MASTER OF PLOT TWISTS: William Sterling

How to Survive Writing a Book

Welcome to the first Master of Plot Twists spotlight on Plot Twist: Still Alive—where we focus on people who stopped talking about their goals and actually did the hard, uncomfortable, terrifying work of bringing them to life.

Let’s get something straight: writing a book is not about waiting for inspiration. It’s about showing up, pushing through doubt, and being willing to suck at something long enough to get good at it.

Enter: William Sterling.

William Sterling is an author, editor, screenwriter, and sometimes actor from Dacula, Georgia. His path to becoming an author wasn’t clean or easy—it was built on persistence, failure, and the willingness to keep going even when the work wasn’t good yet.

He started like most people do: writing strange, eerie stories as a kid, fueled by imagination and a love for horror. But that early spark didn’t magically turn into success. It took years of writing, rewriting, scrapping ideas, and producing what he openly admits was “gruesome garbage” before something finally clicked.

That’s the part most people don’t want to hear.

There is no moment where fear disappears. There is no version of this where you feel fully ready. There is only the decision to keep going anyway.

William leaned into that process. He embraced the mess. He stuck with it long enough to find his voice—and now he’s built a body of work that reflects that grind.

HIS TERROR COLLECTION:

Punk Goes Horror (2025, Truborn Press)

Punk Goes Horror II - a blood-soaked anthology featuring 19 horror

authors (Puchase through Crystal Lake Publishing or Amazon: https://a.co/d/0hqVoEy3)

Our Beanie Beastie Nightmare (2026, part of Mad Axe Media’s Totally Freaked lineup)

Latchkey Monsters (2027, from Sley House Publishing)

This episode isn's just about William, it is about how he ACCOMPLISHED SOMETHING SO MANY PEOPLE WANT TO.....

You don’t become an author by waiting until you’re good. You become an author by writing.....really fucking badly, inconsistently, painfully....until you aren’t.

Most people never finish because they’re too busy trying to be PERFECT.. The ones who make it are the ones who keep going anyway.

So pick up the pen, paper or sit down in front of your laptop and FUCKING DO IT....OR ELSE