I didn’t expect much when I first uploaded my fantasy Shorts.

Just a voiceover, a few images, thirty to sixty seconds of lore. No ad spend. No magic keywords. Just a story that had been sitting in my head for far too long, finally pushed out into the world.

The first one hit 90 views. Then 110. I refreshed. Twice.

The second barely passed 70. Still, I kept going.

And then, one evening, after a long day juggling work, family, and dinner with a toddler clinging to my leg, I checked YouTube and saw it:
1,037 views.

A thousand strangers had watched a slice of the world I’m building. A kingdom I drew in the dark. A name I’d whispered into existence over five rewrites.

It’s easy to dismiss it. “It’s just a number,” I told myself. “People scroll past everything.”

But the truth is, for authors like me, especially those of us self-building from scratch, every view is a flicker of proof. That the story matters. That someone, somewhere, paused to listen.

There were no fireworks. No subscriber spike. Just a moment. One I’ll quietly remember as the night I sat in my dressing gown, tea in hand, and realised…

This is working.

I’m still writing. Still shaping this novel. Still creating. And slowly, view by view, line by line, I’m getting it out there.