Always Booked: Senior Keely Hood furthers her writing passion by writing and publishing a novel

Cold brew in hand and her meticulously-curated Spotify playlists that she makes to get for each writing project blaring through her headphones, senior Keely Hood sits down at her dining room table and pulls up her 250-page Google Doc. She emerges 10 hours, several hundred words and two cups of coffee later from her self-described “hermit state” — a “good day” of writing for her.

“My writing process is insane,” Keely said. “All my friends know this about me. I’m very obsessive about it. It’s been my main hobby for the majority of high school.”

Devoting almost every spare minute to one of her ongoing projects, writing has been at the center of her personality since middle school. She’s furthering this passion by self-publishing her full-length fiction novel, “Where the Road Ends,” before graduating in May.

Keely credits her love of writing to books she read growing up. In elementary school, Keely remembers tearing through the “The Hunger Games” and “Harry Potter” series in a matter of days. Sharing book recommendations with her sixth-grade friend group and older sister Tatum, Keely remembers this as the time where she began leaning into her passion.

“I’m sure that she kind of looked up to me and saw me reading a lot, and I’m sure that inspired her to want to take on that same thing,” Tatum said. “In elementary school, there was a ‘Great Wall of Reading’ with fake stones for books that students read. I had so many stones that I put up there, and so I think she wanted that too.”

Seeking to imitate the style of her favorite authors at the time, J.K. Rowling and Suzanne Collins, 11-year-old Keely launched her writing career with her first story, “The Night the Dreams Came,” a dystopian tale about how high schooler Victoria Wright’s unsettling dreams manifest themselves in reality, making her question reality and fiction. She even printed several copies for her friends and family. 

Ever since this first dystopian-fantasy story, she has completed five novellas and novels, a published short story in the Freelancer literary arts magazine and a handful of one-off personal projects in her free time. Her writing style shifted as her reading taste changed — writing more horror and mystery after obsessing over Stephen King in middle school and doing deeper character studies inspired by John Steinbeck’s work.

Last summer, Keely undertook her biggest self-set writing challenge yet — writing and publishing a full-length novel by the end of her senior year.

This current project, “Where the Road Ends,” is a third-person story set in 1998 featuring the male protagonist Dane and his encounter with secondary character Roland. The story follows how the two evolve during their road trip across the U.S., each finding out the other’s backstory and reason for traveling. Each chapter covers their adventures in a different state.

Exploring the lives of Dane and Roland has given her more experience with in-depth character studies and writing realistic dialogue. But she developed something more important in the process.

“This [project] is where I found my voice,” Keely said. “Not only in terms of my writing voice, but also in terms of themes I like to write about.”

After writing her first draft in the summer of 2021, Keely began the revision process by having her two trusted literary companions edit — Tatum and her friend and classmate senior Anohita Paul. 

Tatum felt honored that Keely trusted her to read her story and felt invested in the characters’ personal journeys. Most of all, she felt proud of her childhood reading buddy’s development into a legitimate author.

“When I was editing, it stood out to me that [‘Where the Road Ends’] was better than at least half of the books that I read this year,” Tatum said. “It’s very professional. When she publishes this, and if she can get her feet on the ground and promote it a little bit, I really think it could do well.”

While editing, both Tatum and Anohita specifically noticed Keely’s meaningful use of prose and description, explaining how it comes off as engaging when Keely writes it compared to when she’s seen it used by authors as filler text.

“She’s really good at using prose in a way that might come across as long-winded if other people wrote it, but she does it in a way that’s genuinely engaging instead of boring and flowery language,” Anohita said.

After reading and responding to Tatum and Anohita’s edits over a few months, Keely has met with a professional editor and is almost done editing. After publishing her project, Keely plans to continue writing in college and in her future career — something 11-year-old bookworm Keely could only imagine.