Hello there, readers! I go by the pen name thirteenbooks but you can call me Abdu, and I am an eighteen-year-old writer from the tropical island of Sri Lanka, with aspiring dreams of having my work reach the world’s stage, the global platform, the people…whatever you want to call it.
My childhood in Sri Lanka has been – thankfully – humble and peaceful. I enjoyed local cuisines and adored traveling the beautiful expanse of land. I was educated at my second home, an Islamic Alternative Education school founded by my amazing parents, Iman Academy. And I just loved the environment I was in. My little bubble of happiness included my family, friends, and daily experiences.
However, I wasn’t an ordinary Sri Lankan boy. I preferred playing football rather than cricket or the national sport, volleyball. I did not speak any of the native languages, for my bread and butter was the English Language. I was obsessed with reading as many “English” novels and books and watching as many “western” TV shows and movies as possible. In short, I was as foreign as can be – and an extroverted introvert, at that.
So I turned to Writing. It all began at the age of thirteen when I knew being a teenager came with being motivated, driven, and taking the initiative to pursue my passion. The books I had read were all I’d known. Harry Potter. Percy Jackson. The Maze Runner. Tintin. It was time for me to create my own. Leave my mark on the pages of history. Yeah…no.
With no clue of what my storyline was going to be, no vision of a future in writing, and my mom’s laptop with a pirated copy of Microsoft Word installed, I delved into the world of creative writing, not knowing the least of what I was getting myself into.
I was consumed, day and night, hours on end, detached from reality, phasing back and forth and in between imaginary worlds, teeming with the lives of many characters very close to my heart. Every day I would skip meals to write another 1,000 words, only to re-emerge hungrier than ever. I would skip gaming to spam my friend on Discord and introduce my next “big” idea. And I would turn every source of entertainment into “creative inspiration and research.”
Until one day, ten months later. I sat back with wide eyes as I clicked on the save icon for the final time, completing my first manuscript draft which totaled an estimated 105,000 in word count, at the age of fourteen.
Why am I writing this blog, you may ask? Because I had just poured my soul into a piece of art, found myself living and breathing the words and pages, and achieved something tremendous even for my standards. But what I hadn’t realized at that moment, fast-forwarding four years later, with countless feeble attempts at sharing my work with various publishers in person and on the internet, daring the number of views on my book to kick off into high gear…
I didn’t realize I was completely and utterly lost.
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