Sasha Brudlo

Hi there! I’m Sasha, a Canadian poet and author based out of Toronto.

Last year, I turned thirty, and it made me think about my mortality and what I wanted to leave behind after I was gone. That’s when I came up with the goal that would change everything:

I was going to write ten books in ten years.

There were too many ideas floating around my head, scribbled down across notebooks, typed into fully-developed plots and just sitting in my documents folder. So I figured I’d better get started on actually writing some of the stories I wanted to create.

This started with the daily writing goal of 1,000 words a day. Soon, however, my writing habit got out of hand, and I found some days I would write 2,000, or 3,000, or even 6,000 words! I started saying “no” to binge-able TV shows and drinks with coworkers, and saying “yes” to writing, over and over again.

And I wrote a book. And I rewrote the book. And I wrote two other books. And I wrote a handful of short stories set in the same universe. And I’m still writing.

Eight-or-so years ago, I had an idea for a story about a teenage girl who dies and has to navigate the afterlife. Over the years, the idea grew and changed, a romance subplot got out of hand and took over the story, and twenty-four pages of broken scenes turned into a detailed plot I tucked away in that documents folder. When it came time to choose which idea I wanted to focus on, there was never a question. This would be my first book.

So that’s the short and sweet version of the story of how I went from a person who liked writing and had a bunch of ideas to an actual writer. So I’m going to say it again.

I wrote a book. I wrote another book. And I wrote another book.