Writers Spotlight

My manuscript has been slowly growing for five years. Although it started as a work of creative non-fiction, I later incorporated fable and poetry. Most recently, oral storytelling has played a big role in its development. A year and a half ago, I received a micro-grant from a community arts organization called Art Starts to begin an audio project about language in Toronto. While working on recent drafts of the manuscript, I listened to the audio interviews that I conducted. With the permission of the interviewees, I have incorporated some of the dynamic conversations about language and cultural identity.

As I navigate the early stages of my writing career, I expect to develop a learning relationship with my mentor, Kai Cheng Thom. Relationship-building is important to me and I want to learn about her journey as a writer as I continue to understand my own. I wish to sharpen my editing skills and explore how to tell my multi-genre story in a way that best suits my vision. I hope to gain knowledge about realities and resources in publishing for racialized writers living in Canada.

A major part of my writing process is my participation in a weekly writing meet-up. We are a small but mighty group of racialized womxn who meet at a coffee shop in the east end almost every weekend. The biggest take away from this is the discipline and structure of writing at the same time and place every week. This ritual propels my writing for the rest of the week and anchors me in community with writers of various genres.

An ideal writer’s life exists in a world that fairly compensates writers for their labour. This means that writers are paid properly for their countless cycles of research, planning, production, editing, and public engagement. In this kind of world, there are also meaningful opportunities for writers to be engaged in community networks and in social movements.  Finally, this world has authors writing in multiple languages. In such a world, multilingual writing is a norm. English is no longer the overwhelmingly dominant language of literature and there is ample space for hundreds of other languages and the worldviews that they carry.

If I could choose anyone to write a book about my life, I would choose Vietnamese author Kim Thúy. Kim writes gorgeous poetic prose and has just written a cookbook. She would do an excellent job at capturing my reverence for food and particularly fruits. I can see her telling the story of my life using pomegranates, sapotes, sour cherries, durian, and papaya.

In ten years time, I imagine myself writing for the page as well as the screen. I will have published a book of non-fiction stories and will have written and directed a full-length documentary of social relevance. Because my stories are deeply personal and based in family experiences, I anticipate struggling with inevitable rejections from institutions and individuals. A highlight will be finding success in the writing profession while maintaining strong and reciprocal relationships with family, friends, community, and self. I understand that writing and artistic careers can put great demands on time and energy. I want to learn how to take good care out there as I strive to make a living telling stories.

I grew up in the United Arab Emirates during the 1980s and early 1990s and moved to North America when I was thirteen because of the first Gulf War. Growing up in the Middle East during that time meant growing up concurrently with innocence (so much was censored) and turmoil (so much was brewing), optimism (so much seemed possible) and repression (so much was not legally possible). My intention was to create a novel which captures and questions these contradictions and absurdities.

I wrote this novel driven primarily by the desire to leave behind an authentic portrayal for my Canadian-born-and-raised daughters of what growing up female in the Middle East felt like during that time and how we were all and are still today such resilient fighters and heroines.

I write best at night, after my daughters are tucked in bed. I set a goal with myself to hit a certain minimum word count every month. I have a writing group with whom I meet up with monthly. I also email all my writing to my mother, sister and best friend for their feedback. Honest, critical feedback is everything to my process and without it, my writing would go nowhere.

They’ve passed away but I’d be honored to have the different worlds I’ve lived in re-created in words in a collaborative effort by these three brilliant writers: Ismat Chughtai, Sue Townsend and Carol Shields. Otherwise, the living authors I’d choose to work collaboratively on a book about my life would be: David Sedaris, Dave Eggers, Mohammed Hanif and Junot Diaz.

I believe hardship is the seed of all great art so I don’t think I would make daily life easier for writers. Where’s the growth in that? Maybe I’d make meeting and connecting with authors and agents and publishers less mysterious for the unconnected writer so I’d help set up more free mentorship programs like Diaspora Dialogues spread out across Canada and the world, but other than that, I’d leave it all as is. Horrible, aren’t I?

I’ve published the novel I’m currently working on, and the next one in my head. Feedback from outside (nay, even inside) the circle of my family and friends has been overwhelmingly positive and gushing. I’ve been inundated with awards, the world has fawned over my genius and I’ve received ten-figure advances for my third and fourth novels. Keeping it simple and attainable, you know.

I’m so grateful that I was chosen for this mentorship program and paired with Carrianne Leung. Having the support of a talented and wise writer in the solitary process of completing a collection is an amazing development, which I believe will guide my collection to a deeper, braver place and push me further than I can go alone.

I started this collection of linked stories during the years that I working abroad as a journalist. I’d begun to see connections between the comforts of life in Canada and problems in Papua New Guinea, Bangladesh, Nepal, El Salvador — wherever I was. I turned to fiction for the freedom it gave me to explore these links and soon I was applying for an MFA. At Rutgers-Newark, friends and teachers guided my incipient stories into more personal reflections on race, war, sex, and art. Recently, I’ve been working on a frame story to turn the collection into a novel, but I’ve discovered that the frame has taken on a life of its own. So now I’m working on two books — a collection and a novel.

The first short story I ever wrote came to me fully-formed, as though it had been waiting to be birthed. That’s never happened again. Usually a situation or scene will come upon me. I respond by taking notes and building a world. Then I plod my way through a first draft, a foggy and frustrating process. The ideas on the screen never quite match their potential in my mind. But somewhere between the second and sixth draft, alchemy usually sparks and the story starts to reveal itself. 

If it wasn’t so presumptuous I’d ask Alice Munro to come out of retirement (and maybe pick up some Spanish) so that she could turn her philosopher’s gaze in my direction and pluck insights about the human condition from my life, insights that I clearly am missing because I am not Alice Munro.  

In my perfect world, everyone who wanted to write could. They’d be free to spend their days penning stories for eager audiences in a green, flowered world without war and waste.

A decade from now I will have completed this story collection and first novel. As well, a trilogy for middle-grade readers that I shelved a little while back will be in the hungry hands of Latina girls who aren’t yet seeing themselves enough in literature. I imagine I’ll have faced an absurd number of rejections along the way, but as a necessary consequence, I will by then have also learned the art of persistence.

Based on my past mentorships, I have seen that an opportunity to work with a published, successful writer brings insight and knowledge into both the process and craft but also into the larger aspect of seeing a project through to its final incarnation. I look forward to this process resulting in a finished manuscript, as my manuscript had been in earlier stages during my past mentorships.  I greatly admire novelists who have produced a work through many stages and over years; it has seemed an insurmountable mountain for me to climb thus far, but I’m excited to finally reach that pinnacle through this program.  

When I get up in the morning, my impulse is to write. I find my mind most focused and fresh for what comes onto the page. That’s really the only identifiable and consistent process I’ve had over the years and I don’t see that changing. Everything else is determined by deadlines and finding the time necessary to do whatever work is at hand to produce something. I’ve heard a lot of discussion about process and everyone seems to still be looking for the magic answer of how to write because it’s so unstructured – and lonely- and different from other creative endeavours, but I think you either have to just do it or not. It’s discipline and hard work like anything else. I’ve spent a lot of time reading and watching YouTube videos with great writers about process but they all seem to say the same thing: just keep going and work hard. Reading the greats is part of that too, and reading attentively when you don’t write. I spend a lot less time now watching interviews and making sure I just do it.  

I started this manuscript many years ago with a simple idea that I had a story that needed to be told. While my other career took precedence and prevented me from devoting time and work into the project, I also needed to acquire more life experience and let enough time pass to really see what the story is that needs to come to life.  I have a university background in journalism but never studied creative writing as rigorously; but I’ve always loved literature and had the dream of being a novelist. A few years ago I came back to the project after a life-changing workshop at the Banff Centre, after which I did a couple of mentorships with writers Shyam Selvadurai and Cary Fagan to help develop the story and direction of the novel to where it is now.  

If I could have one author write about my life I would choose John Updike. He makes the ordinary extraordinary and vice versa in a way no one else does. And I love his prose.   

In a perfect world, of which I was the ruler of all, I would make sure that a writer could receive a yearly salary to simply be who they are and write. Of course there would have to be some accountability — like submitting a certain amount of pages by the end of the year — but I think it would be great to not have to hustle all the time and just be who you are.  

In ten years, my goal is to have a novel published. I’ve also discovered new writers and the worlds of other books. The lowest point to getting to that place would probably be feeling like I don’t want to write, or not having either the mental or physical capacity to do so — we take so much for granted sometimes. As for highlight, I used to fantasize about meeting authors I admire who would tell me they liked my writing, but my greatest fantasy is to be on the other side of the world and find a book I’ve written on the same shelf as the writers whom I admire. To know that a story you’ve written is reaching and touching souls in other corners of the world and is just as accessible as any story you’ve ever read — that’s the great power of art and the lasting power of literature and has been my inspiration for being a writer. So that would definitely be my highlight. 

This novel was born out of my desire to write a story set in a young adult psychiatric ward that was filled with humour, with teachings, with love, forgiveness, acceptance, and mirrored the real experiences of people who are dear to me who spent time in them. This was also a chance for me to explore my own mental illness and what it was like growing up in the household that I did with the mental illness I have. This manuscript has been honed and rewritten countless times. I am ready to let it go into the world but it’s not quite ready to fly yet.

I am hoping the mentorship will allow me to gain some perspective on this project. I have been holding it so close to me for many years. I think that my mentor (Melanie Florence) is such a good match for me and I am super excited for her insight on what’s working and what can be refined. I am also excited for the end of this mentorship because I have faith that it will finally be ready.

I don’t think that I ascribe to any writing process. When I have time to write I do, even if it’s just in the notes section of my phone. When I don’t have time—or energy, I don’t write. I have started to give myself a break from the constant inner monologue of ‘you’re not writing and that means you’re horrible blah blah blah’. Now the work I do produce is better because I’m not doing it in a stress bubble of self-hatred.

It’s interesting to think of which author I would choose to write a book about my life as it has a myriad of answers. I guess it would depend on what kind of book I wanted it to be. If I wanted a slightly magical but real and kinda sad book I would say Heather O’Neil. If I wanted a full magical adventure Neil Gaimen. If I wanted something romantic and hazy Michael Ondatjee. If I wanted something dark and twisty I’d go with Chuck Palanhuick.  All would be super great books I’d love to read.

In my dreams, ten years from now I am in the third season of a TV show I created and writing. I’ve published my YA novel that I’m working on with my mentor in this program. My second poetry collection, and my second short story collection are both published after the success of my firsts. I am travelling more for pleasure and not only for work. I have started my publishing house for Indigenous youth and am still working with N’we Jinan the arts concentration program that I currently work with.

I would say the lowest point of my writing career so far would probably be what the lowest moments are currently, which is when I doubt that I should keep going. When I feel like I have absolutely no talent, that I am basically made up of rejection letters and no one will ever like my weirdo stories.

If I had the power to rule the world, a writer’s life would include a guaranteed yearly wage, enough so there wasn’t a constant worry and need to book as many contracts as you can to survive, and also with health benefits. And every writer would get a private soundproof studio to work uninterrupted. That would be pretty sweet. Imagine the books we’d get if people didn’t have to scramble to get enough money just to survive under the poverty line and actually had time to write!