I was sending a reply to the latest newsletter by Alice Lemee. She’s one of the many Substack-ers who happen to wind their way into my inbox with me having no idea how (nonetheless, I appreciate past-Noor for having the foresight to subscribe).
I told her how there is a decided itch in me to publish more, in particular, more semi-fictional short story narratives based on anecdotes from my life. This revelation was triggered by a quote she mentioned.
“Read all the time and keep writing. There are a million talented writers out there who are unpublished only because they stop writing when it gets hard. Don’t do that — keep writing.” - Gillian Fynn, the author of Sharp Objects and Gone Girl
Until social media took over my life in 2011, reading was what ran in my blood. And now, in my recent backlash against all things algorithmic, I’ve turned back to my original love. To prove it, there’s now an ever-growing list under my ‘Currently Reading’ on Goodreads (I’m on 7 books).
In an ultimately natural progression, my love of reading is what has sparked my love - no, my need - to write. This may or may not be factually correct (I think I’ll ask my mother about this), but I’m sure that, as a child, I was a writer before I was an artist. This idea is held up by the fact that I vividly remember narrating nonsensical stories to myself whilst pacing up and down in front of the TV, my older cousins looking and giggling all the while. I must have been about 3 or 4.
Throughout childhood, I always had an abundance of ‘beginnings’ in my head. They never made it to the end, only because I never knew how to end them. I'd start multiple narratives with what seemed like interesting characters, only to abandon them before they’d even had the chance to exist. And yet, I still harboured dreams of one day publishing a book.
Moving into my teenage hood, I progressed a little. I was now able to write multiple chapters into Word documents, some stories of which ended up on Wattpad (one even won an award for which I garnered very detailed feedback from an established writer herself).
Nevertheless, no matter how much I was writing, the problem still remained - these stories never ended. They seemed like they were going somewhere only to just - stop.
But now I know why.
I was a sheltered child, holed up in my bedroom for every waking hour outside of school. This meant one simple fact: I didn’t know life. To read was easy - all I needed to do was open a book and I’d step into a world. It felt, to my introverted self, akin to living.
But to write is harder - for that, you actually need to live.
Joan Didion had to hang around with real-life hippies for three weeks in order to write ‘Slouching Towards Bethlehem’. James Baldwin literally lived in a ‘tiny Swiss village’ whose inhabitants ‘had never seen a Negro’ for him to write ‘Stranger in the village’.
That is to say, these writers went out and lived life in order to convey it. It’s what makes their writing work, it’s what makes it feel real. Just like how a portrait, no matter how abstract, cannot stand on its own two feet without basic principles of anatomy, so too, a story, no matter how fictional, cannot work if it’s not rooted in some form of reality.
Now, as an adult, I’m squarely initiated into the arena of life (that entailed going to university, getting my first job, and getting married). Before, I could never end my stories because I didn’t have the experience. But I now hold (some) life experience which can (in theory) complete stories, should I start them.
And that’s where we go back to the point I made to Alice - ‘semi-fictional short story narratives based on anecdotes from my life’.
I think this blog is an attempt at doing that - whilst no theme or narrative weaves the posts together, the fact that I am the writer of all of them should hold some thread of connection to bind them all. It’s what I’ve seen in writers like Didion, or Elif Shafak who writes wildly different stories ranging from botany, to ancient Ottoman architecture, to intergenerational family trauma.
And so, whilst I may not write every day in public, I can assure you (and Gillian) that I write everyday in private. And through that, I hope one day, to actually finish a story (before mine ends!).
I love this. I think you nailed it, but with one subtle caveat.
We can finish stories when we’re young, or introverted, or shut in. But too often we’re trying to write what we think we should be writing, rather than what were capable writing, at the time.
So we inevitably hit a wall, where the piece can no longer progress.
I remember reading somewhere that Neil Gaiman had the idea for The Graveyard Book, wrote the first chapter, and then realized the idea was bigger than he was at the time.
He shelved it for 20 years.
He said that only after living a bit more, could bring the story to life in the way he had always wanted.