Mirta Stantic.

By Julia Fairclough

Mirta Stantic was so compelled to write her first novel that when an idea for a chapter or scenario came into her head, she skipped the school bus and ran home.

While it is not unusual for writers to obsessively work on their manuscripts, it is not every day that you find a 14-year-old girl juggling school, music, ballet, and a social life to hammer out a 200-page novel. And it is also not everyday that a teenager is a successful, published author.

But that’s what happened to Stantic, 17, a Somerville High School senior who moved here from Croatia in August. Her book, “Kako smo odrastali: Slobodni pad,” which translates to “How We Were Growing Up: Free Fall” was published shortly before she moved to Somerville from Zagreb.

The first edition of 1,000 copies (a large print run for Croatia) sold out last week, just two months after its publication. The book is currently only published by Algoritam, the largest publishing house in Croatia.

At one point I almost gave up because it was so overwhelming, but the editor said I’d be very proud when I see the book in the bookstore for the first time,” Stantic said. And she was right.

“I saw the colorful book cover on the shelf,” she said. “I saw all the people in the bookstore during the promotion who were actually there waiting for me.”

The book is about coming of age as an adolescent, and ponders first love, making and losing friends, the pressures of a strict school system in Croatia, and all the other issues that arise during that magic time between childhood and adulthood.

“My friends and I were going through these confusing situations, and then I came to realize that it’s not the end of the world if a friend or love moves away from you,” she said. “Although our experiences may differ, the issues were the same.”

Stantic did not write the book to help other teenagers who are awkwardly bumping along that rocky road of adolescence, though she hopes they find it helpful. She just couldn’t help but write down her feelings, she said.

Whenever she feels emotional or confused, she stops what she is doing and writes it all down in her journal. This way she can move on and free her mind. But the difference with this book, which she wrote determinedly through her freshman and sophomore years of high school, is that she kept on writing.

“The book came along when I was in a state of ambivalence about other things I was doing—music and ballet—and so I started to write,” she said. “It’s just like Forrest Gump in the movie where he felt like running for no apparent reason and started to run. For me, I wrote.”

People are already asking her when she will write her next book. And she usually smiles. She will continue to write in her journals. Something she is working on might be published one day, “but that I don’t feel the pressure of a second novel,” she said. “It’s about continuing to write for the same reason I wrote my first novel. Because I needed to.”

A hardworking straight A student, Stantic is interested in studying neuroscience at college. Her dream is to attend Harvard University, though she is applying to some other local schools, including Tufts University, Brandeis, and MIT. She speaks six languages – Croatian, English, German, Slovenian, French and Spanish. She is a member of the tutoring club at Somerville High, and peer tutors in mathematics and biology twice per week.

She played piano for 10 years, sang for eight years, and studied ballet for many years. She is an avid skier and skied professionally in Croatia, before altitude sickness got the best of her. That was perhaps the big tuning point in her life, at the tender age of 13.

“I was lying in bed and thinking that my life was over,” she said. “It was the first time I remember losing something that I really saw myself in. I managed to get over that period fairly quickly, and to learn something about myself at the same time.”

She is currently studying to be a ski instructor for children, an age group she finds appealing because she loves helping others.

Last March, she won a competition for being the most successful teenager in Croatia. She and other national youth were featured on TV. The youth she met are a great network for her to work on social justice projects, like understanding how to combat bullying in the schools.

“The award was not as important as the chance to point out important issues and to have public support,” she said.

Stantic was born in Zagreb and lived there all her life, before moving to Somerville. She had visited the United States for the first time last summer and spent a few weeks visiting Atlanta, Indiana, and Boston. Her first impression was that the United States was very hectic, but she fell in love with Boston and its European charm.

Her mother, Anita, a linguist, brought her family to Somerville as she is on a Fulbright Scholarship performing a research project at Tufts University. The family will move to Indiana this February as part of the scholarship project.

Anita and her husband, Goran, are happily married and serve as a huge source of support, Stantic said. She also has a brother, Ljudevit “Vito,” 13, and a sister, Vedrana, 7.