Meet William Heinzen, active member and Co-Lead of the Entrepreneur Team. 
William works on the cybersecurity team at National Information Solutions Cooperative (NISC) in Mandan, ND. However, when his work day ends, he can be found outside running, or inside writing. William tries to write at least 1000 words a day, and aims to write four days out of the workweek. Additionally, on the weekend he takes more time and tries to write both Saturday and Sunday, often doubling his word count. It’s no surprise, with this dedication to writing, William is an author of both a novel and short story.
As a child, William always loved reading, and in fact wrote his first story, “Detectives in Dinosaur Times” in third grade. Since then, he’s been writing ever since. In November 2016, he published his first novel, Warrior of Light. In fact, this book was featured in a promotional bundle alongside some of the other bestselling fantasy authors like Brandon Sanderson, R.A. Salvatore and Michael Stackpole. A successful moment William will never forget. Nearly a year later, in October 2017, William published the short story “Malichon Manor”. William notes that one of the challenges he’s faced in his writing career, in fact, is writing the sequel to his first novel. While it’s been a challenge for him to build off his first story, without being too repetitive, he will release this sequel later this year. Another challenge he finds as an entrepreneur is learning how to expand his reach to new readers. While he attributes social media to be a very powerful tool, a lot of other writers do the exact same thing, leading him to find other new ways to draw in readers.
His advice to other young professionals is simple, focus on what you can do, not what you can’t do. William says, “For example, we can’t choose how other people treat us, but we can choose how we treat other people. It can be easy to get overwhelmed by circumstances outside our control, but if we stop and focus on the circumstances that are inside our control, we can often find ways to move forward.”
If you’re interested in reading more of what William has to say, you can read more here.
