Hi, I’m Rachel: former teacher, Tolkienite, dog mom and owner of Rachel E Scott.

Like many people in post-pandemic 2021, I was reconsidering everything. Mainly, my job. I’d been a substitute teacher for a few years and landed a full-time teaching job in 2020. And while I loved my students, my heart wasn’t in the classroom.

It was in my writing.

When the end of the school year rolled around, I discovered that I wasn’t being rehired. At the time, I was hurt, frustrated and confused. But under all of that, I felt…relieved. Finally, I felt like I didn’t have to pretend anymore. I felt like God was releasing me from the sense of obligation that had been fueling me since college. And while many people around me thought I should find a new teaching job, I felt my heart being tugged elsewhere.

I spent the following summer feeling anxious and unsure where to go. There were no jobs I felt a passion about, and as a passion-based person, I needed to love what I did.

The answer seemed easy: writing. But writers have to be picked up by a publishing company, and even then, it’s hard to make it big. Or so I thought. On a whim, I pulled a book from my shelf and discovered that the author—a fairly successful author whom I admired—was self-published. And thanks to the DIY spirit that my parents engrained in me, I decided that publishing my own book couldn’t be all that hard.

So that September, I decided to try to make it as an author. I’d been writing stories since I could remember and began my first book at the age of 12, so the art of it all wasn’t new to me. But the business of it all certainly was. I spent the next four months researching the industry, reworking the book I’d started during the pandemic, and preparing to publish said book while trying not to have a breakdown. But the joke was on me because I had multiple breakdowns.

Then in January of 2022, I published my first book. I made a lot of mistakes, and my career did not suddenly take off like it had in my daydreams. In fact, it would be a full year and a half before I saw real growth in my career. And even still today, I’m growing and learning.

Despite all the learning curves, criticisms, anxiety and overwhelm, I love my job. Even as I add in new things (from starting YouTube to creating products) and take some away, the thing that always remains is writing.

So whatever brought you here, be it one of my books, a video or word of mouth, I hope you leave feeling the way I always intended. Like you’re not alone🤎

YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/@RachelEScott

INSTAGRAM: @THE.RACHEL.E.SCOTT

EMAIL: THERACHELHEY@GMAIL.COM