MY PATH TO PUBLICATION
Kasim Ali
The debut novelist describes how all the hard graft he’d put in paid off when he found a real-word story he needed to tell
The first ever book I wrote, I wrote in six months when I was seventeen. I never did anything with it. That first book, I told myself, was just for me.
‘The next book I wrote was the first in a planned young adult fantasy series. This one, I sent out to agents and the rejections came in swiftly. Maybe 25, maybe fifty, maybe more. I deleted them as they came in, though I kept writing that series; I wanted to complete it, to understand where I was taking the characters.
‘From then on, it was non-stop. From 19 to 25, I wrote two books a year: a YA romance, a YA horror, an adult horror. I wrote an adult science fiction, a YA science fiction, an adult romance. I sent them all out. They were all rejected. The same names kept appearing in my inbox with the same words next to them: Unfortunately… These rejections hurt. For days after, I was convinced of my utter mediocrity. And then my ego would swing in, tell me I was good at this, I just had to find the right story.