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Silver Spring native Hannah Moskowitz has nearly as many manuscripts under her belt as she does years of life. The 18-year-old author is punching out her 14th manuscript.

The college freshman is now enjoying the fruits of her first published manuscript. Her young adult novel "Break" tells the story of a teenager who is on a mission to break every bone in his body. The boy knows that once a bone is broken, it grows back stronger, and is desperate to somehow find the strength he needs to cope with family problems and love life drama.

Moskowitz set out to write about a teenage boy on some kind of strange mission, but beyond that, was unsure how the plot would pan out.

"I wish that I had a good story [to explain how it came to me, but] it honestly just fell into my head," she says.

She acknowledges inspiration from two books-turned-movies: Chuck Palahniuk's "Fight Club" and Jon Krakauer's "Into the Wild." Both, she observes, address self-destruction as a form of self-improvement just as the protagonist of "Break" does.

Jonah, the main character in "Break," destroys his body in a variety of ways – skateboarding tricks, punching a wall, smashing each of his toes with a hammer. As the book goes on, it becomes clear that Jonah is self-mutilating to escape the pain he feels. His parents are fighting, his new baby brother is always screaming and his other brother's extreme allergies are constantly sending him to the emergency room.

In one scene, Jonah jumps into an empty pool.

"I need to do this one, and I know it in all of my unbroken bones," Moskowitz's main character thinks. "I need to get stronger. I need to get stronger. This is the way. Face-planting into this empty pool will be my salvation. It has to be."

Moskowitz's tremendous enthusiasm for fiction is evident not only in her prolific output (her manuscripts average 45,000 words), but also in her attitude. "Break" is the seventh novel she wrote and the first to be published. She finished her first manuscript when she was in eighth grade.

A graduate of The Barrie School in Silver Spring, Moskowitz worked on "Break" during free periods at school and downtime at rehearsals for two high school plays she was in. She started the book when she was a 16-year-old junior and sold it at age 17.

Thus far, all her work has been about teenage boys, she says, explaining that she writes about them and from their perspectives because that's what she likes to read.

"It helps me, I guess, depersonalize it," she says, noting that the male character allows her to make up an entire world, rather than slip into something autobiographical.

Although most of her friends have always been boys, she is a self-described "girlie girl."

"My entire dorm room is hot pink," she says of her on-campus abode at Brown University.

Moskowitz seems content to accept the likelihood that not all her novels will be published. As a writer, she says, you simply never know which manuscript is going to succeed, so you just push on, hoping for the best.

Her writers' group helps her improve her work, and her best friend reads all her manuscripts, his only job to tell her she will become a literary sensation.

Moskowitz says her least favorite part of writing is getting down the first draft.

"It's like having schizophrenia until it's done," she says.

Moskowitz has not yet been able to work on her manuscripts arriving on campus, but is looking forward to figuring out how to work it into her schedule.

"Break" is available for purchase at Barnes & Noble and Borders and online at www.amazon.com.