Jani Berghuis can remember sitting in class and writing stories for fun as early as second grade. Now a junior at North Penn, Berghuis has certainly not lost that early love for writing; at only 16 years old, she has already written four full-length novels.

“I’ve been trying to write [books] since I was able to write,” Berghuis said, though it took her until the age of 12 to complete a full novel.

Berghuis wrote her first novel, about “an intergalactic space criminal who robbed banks,” while she was still in middle school. Though finishing a full-length book at a young age is a sense of pride, the topic of her first book is something that she is “still embarrassed to talk about to this day.”

While her first effort may not have been her favorite, she continues to write, and at an impressive rate: one of her books took only two months to complete.

Describing her writing style as a type of realistic fiction similar to John Green, Berghuis writes books that appeal to teenagers like her. The topics of her books range from romance to a self-described “gay-rights activism novel.” Her most recent project, which took her six months to complete, is about a group of teenagers who commit a murder- with the twist that readers already know who the murderer is.

“I try to create characters who are relatable to teenagers,” Berghuis said, explaining that she gravitates towards characters who, like her, have a sarcastic sense of humor.

Even more impressive than the number of books that Berghuis has written is the time frame in which she has written them. “I just started writing serious novels last year,” she explained.

In order to complete novels in such a short amount of time, Berghuis aims to write 2,000 words a day- about the same length as an in-depth critical paper.

“I sit down when I come home from school and I write for as long as I physically can,” she said, adding that her writer’s studio is merely a laptop and her kitchen table.

Berghuis’s ultimate goal for her books is publication, an aim that she has worked hard towards, having already sent manuscripts to a few literary agents.

“I’ve had a couple of agents who were fairly interested in the projects, but people don’t realize how hard it is to get things published,” she said. Though she accepts that the odds are generally not in the writer’s favor, Berghuis is currently working with a few agents who she is hoping will make her dreams a reality. Success does not come easily, she acknowledged, in a business where over 99% of manuscripts are thrown out, especially for an author who has yet to finish high school.

In the meantime, Berghuis has self-published two books, Love in the Time of Cynicism and The Feeling of Humanity, using Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing service. One of the novels gained over 1,000 downloads within just its first few weeks of availability.

It is people like those 1,000 readers who motivate Berghuis to continue with her passion.

“Knowing that eventually this could be a project that people my age are reading and enjoying- that’s what keeps me writing,” she said.