At 18 years old, Lauren Davenport is doing something some people strive towards for a lifetime.

On page 46, readers of the September issue of "Family Circle" magazine will find an article written by the recent Rock Hill graduate, her first published.

Jeff Davenport, Mamre Baptist Church pastor and the young author's father, is a published writer who had always urged his little girl to try her hand at writing.

Appropriately, Davenport's parents also inspired the topic for her first article, which encourages parents to wait to say 'No' to their children until it really matters.

"My parents haven't said 'No' about everything," Davenport said. "They've waited for the really important things to say 'no.'"

The article will be featured in the "Teen Talk" section of the magazine, in which youth turn the tables and give some much-needed advice to their parents.

It may be her first article in a major magazine, but Davenport has already had to compromise her vision, if only slightly. Her original title for the piece was reworked a little bit, though it didn't give the author much pause.

It probably helped that Family Circle gave the young writer more than exposure. At a dollar per word, the article netted her around $500.

It was easy money doing something that Davenport said, surprisingly, wasn't that difficult.

"It's really easy," Davenport said. "Some people work all their lives to get something published and I just happened to get something."

As Tom Petty famously said, the waiting is the hardest part, and that was certainly true for Davenport. When she first got the happy news, she was informed her article would be featured in the June issue of the magazine.

"I got the check in May, so we were waiting for the actual article to come out," Davenport said. "The June issue came out, we got it and we were so excited but it wasn't in there. They set it back a few months, I guess they got more stuff."

Now that she's had an article published, she's trying to keep her momentum. She began working Wednesday on another article. This is one about fashion that she'd like to see published in a magazine such as Seventeen or CosmoGIRL!

Davenport's first article is in the September issue of Family Circle, available now.