I get a lot of guests on Lens of Hopefulness who found self-improvement later in life — as adults, sometimes as retired adults, like me. So, when I got to sit down with Shanti Hershenson, I was genuinely excited, because here’s someone who found her purpose before she could even legally drive.

Shanti has written 38 books. She’s published 22 of them, with number 23 on the way by the time this episode is out. And she’s about to head off to Bryn Mawr College outside Philadelphia. I wanted to know how someone gets that much work done, that young, in a world absolutely stuffed with distractions — and what she’s learned along the way that the rest of us could use.

Finding Purpose Early

Shanti told me she’s never really doubted that writing would be her life. This is what she wanted to do as a kid, and it’s what she wants to do now.

“This is what I wanted to do when I was a kid, it’s what I want to do now, I can’t imagine myself doing anything else.”

She’s in good company. She pointed out that S.E. Hinton was sixteen when she published The Outsiders, and Christopher Paolini was fifteen when he wrote the first Eragon book. So, a young author with a clear sense of direction isn’t unheard of — but doing it in this generation, with this much noise competing for her attention, is its own kind of feat.

The Discipline Behind the Words

I asked how she manages to write so much with a phone full of apps sitting right next to her — because I have that same phone, and I know how it goes. Her answer was refreshingly honest. She’s not immune to it.

“One thing I do is that I have a goal, and I have to write a thousand words every single day. I have been doing this since I was in seventh grade. Not writing a thousand words is not an option.”

She admitted she still catches herself two hundred words in, ready to scroll. Her fix is noticing the pattern and talking herself back: finish the writing first, then the scrolling will feel good, because it’s not standing between her and something she still owes herself.

This connected for me to something I read years ago in M. Scott Peck’s The Road Less Traveled — his idea that so much of what troubles us as a society comes down to wanting immediate gratification instead of delayed gratification. Shanti described her writing sessions almost like a meditation — noise-cancelling headphones on, everything else locked out, fully present with the work and the characters she’s built. That’s not so different from what I feel when I’m on-stage improvising or lost in a scene. You disappear into it.

Family, Environment, and Finding Your Footing

I asked where the discipline came from — school, family, something else. Shanti said part of it was simply natural, an obsession with writing and creating for as long as she can remember. But she also said her family has been supportive without that support directly explaining her output. What shapes her work more, she said, is the environment she lives in — real events, things she’s seen and felt, opinions she holds, all filtering into even her more fantastical stories.

We talked a bit about how tough the teenage years can be for anyone trying to find their own independence. I shared that I didn’t really find mine until later, and that I drifted for a while into a crowd that experimented with drinking — something that, thankfully, never took hold in me. What did help, looking back at raising my own two sons, was giving kids as many outlets as they can handle. One of my boys found music and never stopped; the other found a camera in his hand young and became a professional videographer. Shanti’s experience, and the response she gets from other young people telling her they’re inspired to write too, felt like a good example of what happens when a kid finds that outlet early and it actually sticks.

On Being a “Pantser” and the New Book

Her twenty-third book, Wolfgang One, is the start of a planned trilogy. It imagines a society where everyone is cloned from an important historical figure and raised from birth to live up to that person’s legacy. The main character is a clone of Wolfgang Mozart, on the edge of adulthood, when a DNA test turns up something that sends him spiraling.

As a fellow author, I wanted to know her process — plotter or pantser (A person who writes by the seat of their pants!), in the language we use in the Long Island Authors Group I sit on the board of. She’s mostly a pantser.

“I do actually have a whiteboard in my room, but I haven’t touched it in like two years. I’m definitely — I’ve always been a little bit more of a pantser.”

She’s not a pure one, though. She keeps bullet points and loose paragraphs of what needs to happen next, and by the halfway point of most books, she knows exactly where the rest of the story is going. It’s a process a lot of working authors will recognize — start loose, tighten as you go.

AI, Authenticity, and What a Computer Can’t Do

This was the part of the conversation I most wanted to have with her, since she’s coming up in a generation where AI in college and in writing is simply there, all the time, whether anyone likes it or not. I told her about a short story class I taught, where I asked an AI tool to outline a three-act structure just to demonstrate what it could do — and it offered, unprompted, to just write the whole thing for me. I asked why she doesn’t take that shortcut, given how much time it would save her.

“So much of what I enjoy about writing is the process itself. I love sitting down every day, I love having my little cold drinks, my coffees, and just writing... So much of writing is relaying my own personal experience, and how deep down I have felt about certain things, and I just don’t feel like a computer can properly convey that.”

That tracked with something I feel as an actor. When I’ve had to play a scene rooted in real loss, I’ve pulled from what I felt like when my own father passed away, and I had to play a scene about grief, and so I put that experience into the character. No tool replicates lived experience — it can only approximate it. Shanti and I agreed AI is a legitimate research tool and it isn’t going anywhere, but we agreed the writing it produces tends to come out oddly careful, almost afraid to commit to anything sharp or specific. There’s a place for it. It’s just not the place where the actual voice lives.

Lessons Worth Sitting With

● Purpose found early doesn’t need to be rare — it needs room to grow. Give kids outlets, plural, and let them find the one that sticks.

● Discipline beats inspiration. A thousand words a day, kept since seventh grade, will outproduce waiting to feel like writing.

● Getting lost in the work — writing, acting, whatever your version is — is its own reward, and it’s the thing that no shortcut can replace.

● Structure and freedom aren’t opposites. You can start as a “pantser” and still end up with a story that holds together.

● AI can save you time on research and logistics. It can’t hand you your own voice, and it shouldn’t be asked to.

Where to Find Shanti

Shanti’s books span several series — including the Bio Gnome series, the Eris and Rest duology, Little Green Man, and the new Wolfgang One trilogy — and are available on Amazon in Kindle, paperback, and some hardcover editions, with several titles on Kindle Unlimited. You can find all of them, along with her newsletter and event schedule, at shantihershenson.com, and she’s active on TikTok, Instagram, and other platforms if you want to follow her work as she heads off to college this fall.

Listen to the Full Conversation

There’s a lot more in the full episode — including how Shanti approaches cover design, her thoughts on adapting novels into film versus screenplays, and where she sees herself five years from now. Lens of Hopefulness podcast...