I am an only child. Yes, that means I am one of those kids who talks to herself in her room, but that also means that come summer, I'm one of those kids who gets signed up for a slew of summer camps. When I was little, this was often against my will. My parents wanted me to get out of the house and be social. Looking back, I don't blame them – I mean, I talked to myself aloud. I think it's what any parent would have done.

The summer between eighth and ninth grade, I resolved not to go to camp. I made a deal with my parents: I would write a novel over my summer vacation, if I could stay at home. Of course, my parents said what every sane parent would say – "Yeah, right".

For me, this was an excellent idea. I had always wanted to write a novel. Though I had written numerous short stories ever since I could read, I had never tried to write anything longer. This was my way of trying something new, and I was excited.

I wanted to write about something I thought was important – something I cared about. I knew writing about something I thought had to be written was what would ultimately motivate me the most. This was how I found the topic of self-harm. I knew more needed to be written about it, but not more facts and statistics. I wanted to read about the feelings behind the need to physically harm, and to do that, I knew the book had to be fiction, but I couldn't find any books like that. This was how I began to write the book I wanted to read.

When I started outlining the story I wanted to tell, I didn't know what the whole story would be. I had a vague idea of the emotions I wanted to explore. I used that to start mapping out short scenes. For some reason, words weren't enough quite yet to describe the shadowy scenes in my head, so I began outlining with pictures. Of course, having no artistic sense whatsoever, these drawings were mostly hastily drawn stick figures with a few words beneath them.

I started writing my novel looking at these smeared, blue pen drawings. I must have looked a sight, camped out on the dining room table with my laptop, an iPad, a permanently half-empty cup of Earl Grey, and scattered drawings and notes around me, but it worked for me. No one had ever told me how to go about writing a novel, so I did it my way. I ended up writing most of my first novel on an iPad. I even wrote whole chapters on a phone, texting dialogue to myself. No one had ever told me that this was not how to write a novel. No one had even told me that 14-year-olds weren't supposed to be writing novels. So I went ahead and did it.

When writing this novel, I had thought I was ultimately writing it for myself. I figured that after I was done with it, I would print it out, sigh with satisfaction, and hide it in my desk where it wouldn't see the light of day. This only lasted a few weeks.

As the weeks went by, I couldn't get the story out of my head. I had finished writing the book, but for some reason, it didn't feel done. I knew that if I had truly written the novel for myself, I would feel content hiding it away in my desk, since the person that mattered, me, had seen the project to its end. But when I found I was far from content, I realized the unthinkable – I really wanted others to read my book.

I felt that if other people could read the book, and I could get some subset of them to think about these issues in a different way, my time spent on this novel would be worth it. This really motivated me more than anything else. And with this realization, I set about trying to get my novel published.

I knew nothing about the publishing process, so I began to read everything from Publishing for Dummies to online author forums. I learned how to draft a query letter, and sent it to a list of carefully compiled literary agents. I started to get excited when I began to receive responses, but this excitement quickly dissipated as I read through rejection after rejection. I lost count after 280.

Among the responses, some were curt ("No"), and some were well meaning ("Come back when you get a BA in Creative Writing… or at least graduate from high school"). But ultimately, all I heard was no.

While I have to admit I did contemplate giving up a few times, I was surprisingly not that discouraged. As the rejections poured in, "No" started to sound like "Not this way". It wasn't definite rejection anymore; I just had to find another process.

While trying to get my first novel published, I started working on a separate novel. This was a novel I started outlining three days after writing the final "The End" on my first novel, and would go on to become The Seventh Miss Hatfield. I suppose writing another novel served as a much needed distraction at times, but part of the reason I started on another book was that I was simply hooked. I was bitten by the writing bug and couldn't seem to stop writing! In a way, this encouraged me even more to chase after my publishing dreams, and pushed me to keep going. I ended up publishing my first novel, All That is Red, myself, and getting a three-book deal for my second. And best of all, I did it in my own way, because I didn't know what I was supposed to do. Anna tweets @caltabiano_anna.

If you are under 18 and have some of your own writing to share join the Guardian children's books site and share in Your Stories.