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Writerly Intentions for 2022

16/1/2022

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Photo by Debby Hudson on Unsplash
Hey hi hello and happy new year!

Every December I tell myself I won't bother making resolutions because I rarely meet them, and every January I make them anyway. But! I've decided this time to make 'intentions' rather than 'resolutions'. It feels a bit more flexible, hopeful, and aspirational that way, instead of a commitment I already foresee myself breaking, y'know?

As Hyba noted in her positive productivity post (one of a series of three, I encourage you to read them all!), it's important to treat ourselves with grace and compassion.

So here's a non-exhaustive list of my writerly intentions for this year:

✧.* Chronicles of Mourra
  • Aim to complete a draft of in time for Pitch Wars in September
  • I doubt I'll be comfortable submitting it by then, as it will be a very raw draft, but I'd love to have the option!
  • Currently I'm at 18k of the new draft, and estimate I'll be up to ~27k within a few weeks, as I'm at a point where I can merge content from the previous draft with this one
  • I foresee the total draft being around 50k? Maybe 60k? I am wildly excited and delighted by how it's going so far! 
✧.* Rivener 2.0
  • Step 1: flashcard the new plot
  • Step 2: write
  • Step 3: profit?
  • In all seriousness, I'm aiming to share it on Tapas once it's complete! Currently I'm focusing on CofM, so this really is one of those things I'm making an intention to achieve rather than a hard-set goal
✧.* Blog
  • For the past few years I've taken part in a reading challenge. Last year it was to read 15 books and officially I read 16 (unofficially I read 19 but I didn't list them for ~reasons~). This year I've set the same goal
  • I usually share my reviews to the books I read on my GoodReads account, but I thought it would be neat to share them on my site too
  • The series shall be called 'Book Responses' because they're going to be fairly casual and probably not very in-depth posts about what I liked, didn't like, and/or the vibe I got from the books
✧.* General
  • flashcard the plot for Glitch wip (maybe)
  • research and create a plan for hosting a community space for Muslim writers
  • take part in Fictober 2022
  • submit to some kind of lit magazine or competition at least once
  • write more poetry
  • try and get my fable out there? somewhere? somehow?
There you have it! These are manageable intentions, I think, but also listing them like this is making me a little anxious, not gonna lie. I calm down when I remember this is supposed to be spread out over a full year, and my main 'goal' is to work towards these things, even if I don't finish them! I need to have something to aim for, at the end of the day.

Have you set resolutions and/or intentions for this year? If so, what are they? Comment below so we can support each other!

​Best of luck this year babes, and as ever: happy reading and writing. 
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A WRITER'S YEAR IN REVIEW

29/12/2021

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It has been...a year. Apparently. As this tumblr post put it:
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So anyway, it's December and 2022 is around the corner, which means it's time for my year in review! (Shoutout to Hyba for reminding me this is a thing I can do lol).

​I did something similar last year and it was fun to see how much I accomplished or what changes occurred that I just plum forgot about, because I have brain like swiss cheese (full of holes).​

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Portals and Twists: a New story Idea

19/12/2021

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Photo by Misael Moreno on Unsplash
For a few years now, I've had this image in my mind of an oracle figure sitting in a dank little cell, and then that same oracle figure on the run, being hunted by pursuers. I think it came about after watching Minority Report (2002) years ago with my dad. These two scenes were the beginning of a story, I could tell, only they were lacking something to truly bring them from the 'spark' stage into 'development' mode.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago. I was talking with my friend Hyba about isekai stories (specifically in webcomics). I have long been a fan of portal and isekai stories, and I love mashing up tropes and adding twists to them. Talking to Hyba got me wanting to dabble in this genre. 

For those who don't know and don't want to click on the link, isekai is a Japanese term for a genre of story where a person is transported into another (often fictional) world; sometimes this involves reincarnation. Some of these stories are portal fantasies, however not all isekai stories involve portals.
Some examples of both that I've personally enjoyed include Alice in Wonderland, The Chronicles of Narnia, John Carter (2012), Inkworld, InuYasha, and Fushigi Yugi. (The latter two are manga turned animes). ​

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Adventures in Printing (and other things)

11/7/2021

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Hello hello hello!

I have something super exciting to share, and that is that...I PRINTED MY BOOK! I've heard about and known of Lulu.com, but I finally kicked myself into gear and sent Rivener (draft 1) to get printed! What actually spurred me to act was that the lovely June shared one of her short stories with me, and I loved it so much I told her I wanted it on my bookshelf, and would she mind if I printed it out? She said yes!

Initially I was just going to do it myself, but then I thought I'd rather have it done with proper book binding, and once I saw how easy it was to do, I decided to do Rivener too! 
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Yes, that is hardcover! I splurged because why the heck not. I looooooove it. The quality is impeccable, and the only 'issue' is that I didn't know how to format the manuscript for printing, so the chapters don't all begin on their own page. But the affordability (which I just got an email about them changing due to increased demand for their services, so bear that in mind) was well worth it!  

I almost teared up, holding my book in my hands. My actual hands. ​Mindblowing! I'm going to get all my short story collections and my fable printed next!

And now, a word from the author of Muscle Memory...

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(Full disclosure that I chose the book cover and it's not her design, because I got so excited I forgot to ask her if she had/wanted a specific cover).
Hi, Mayyah’s friends!

I’m June, the author of Muscle Memory, a short story about various themes that were important to me. I don’t want to prattle on too long about it, but the basic gist is that I wanted a summer romance that featured Vietnamese American youngsters. 

(Before I prattle about the deep stuff, the short and sweet summary of the story is that a girl named Y Nhi wants so badly to fall in love but has been destroyed by it so entirely in the past. Her childhood friend Vinny has picked up her pieces many times before, but he kinda…wants to put her back together for the rest of her life while also never letting love destroy her again because his love is different.) 
I’ll be honest, being a Vietnamese American is kind of weird. You know there’s a bunch of others like you, but sometimes you can’t see them? Y Nhi and Vinny are both part of a church youth group. In my head, this is a very real organization, the Vietnamese Eucharistic Youth Movement aka TNTT (you can look it up! It’s actually international, but you might encounter the US-based VEYM.net first). I’ve been involved with them since I was in kindergarten. Very instrumental to my development as a person. The general program involves intersecting faith formation and cultural roots, since that’s been fading at an alarming rate. 

But it’s not something a lot of people know about. I explain it to my friends and they tell me it sounds like I’m in a cult. Which… Has not been my favorite interpretation of this. Is VEYM especially important to the plot of Muscle Memory? Not really. But a lot of the undertones and inspirations came from experiences I correlate with the group. 
I tried to mess around with love languages a little bit in this short story.

The intersection of Vietnamese and American general love languages was on my mind. For example, the adults of my life are more likely to show their affection by buying my favorite food than necessarily giving me a hug. They’ll do outrageous acts of service but will never say, “I love you.” I understand this language. But sometimes it feels like they don’t understand mine because, well. I like hugs and being told that people are proud of me and love me. And I was thinking about how two people who love each other so deeply can miss each other just because their love languages don’t match up. About how love is an effort in small ways like that. 


So anyway! It’s a pretty layered wip considering its astounding < 5k word count. Here’s the link to the full wip on tumblr, and here’s a playlist I made for the wip.

Shoutout to our bff Mayyah for loving this work of mine so much she straight up got it printed. ❤️

And lastly...

My friend and fellow author Hyba is not only writing several books in various genres, all intriguing and varied, she is also writing a thesis! It's on the viability of enhanced fiction ebooks (a fancy way of saying ebooks that make use of multimedia). To complete her study, she really needs people to partake in her survey! It's very quick and not at all technical—anyone who reads using a medium other than physical books can participate! 

I'd really appreciate if you guys could help her out! Plus, by completing the survey, you get to have a free copy of her incredible thriller novella Apartment. Which is honestly such a bargain, that book is amazing. One day I'll share a proper review of it! 

Well, that's all I have for you today! As always, happy reading and writing!
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Writing Updates! P.2

7/6/2021

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Many moons ago (lol), I was talking to my friend Trade about Rivener, and they asked me a fantastic question. I'm paraphrasing here because I don't have my old blog with the record of it, but essentially they asked me what the worst versions of my characters would look like. And I said with Wren, she'd be something like Cormac (my main antagonist). Brutal, unafraid of her own power or using it, and utterly devoid of empathy. I said she'd become like that in an alternate universe where she met Cormac while young and was raised by him and his ideals.

But then...as much as I like angst, I couldn't just leave it at that. I love happy endings! No matter how hard it is to get there! (Sometimes the harder, the better, you know?) Anyway, we ended up talking through what would happen if that version of Wren met Kai, how they'd meet, if he would help her change, and what their story would look like. Ultimately, the world would still be the same—post-apocalyptic, though leaning more towards sci-fi than urban fantasy—but certain events would change, impacting the characters and their development. 
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Photo by Florian Olivo on Unsplash
Several months passed where I stopped writing almost entirely but didn't stop thinking about this, and after some more recent chats with Trade and Hyba, I decided to scrap my first rewrite of Rivener (which, if you don't know, I'd been sort of attempting to do) and properly pick up this AU. 

And now it's an actual thing! I've written 6k for it so far over the past couple days, planned a good chunk of it out, and have the writing bug again (such a good feeling, when you just wanna write and write and write, like an itch). It's going fantastically, if I do say so myself. However...

I was (am still? sorta?) a little nervous to share this version of my story (creatively titled Rivener 2.0) because...this Wren is awful. She does awful things and is complicit in awful things. Internet purity culture has me worried about what the response will be to this character who can lightly be described as ~problematic~. She changes, of course. This story is still about two very damaged people healing, the journey they go through together and because of each other. But it's also a lot darker. Or I delve into the darker aspects more.

Wren is not exactly a villain, but she's not a hero either, not for a long while. She is, in fact, closely aligned with the main villain. Not entirely of her own free will, but...well. Some may think she's irredeemable, which is valid. But I think it's rare that people are truly irredeemable. I do believe everyone has the capacity to change, if they want to, if they decided to, if they commit to it and keep trying and learning and unlearning, if they work hard to not repeat their mistakes or the way they've hurt people, if they apologize by word and action.

I don't think anyone is owed forgiveness, but I believe everyone can earn some sort of...grace? I don't know if that's the word I'm looking for, maybe redemption is closer to the mark.  So yeah. Wren will have a pretty significant redemption arc. I hope I can do a good job conveying the complicated person she is, with pretty severe faults but equally admirable qualities and depth to her. Her journey is not easy. She can never erase the things she's done. But I hope you cheer her on as she grows to be a better person, even if she can never fully make up for who she was. I hope you understand where she's coming from, even if it doesn't excuse her actions or beliefs. 

Now this AU is not all about Wren, and Kai too is changed from the original story. Firstly. we're meeting him in vastly different circumstances, when he's arguably a much rawer character? In the original, he'd been enslaved to Cormac for a while by the time he met Wren, and a few years before that he was "stock" on a "farm" (for spoiler reasons, I won't explain what that means).

In this AU, he meets Wren having just been removed from the farm. He's less docile, but at heart, still the same sweet, gentle, traumatized Kai of the original. They have a long way to go before they like each other, given who Wren is and how they meet in this AU. She treats him pretty terribly. Not as terribly as she could've, and not as terribly as others, but...oof. They have an uphill battle ahead of them.

Still! I'm really excited to write this story, difficult (in topics and tone) as it is! I get to explore the world a little bit more, flesh out Cormac a lot more, and write some scenes I always wanted to, which didn't end up having a place in the original! I hope you guys will come along with me on this journey!

Have you ever written or read a character who starts out as awful and slowly transforms for the better (or the reverse)? How did it go? Do you think they managed to become sympathetic or appealing to the reader, despite their faults? Do comment below, or drop me an email, and let me know! I'd love to talk about this!

In the meantime, have an excerpt:
Cormac listened quietly to this report, and the only indication of his rage was the wreaths of fog coiling around his feet like cats, which swelled and billowed behind him like a cloud before he hissed out a breath and it quieted to nothing more but tendrils of mist, cold and spreading across the floor. Wren braced herself against the reach and touch of it, felt a grim sort of perverse pleasure at the way Threader flinched, the way the others fidgeted, discomfited.

“The traitor must have been a shifter too,” Tamsin concluded. “The runners all agreed the smoke didn’t do anything to her, and she didn’t have a gas mask.”

“How did she slip under our radar?” Cormac asked.

Tamsin swallowed, lifted her chin, said evenly, “We don’t know, sir.”

Cormac said nothing.

“The overseer was the first killed,” Jacks volunteered into the charged silence. “Everyone said he was in charge of the hiring. So no one knows how a shifter got past him. Sir,” he added belatedly, as Cormac’s pale eyes slid from Tamsin to fix on him. 
​

“Hm,” Cormac said. The mist on the floor thickened into a carpet, opaque enough to hide the sight of their own feet underneath it.
Stay tuned for P.3 of my writing updates, where I will talk about my Glitch wip! Happy reading and writing!
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Writing Updates! P.1

3/6/2021

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Hello hello! I've been writing and plotting for Chronicles of Mourra, Rivener 2.0, and the Glitch wip, and it has been going incredibly well, due in huge part to my writing buddies! (You know who you are, and I adore y'all). 

I've been meaning to let you guys know how and what I've been doing, and I have SO MUCH to share! Which is why this is only part one of the updates!!!! We shall start with...

Chronicles of Mourra

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Photo by Darran Shen on Unsplash
Since very nearly the beginning of this iteration of CofM (which, if you've been following me for a while, you'll know is one I've been working on for about ten years, though this latest version is about two years old) I've been wanting to incorporate a prophecy into the plot. The question was how. CofM is, at its heart, my exploration of the Chosen One trope, and what's a Chosen One trope without a prophecy? (See: King Arthur, Harry Potter, Heroes of Olympus, the Lord of the Rings, Narnia etc). 

Anyway, so I managed to write about 40k without said prophecy actually being developed or incorporated in any way, and it was like a rock in my shoe, very irritating but ignorable with some effort. But finally I sat down (literally, by my local creek), opened my computer, and tackled it. About twenty minutes and 700 words later, I had...something. A good something!

A few days later, after talking it out with my friend Hyba, I ended up creating loads of backstory, character development, and a complexity to the overall plot that I'd been missing until then, and I am so excited. ​Here's a quick breakdown of what I've developed, somewhat spoiler free!
  • Nur (the main antagonist) is a complex, tragic villain. Her mother raised her with certain beliefs about her destiny, and all her choices are guided by those beliefs, her mother's unjustified resentment, and her own very justified bitterness. (She's still definitely a villain though).
  • I've used the 1001 Nights/Arabian Nights' premise as the inspiration for Nur's mother's backstory, and given her a name: Hayat.
  • Nur's full name is now Nur-al-Hayat, or light of life. Her mother named her, partially, after herself. Take that as you will. 
  • The prophecy could apply to two different main characters, although one (or both) will be framed as a false saviour.
  • The prophecy warns of great calamity but also foretells a "golden age" heralded by the saviour figure...but here's the thing. A golden age will be coming, but for whom? Also, with the way the prophecy is constructed, the implication is that the golden age is dependent on the calamity happening first. Which further implies that the saviour figure will bring that about too. 
  • In a sense, the prophecy comes true (or...might...come true) because people believe in it. Certain characters believe in it so much, in fact, that they make stupid and/or terrible decisions because they believe the prophecy is 1) infallible and 2) being interpreted correctly (by themselves)
  • Nur and Qusaiy are mirrors of each other! So are Sirin (Qusaiy's mother) and Hayat (Nur's mother)! This probably means nothing to you because you don't know these characters, but this was a fun and unintentional development for me and I'm very excited to explore it further.
  • Halah's grandfather now plays a larger role in the backstory of the major inciting event of the plot! Which is great and helps explain how and why Halah is caught up in this at all. (As a refresher, Halah is a character who gets caught up in something much bigger than herself and is, in a way, a minor character for these Big Events, although the story is told from and [mostly] limited by her perspective).
  • Nur will not be redeemed, but she will do one (1) good thing, for her own reasons, that will positively impact the Good Guys™. And she'll do it out of spite. It's delightful, I'm delighted by this. This will also be happening in Book 2.
  • Oh yes, I don't know if I ever said, but here it is officially: CofM is actually a duology! Chronicles of Mourra is actually the series title. I'm also planning a spinoff set in the same universe based on Aladdin, featuring a yet-to-be-introduced minor character from the first book (Halah's story). Book 2 will be Qusaiy's story, set when he's (spoiler alert) grown up.

Given all this behind-the-scenes tinkering, the 40k I'd already written needed some adjustments to reflect these changes or plant the seeds of future events! It took me about a week and a half of on-and-off-again writing (twice in a little virtual session with Hyba), but I managed to get what I'd written to a place I'm very pleased with! Here's an excerpt, a little descriptive piece I'm really fond of:
To Halah, it reminded her of the rare expeditions of her youth, when she’d accompany her grandfather to the mountains, where he would retreat to his dwelling there for quiet contemplation (though it was not very quiet with his granddaughter chattering to him and demanding he tell her stories).

It was something about waking up before the sun and watching the stars fade, something about putting out the fire and packing their hasty camp and leaving behind nothing but footprints and soft grey ash, something about the road stretching out before them, that brought it all back to her.   

It reminded her of a song, though she couldn't remember the words, only the melody, which she hummed, half under her breath as they tramped through springy grass and along stony hills, the birds chirping from within the scrubby vegetation. The land folded in on itself outside Qarun’s limits, rising and falling unevenly, raggedly, as though some great animal had torn it up and it had settled like that, with great gouges and strange towers of stone and earth and grass and bush, worn by ages of wind and water.
​
It reminded Halah of one of her favourite stories, featuring the great battle between the Anqa bird and the King of the Jewelled Serpents.
I hope you enjoyed this! Let me know any thoughts you have, or any questions! I love to talk about my stories so I will probably answer any questions you have, although I may skirt around spoilers. Anywho, I hope you're doing well! Do let me know.

Happy reading and writing!
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a freewriting exercise & an update

1/5/2021

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❝ i dreamed about magic and dragons and flying to neverland and i knew if i wanted it hard enough i could go and i dreamed an old, cracking voice softly saying "after thunder, golden showers" and a young, lilting voice singing "and 'round the corner there may wait/a new road or a secret gate/and though i oft have passed them by/a day will come at last when i/shall take the hidden paths that run/west of the moon east of the sun" and there were fireflies i chased laughing in the dark and there was a swarm of mosquitos but they were golden and dancing in the light and they did not bite me and it was magic, magic, and i want it back. ❞
—text in quotations are from j.r.r. tolkien's lord of the rings

Hello hello, it's been really long while. Am I back? I don't know. I still haven't written any more of my books, but I no longer feel like my writing ability and creative drive is locked in a doorless safe buried far underground, encased in cement, out of my reach. So hopefully!

I do have some updates though:
  • the wip I'd temporarily titled Chimken Tendies is now to be referred to as the Glitch wip!
  • i put an indefinate pause on redrafting Rivener and instead
  • i am planning an AU! It started as a convo with my friend, wondering how Wren and Kai's story would play out if the main antogonist, Cormac, found and took Wren under his wing when she was young. It's a darker story, but one I'm really excited about!

I hope you're all doing well! Comment below and update me on your lives and writing! Ask me questions about my wips! I may not be writing but I'm definitely thinking about my stories all the time. I reply, I promise, just slowly, and I love hearing from you.

Until then,
​Happy reading and writing!
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Oh No: A Realization

8/2/2021

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Why yes I am updating at an unprecedented rate but that's not what's important here, what's important here is that I came to a Realization™ and it Explains Everything but has also filled me with Existential Despair (hence the emphasized capitalization for appropriate dramatic effect).

I have struggled throughout my entire writing career to write as much original fiction, with as much joy and consistency, as I write fanfiction. I have struggled throughout my entire writing career to complete my original fiction the way I complete fanfiction (at a frankly insane rate). In the past three months ALONE I wrote 185k words of COMPLETED FANFICTION. 

It took me approximately two years—or ten years, depending on how you look at it—to write 40k of my novel.

And today, as I was brushing my teeth, the reason why hit me like an ANVIL. 

I am a character driven writer. I don't really care about plot except as a vehicle for character development and relationships! Therefore, fanfiction (which is about the characters more than anything else), is incredibly appealing and fulfilling for me!

Original fiction, on the other hand, requires me to be invested enough in my characters to want to write about them. And unfortunately, as these characters exist in my head and I have not spent [insert egregious amount of time here] hyperfixating and consuming content about them, I simply do. not. care.

(Well, I don't care enough. And nobody else cares enough, which is part two of my problem: I thrive off of engagement the way my body thrives off of oxygen. Hard to get that with OG fiction I am not allowed to post lest it sabotage the potential for publication). 

Which means the probability of my completing original fiction or writing with consistency and passion and dedication? SLIM TO NONE.

Cool I'm going to go cry into my pillow now. 

But Sumayyah, I hear you saying, why don't you just write fanfiction and then change enough details that it's safe to claim it and market it as original fiction a la Cass!e Cl@re and other authors? And to that I say:  
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In essence, I'm SCREWED. I would like to rescind the writerly instinct that was given to me. Clearly it was intended purely to torture me with everything I want but cannot have because of the way I Am As A Person. 

​Nice.
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