How I became an author at 19 years old -

Ever since I was a kid, all I wanted to do was to become an author. It was my biggest dream and I wanted it very, very badly. I would stay up late at night to read books and learn from other authors the way to design and craft amazing stories. I’d buy notebooks and pens beyond necessity and hand-write hundreds of pages before I upgraded to typing on a laptop. I did this ever since I was in first grade. I’d read and write anything I wanted to and I didn’t stop.

When I was in 7th grade, I wrote my first full novel called Finished. To this day, I still have the manuscript in my room and I look back at it often to remind myself of how I used to write and how far I’ve come. I had several covers made of it as well (at the time I had discovered Canva, which was a revolutionary thing for my covers).

Check out my personal website for a review on Canva Pro.

My point with all of that is this: If you want to achieve your dreams, you really need to toss your coin into the well and go for it. Don’t wait around for it to happen, because it will take time. But the rewards are worth every second.

Where it all began…

My journey to becoming an author began in my childhood. I discovered that I had a passion for writing when my mom continued to encourage me to write. I realized that I didn’t want to do anything else but write all day–of course, this is impossible and I understood that, but I really did love writing.

As a kid, I would write any story I could come up with. In 3rd grade, I wrote my first SciFi story that was all hand-written with different colored pens in a composition book. As I grew up, I kept writing different genres, including realistic fiction, historical fiction, fantasy, and more. Even when I was a kid, I had diaries that were never for me to talk about my day. I would come up with different characters and pretend the diary was for that character. I was able to create stories based off of these character’s daily lives. I kept updating some of them for years, flourishing their stories until I felt that the tale was complete.

I can’t remember the first time I started typing my books, but I remember getting my first iPad mini and a keyboard with it. After that, Google Docs became my best friend and I typed out all my stories using it. I was really a fan of the Warrior Cats books when I was young so I wrote my own versions of them with wolves and created my own stories out of the idea. I also wrote stories about aliens, revolutions, wars, and so much more.

In middle school, I started branching more into what I write today: Military SciFi. It began with my discovery of anime and then I started enjoying more military-related content. I designed entire worlds, wars, and military systems for fun and world-built all of them.

Then, I wrote my first full scifi novel: Finished.

The development of Finished

My first scifi novel took place in the year 2147, if I recall correctly. It followed the life of a high schooler named Joel who was accused of murdering his best friend. From there, the story delved into the deep world of political corruption and evil corporations hellbent on turning mankind into cyborgs.

I actually began writing this story on my first blog: The Story Village. I began this blog as a way to serially release chapters of Finished and update any potential readers on what’s next. Of course, I didn’t really know too much about the internet back then and my knowledge bank has gone up since, but I left the website up to see where I’ve improved since. If you want, you can actually go to my old blog and read the first 13 chapters of my first manuscript. I think it’d be fun to see the improvement yourselves as well!

I never ended up publishing Finished, but it is the story that has built the foundations for my first series: The Fallen Age Saga.

You start some, you scrap some…

That’s the thing about writing books: You start and scrap many projects and you finish very few of them. I can’t count how many projects and books I started only to drop after writing 20-30k words in each. I never felt satisfied and wanted to move on to something different.

I wrote an entire trilogy called The Shadow Trilogy that covered ancient Egyptian themes, but I never finished the third book. I wrote about 120k words in total between the first two books and didn’t continue.

Then, I began writing newer projects that have actually withstood the test of time: The Guild of Doom, Malware, and Soldat.

The Guild of Doom and Soldat

Originally two different projects, The Guild of Doom and Soldat were each meant to be stand-alone novels in fantasy and scifi, respectively. I began writing them at the end of 8th grade, if I can remember, and I wanted to design stories with magic and deep fantasy themes and stories with militarism and aliens.

Then Malware came into the picture. Originally it was supposed to be a stand-alone scifi novel about political corruption and clandestine operations. However, I wanted more. I felt that more could be done with this story.

I rewrote it about three or four times before I finally settled on the final version that you see today.

And then a brilliant idea: What if all my newest projects were connected in one timeline? I had always wanted to create an epic saga, so I figured that it would make sense if all the stories matched up and were connected.

So, this helped begin what you now see today as The Fallen Age Saga.

Publishing Malware

I took up most of quarantine to write the final version of Malware and it was the first book of mine to ever reach 100k+ words (106k to be more precise).

I decided to begin posting about it on TikTok to hype people up. At the time, I had around 750 followers, which isn’t too much if you look at TikTok and how big some accounts have grown. However, I made a series of three videos with the titles: “If this is on your fyp, this is what group you belong to in my book.”

I made one for three groups and then posted them all in one day and thought nothing of it. To my absolute surprise, I started getting notification after notification after notification.

And then my account skyrocketed from 750 followers to 2k almost overnight. I couldn’t believe just how many people were excited to read my book and see the groups I had spent forever designing come to life.

Currently, my account is sitting near 6k followers. It’s been a crazy trip since the beginning.

I decided to publish through Amazon KDP and I am planning on branching out to other publishing platforms to distribute my books to more retailers very soon.

19 and an author

So, here we are: I’m 19 currently and every time someone asks what I do, I just say “I’m an author.” It’s pretty wild to see how I’ve come this far, but I wanted to tell you all my story so that you too can understand that it’s not impossible to achieve your dreams. It’s not impossible to do what you want to do in life.

What you need to remind yourself about is this: It will take time. It will take hours upon hours upon hours of effort. But you need to stick to it and you need to continue, otherwise, you’ll fail before you start.

I hope this inspires you to grab onto that dream of writing your own book one day. If you want more of my content regarding writing, feel free to check out my website and follow my social media accounts to get updates and other neat things.

Good luck and keep on keepin’!

You can find me at the following accounts:

Zainah Yousef

Zainah Yousef is the author of The Fallen Age Saga and specializes in gaming, social media advice, and reviews. She's been writing all her life and she probably won't stop anytime soon.