My Publishing Journey

I wrote my first book in 2011. 

Nine years sounds like a long time, but it feels even longer. It feels like that was decades ago. I was still in middle school then, and every few days I would write a chapter, then print it to bring to my friends in homeroom. 

The pages would be passed between the girls in my group, and I would watch with delicious satisfaction as they reached the last words of the chapter, which I purposefully left as cliffhangers to ensure their emotional commitment. They would haggle me to write more, and I would, knowing I had an audience, and finally I reached the end of the story. 

It was my first novel length book -- about 60,000 words -- though back then, I didn’t know anything about industry standards of word count. Before then, I’d written short stories -- about fifteen to twenty pages at most -- but this was about two hundred and fifteen pages. I still remember lugging around the finishing manuscript, which I printed and put in laminated pages inside of a binder. 

I don’t think it crossed my mind to write professionally, back then. It was just something I enjoyed -- something I loved. I was always a voracious reader, so writing seemed a natural next-step for a hobby. I began drafting more novels, picking at ideas and abandoning them to marinate only to pick at them again.

The next book I finished was in late 2013 and clocked in at 105,000 words (still my longest book to date). It was an angsty urban fantasy, similar to a lot of books in the market at the time. I was proud of myself for reaching the end, and that was when I began researching how to get published. 

So truly, that was when my publishing journey began.

I read through articles upon articles about traditional publishing, literary agents, and query letters. I prepped materials and reread my beginning chapters countless times. 

Then finally, I began querying in January 2014. 

And kept querying. I eventually queried two other projects, as well, but I didn’t get any positive feedback. It felt like I was standing by the door to my dreams, knocking and knocking, just waiting for someone to answer.  

Then, in spring of 2016, I got my first partial request from an agent. It was the first of three projects that I had queried since 2014 that finally got some traction. That email gave me an immense confidence boost; I finally thought I could make it. It felt like, if I just listened close enough, I could hear movement behind that door -- someone was approaching. 

Until the rejections began rolling in again. The door stayed closed. From 2016 to now, I completed five more manuscripts and queried them. I got about twenty partial/full requests per manuscript, but didn’t have any luck securing representation. Since 2014, I’ve amassed at least 400-500 rejections. That means I researched agents, their agency guidelines, and wrote them an email with a short synopsis + sample pages according to their agency guidelines about 400-500 times only to be rejected. To be fair, I did amass a lot of partial and full requests in the meanwhile, as well, but they didn’t amount to any offers.

It’s easy to say and seems to simple to write — that this journey has lasted years and hundreds of rejections — but it’s heartbreaking to live through. (Don’t get me started on the difficulties of being a person of color in this industry.) For one thing, each thing I write is a piece of me — it is my soul stripped bare — and to send that for someone to read is hard enough. Then to be callously rejected is even more difficult. Especially when it takes up to four months for agents to reply and many agents have a no-reply policy, as well.

But I had my heart set on being a published author. I wanted to write books about Muslims and books about Pakistanis; books I didn’t have growing up. I wanted to spread some good in this world, to provide comfort and joy to others the way I have experienced from reading. It’s been a long and difficult journey. I wanted to give up every few days, but I refused to let in. I knew it would happen eventually; I just had to wait. 

Then, in spring of 2020, I participated in #DVPit. I had just recently made a twitter account to participate in these pitch contests, which I previously didn’t know much about. It was through #DVPit that I learned about my publisher, CamCat Books. 

I submitted to them in April.

In August, I got an email from their CEO asking if I could get on a call with her regarding my manuscript, The Lady or the Lion. They sent me the contract over the next day. 

I signed. And the door opened.