Not many teenagers can walk in to a library and find their own book on the shelves.
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But Ballarat Christian College year eight student Lara Mocan can.
The 13-year-old has written and self-published her first book Destiny, and the novel is on the shelves of her school library for her classmates to borrow.
Lara, who has loved reading and writing since she was about five years old, had started writing many books but Destiny is the first she has published.
It was a school project that prompted the budding author to publish her book.
"I actually wrote the book in year six and in year seven our class did the project to achieve something that normal kids wouldn't really achieve and I chose to publish a book."
It was a long process that began at the start of 2019 and Lara finally had the books in her hands a few weeks ago.
"The book is about a modern day princess who loves to ride horses, but she is supposed to become the queen and people don't really want her to ride. It's about her following her destiny to become a horse rider," Lara said.
Seeing her book on the shelf has inspired Lara to publish another novel.
"After we sell the first batch of books we are going to go through the rest of my books and see which one I like best, then go through the whole process again using the money from my first book to publish the next."
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