there is to know about Michael Clifford for authenticity and endlessly revising a 5,000 word Imagine to send out to editors that week too.

Here you can find me tweeting about the pain:

You would've thought that I'd be a pro at writing fast by then. I mean, I've completed two NaNoWriMos––50,000 words in one month. 30,000 in two weeks should've been standard. But those two NaNoWriMo novels weren't being posted to readers across the world or submitted for publication. Those two novels didn't need to be shared with anybody immediately upon competition. The added pressure was insurmountable.

I suppose I didn't need to do half the work I did researching Michael Clifford, but I couldn't allow myself to create something that wasn't as authentic as possible. As a fan of 5 Seconds of Summer myself I knew how important it was to make sure that I wasn't portraying Michael as a cutesy fanfiction trope in a published book. And so I watched interviews, and I read articles, and I studied up on everything I could. Since I assigned Famoux writing to the day, most of this research was happening in the dead of night.

Here we have me looking for photo inspiration. Notice that Ashleigh Gardner, one of the nicest human beings ever on Wattpad's staff, favorited it. Because she knew.

And here we have me trying to be all sly about it. I'm just a fan of him. HAH.

In the midst of all this research and authenticity, I must admit to you something about the imagine i wrote. In a spur of the moment decision before sending it off, I simply couldn't resist giving Michael the one thing every main man in an imagine needs. Here's a little excerpt line:

"Michael Clifford's grin is bright and crooked . . ."

Oh yes. To this day I still cringe at the fact that I actually gave Michael Clifford a crooked grin, and that this crooked grin is now immortalized in a published book.

THIS SMILE IS NOT SO MUCH CROOKED AS IT IS FULL OF WARMTH AND LOVE.

But I digress. A few days before Christmas came, I sent in the imagine, taking a deep breath before diving into more Famoux. The deadlines were excruciating, but honestly, I never felt more like an author in my entire life.