Once, I tried to break up with writing. It was your typical love story: girl meets book, book introduces her to pen, pen whisks her away to far-off lands until she’s besotted. I was eight when I realised that my love for writing could become a profession. But later, when I completed a literature and education degree, reality hit. The books I studied clearly showed that people like me – an Asian girl from a council estate – did not get published. I needed to be a proper person with a proper job.
So, I became a primary school teacher. Writing was my ex-lover; I was never to speak its name again. Except, it was squatting in my house, knocking on my bedroom door with tantalising tales and proposals. And I, shut in that room, was starting to get cabin fever. I needed to open that door and write again. Last year, I became a writer-in-residence for First Story and was placed with a group of secondary school Asian girls near the council estate I grew up in. Looking at them felt like seeing a snapshot of my younger self. Except my younger self didn’t have a real-life writer at the front of the class, demonstrating that people like her can get published. Because, despite the obstacles, my debut novel The Things We Thought We Knew was published last year.