Zoo

We’re told there’s an order to things. Horse then cart. Write, then publish. Later, readings, then hobnobbing with other famous writers.

My life was happening completely out of order. I was writing a book, then I met a writer who soon became famous as her debut novel won prize after prize (Nayomi Munaweera's Island of a Thousand Mirrors, coming to America in 2014), then I began editing my book, then I started doing readings thanks to said famous writer, and then I tried publishing my book.

 The cart and horse were not just out of order, they were in different zip codes and I lost track of who was supposed to be where, myself included. After a few months, I decided to put things on hold at the publishing end (because spending day after day sending your novel out to agents is like spending day after day holding your eyelids open and sprinkling chili powder into them) and focus on a new writing project.

I became comfortable with the idea that my first novel would be practice, would likely never be published and that was okay (full disclosure: when I say ‘became comfortable’ I mean to the extent that you become comfortable with a Bengal tiger sitting on your coffee table while you try to watch TV- you try to look over it but you can never not see it).

But then things started happening.

You should know, at this juncture, that there is a battle in my mind over telling you this. In one corner, the superstitious Parsi aunty in me warns, "Tobah tobah, Phi, you shouldn’t say good things aloud before they happen or else najar laagsay and they won’t happen!" 

They're always watching me, these Parsi women who live in my head

In the other corner is the optimistic Canadian in me saying, why not celebrate small victories, eh?So strong is this superstition, there’s even an English equivalent: don’t count your chickens. Oh heck, the Canadian wins.

Here’s what happened.

A few months ago, I decided to go to Karachi but I was apprehensive: last time I went, I had a novel in hand, a lengthy list of specific questions to ask specific people. This time, I had no novel, only a vague idea of meeting people, learning through their stories the history of Karachi, of Karachi Parsis, which one simply cannot research at the libraries of California. Yet the evil garden snake who lives in my mind hissed incessantly: Isssss this trip simply an elaborate (and expensive) avoidance tactic, Phiroozeh? Oughtn’t you instead be writing novel number two? It’s fiction, dear girl, you're suppossssssed to make things up. What’s all this nonsense about hearing people’s stories anyway? You’re not a biographer. 

A few weeks ago, a new writing project came to me, and a cliché I always rolled my eyes at played out before me: I became possessed by the idea and have furiously working on it ever since. The garden snake was at the ready: is it really a good time to go to Karachi now, Phiroozzzzeh? Shouldn’t you just focus on this story and see what comes of it?

I had to admit, the little critter was getting to me and I began to ponder what the cancellation policy on my ticket might be.

Proud mamma must pull out the wallet photo at every opportunity

A few days ago, a friend mentioned that when I attend the Karachi Literature Festival, there will be Indian publishers there and I should tell them about my book. Book? What book? Oh yeah, I have a book. I wrote a book. I edited and edited (and edited) and polished and perfected a book.

Yesterday, I received an email from Muneeza Shamsie, a huge Pakistani literary icon. I actually thought I was still asleep and dreaming (never check your email before your morning tea). She is also the mother of Kamila Shamsie, my all-time favorite writer. The way Rohinton Mistry changed my world by showing me Parsis in novels, Kamila changed my world by showing me Karachi in novels. Turns out, I had been e-introduced to Muneeza by a dear, dear friend because of my upcoming trip. I now have plans to meet said literary giant in Karachi next month.


                                                               ~~~~~

And so I find myself at this place of out-of-orderness. I have a completed manuscript in hand, a second one begun, countless readings under my belt, including some I've hosted, fifteen rejections the first manuscript from US agents and now, the scent of possibilities blowing from the east.

It begs the question, are you a writer because you’re published or are you a writer because you write (all day, every day, day after day)?

All I know is I've lost sight of the cart and the horse and I feel liberated. I can have a complete novel whose status is pending, and still work on the second one (by all accounts that’s exactly what you must do after completing the first one). I can go to Karachi with no specific agenda, relinquish my obsessive need for control, for clarity, and let life lead for a while. I can meet Muneeza Shamsie, revolutionary for her empowerment of Pakistani writers writing in English because I AM a Pakistani writer writing in English. I can attend the KLF and see what happens (ie. see what happens when I stalk those Indian publishers and turn on the charm). I’m not counting my chickens (oh come on, this blog post turned into a zoo long ago, what’s one more animal), I’m just … watching the coop from a safe distance, making sure they mother hens are keeping them warm.

It’s a fine balance between doing what you can for your book and then letting it go and letting whatever you want to call it-nature/the universe/life- take its course.  

I learned long ago (and like most lessons learned, promptly forgot): you can make all the plans you want, put your horses and carts in whichever order you deem fit, but life will still do what it wants in the order it wants.

Because life is in charge of this zoo.

                                   

Phi MIB Romer

This is what I do these days:



Replace the guns with peering at people's book spines and identifying alien life with scoping out potential future readers at every coffee shop/train station/bus stop and it comes down to the same thing.

As you know, writing has made me shameless. Shamefully shameless, mind you; I do feel genuinely bad about my newfound callousness. For at least two-four seconds. Over the last year, at weddings and funerals, in line for the bathroom and at the dentist's office, I've been brazenly self promoting.

But what happened today is a gray area; I'm not sure if I had ulterior motives or was being a nice human being for a change. You tell me.

On the big comfy couch at Barefoot Coffee this morning, I saw that the woman beside me was reading HUNGER GAMES, a book my sister has been recommending to me for years. Asking her about it led to a twenty minute conversation. It was delightful, she was actually incredibly helpful and gave me amazing ideas on how to market the book (it was her MBA training, she said, in the breaths between listing ideas).

All I said was that it's hard for me to read books these days, what with writing my own. And I had to tell her about my blog; she started talking about marketing yourself, etc. And yes, I happened to have my business card within arm's reach but that's because I happened to be using it as a bookmark today. I did not hand it to her till she asked.

Did I scope her out? Did I just want a quick break from my 450 page tome on publishing? I truly don't know.

I like to look at it as a win-win: she got access to my blog and I have a future contact in case I ever pursue that MBA story line.

A Plea and a Laugh

I feel very much like that white-haired PBS fundraiser man who would interrupt Anne of Green Gables/Three Tenors marathons to do his fund drive but for the sake of my art, I shall press forth. So I've finished my book (a term I use loosely and will explain in a future blog) and am researching the route to publication.

The recurring theme in all I read is BUILD AN ONLINE PRESENCE. So here I go. I'm going to reformat this blog, write entries that are shorter and more frequent. You, dear reader, can help me build my presence in any of the following ways:

1. "like" my blog posts on Facebook (this means everyone on YOUR wall can see it, read it, love it, become a follower of mine). It takes .001 seconds of your time and you could singlehandedly launch my career.

2. Forward my blog site (phiroozeh.blogspot.com) to anyone on your email list who you think might be interested in following my blog.

3. Shout phiroozeh.blogspot.com from the top of the next mountain you climb.



                                    We now return to our regular programming.



Today, I read an ebook (How to Find- and Keep- A Literary Agent) and a paper book (The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published) alternately till my eyes gave out.

Here are some things that made me laugh/cry/think:

1. After a reading, an author was asked by an older man, "I'm a retired cardiac surgeon and I'm thinking of writing a book. What advice do you have?"
He responded, "When I retire from writing, I'm thinking of becoming a cardiac surgeon. What advice do you have?"

2. Charlie Baxter on writing: "Part of being a  writer is going through dark nights of the soul. In these nights you confront your own doubts, lack of self-confidence, the futility of what you are doing and the various ways in which you fail to measure up. But a lack of self-confidence can be turned to your own purposes if it helps you to take pains, to take care, to avoid glibness."

NOTE: Having a husband who talks you off your self-generated cliff about once a week also helps.

Smart Art

Right after yesterday's blog post about meeting the curator, inspired by my own determination, I called another curator I had been told about by the fabulous Zara Contractor. A little schedule juggling and I was able to meet them both in a slim two hour window in two different parts of town before they headed to their afternoon meetings.

Through sleet and snow I drove (I'm not being dramatic, people; I'm in Vancouver), just me and my little black rental Fiat. The first interview was so successful I nearly cancelled the second. Thank God for my aforementioned determination.

The first curator worked at the Emily Carr University Gallery on Granville Island, where some of the best local art gets made, exhibited, and sold. With her twenty-five years of experience in the Vancouver art world, she gave me an incredible overview of the art scene outside of the Vancouver Art Gallery which, being a plebeian, was all I had known before (and relied heavily on in my novel). A nice little coincidence was when I discovered she had been one of the founding members of Artspeak, which as you all know was my original destination today and where I headed next.

At Artspeak, I realized that persistence really pays. It was there, thanks to an incredibly helpful curator who spent nearly an hour answering my haphazard questions, (and, it must be said, her co-worker, the artist who helped me figure out how to use the voice recorder on the ipad I pilfered from my hubby) that I found the pulse of the Vancouver art scene.

Now, like any good writer, I have to stare into the distance as the sun presumably goes down behind a thicket of clouds and the rain continues to fog up the coffee shop windows and think about what it all means to me and to my book.

Working Vacation

Avid readers recall from a previous blog entry my main character is breaking into the world of curating, a world I know squat about. You may also recall last year I happened upon a wonderful curator in the Bay Area who spent her lunch hour filling me in on my two page list of questions. It was a good start but I always knew I had to check the Canadian scene.

Last week, I scoured the Vancouver Art Gallery's website and left a message for the chief curator, hardly believing my own ballsiness as I did. She called me back within hours and with shaking hands (she was CHIEF curator), I made frantic notes as she graciously answered as many questions as I dared ask her. She spent eleven glorious minutes on the phone with me but she left me with about 150 more questions than I'd had before.

It's a tricky business, this: on one hand, I can't learn an entire profession in a month or two or six, on the other, I have to. I could look up a a university website for the curator program, but I don't care if Theory of Composition is a prerequisite for Theory of Space. I need inside knowledge, salacious tid bits, scandals, you know, the good stuff.

I'm in Vancouver this week, supposedly on vacation. My first afternoon here, I googled local galleries and started cold calling.

Tomorrow at noon, I have an interview at Artspeak in Gastown.

70 Solutions to Writing Mistakes: A great resource

Last night at Bombay Jam , I was talking to a regular and it turned out she writes too. It made me wonder how many other dabblers in writing there are out there. For those of you who are interested, here is an awesome resource I just came upon, which is so extensive, it will help no matter which stage of writing you may be in.

The link is: http://media2.fwpublications.com/WDG/Z5001_70_Solutions.pdf?et_mid=535038&rid=233465641

If it doesn't work, you can go to Chuck Sambuchino's Guide to Literary Agents blog and download it for free, it's the really big bar on the very top.

Have fun!

The Woman I Love: An Accidental Muse

Across the table, over a glass of red, she said, "Let's go back to the room."
We changed quickly, throwing off our jeans and slipping into Something More Comfortable.
We pulled out our laptops and began to write.

The first time I heard her name, I was hiking with my husband. Dave, my high school best friend, was in town for a computer people conference and asked if he could bring his old university friend along to dinner. I turned her name around on my tongue: Radha. I gave her jet black hair parted down the middle, a saucer-sized bindi, and of course, an accent.*

As she rounded the corner of the Santa Clara Hilton, the first thing I saw were her boots. Stocky, chunky motorcycle boots. Directly above them, a knee length skirt which looked like the gold leaf pallu of a Benarasi sari. Her forehead was disappointingly bare. We ate at an Afghani Restaurant where among the tech talk (I was severely outnumbered in the company of a Googler, an IBMer, and an Oracler), I asked her questions, tried to get to know her. I emailed her that very night, asked her to dinner.

We had a lot in common: we were both immigrants several times over, we shared a love for SRK, and then she dropped the bomb and the reason I had been so attracted to her that first night became clear: she was a writer too.

Years later, she asked if I wanted to go on a writing retreat with her. I pictured wine soaked nights sharing our deepest thoughts, most personal secrets, and maybe some writing on the side. We arrived at a wind swept hostel perched on a cliff in Half Moon Bay. She took the top bunk, opened her laptop and began typing. I went to the bathroom, got some tea, put on wooly socks. From above I heard nothing but thunderous typing. Sighing, I began to write.

Over a divine dinner, I got my wine, some deep thoughts, some secrets. She paid for dinner with a wad of cash she had received at Google for showing up to the Christmas party. (Note: I, as a teacher, had received for Christmas, ants in my classroom from all the candy the kids had eaten behind my back.)

It did not register the first time she said that after dinner there would be more writing.

"Write on a Friday night?"
"It's a writing retreat."
"I hate you."

It was not the last time I said that to her that weekend. After breakfast  the next day, we wrote. After lunch, we wrote. After dinner we wrote. I had snuck along a book and like a petulant child, I took reading breaks, Radha be damned. But every time I did, her typing rattled my conscience from the bunk above. I cursed her, put down my book, pulled out my laptop.

We did it again a few months later. Same hostel, same rules. But this time, it was a tiny bit easier to follow her oppressive schedule.

Our third retreat happened exactly two years ago: MLK Day long weekend. We holed up at the Fort Mason Hostel. More windswept scenery, but this time, we were surrounded by city folk and tourists having fun on their long weekend. She did not notice them. She did not hear the group of 30+ middle schooler stomping down the hall outside our room. She wrote and wrote. I copied her. We wondered why we were getting special treatment at the cozy candle lit restaurant where we dined. We realized it was Valentine's Day weekend. She allowed us a quick chuckle before marching us back to our room.

What happened next was a double edged sword: it was these writing retreats that she engineered that made me realize I could write all day everyday, not when the mood struck or the stars alligned just so. She inadvertently aided my decision to quit my job and write full time. Which in turn ended our writing retreats because I no longer wrote on the weekends. I think often to our waterfront hostels, the marathon writing sessions, a giggle here, a laugh there, well-deserved meals wolfed down between talk of writing, of life.

Last Friday, she accidentally pushed me again, brought the journey she had initiated full circle. I had asked her to read my almost complete manuscript. She texted that she would do it on the weekend. I had been having the hardest time finishing the last chapter, it had dragged on for weeks. Knowing someone was about to read it provided the kick in the pants I needed. I jumped off the comfy couch where I had been wallowing in self pity all morning, bought a fresh pot of black tea, and pounded the last two scenes in five hours straight.

The Bay Area, like any metropolitan city, brings people in and out of my life. Radha stomped into my life in her chunky black boots and threw my world wide open. She did it without fanfare, without expectations, just by being her fabulous self.



*The only time I heard an accent was when she was on the phone with family on one of our retreats. It was the thickest, most wildly exaggerated Indian accent I could have asked for, one I myself use when speaking to family. She hung up and blinked at me, unaware of the switch she had made. It made me love her that much more.

Phid Back

My last post may have been a little different from the rest but man did it make for some interesting comments and discussions. For the record, it took me over a month to write it for the very reason many of you reacted so strongly to it: it was so serious and I'm usually upbeat on this blog. But as the great Meera Syal titled her 2005 BBC mini series, Life Isn't All Ha Ha Hee Hee. Shit happens. As the Americans say, it is what it is.

In writing this novel, the line between fiction and myself is blurry at the best of times. It works both ways. I use so much of my own experiences in the writing:  vivid childhood memories, the aesthetics that I experienced last year in Karachi, some of my own neuroses (those are particularly fun to evoke and splatter onto the page). But on the flip side, some of the scenes I've created have come alive to me. I feel like they've really happened- like in the real world. When I go to Vancouver, I can tell you where Katya and her mother had a huge fight, the exact spot at Kits Beach where she ...oops, that was close. You'll see.

Similarly, the line between fiction and reality in that last blog was a wavering one. Everything was essentially true: it's been a rough ride. But I will confess that as I wrote that last image of me and my frost bitten hand, etc, I was sitting in my backyard among my fully bloomed roses with the California sun beating down on me. Sometimes, it's fun to be a drama queen.

Then there's the feed back I've received (sorry about the title, but ever since a certain someone called  me Phinomenal, my name has been too much fun to play with). The comments within the blog, the personal emails assuring me everything will be okay. I've even heard from third parties about what some of you said. Even though a writer is supposed to write only for herself, for her art, not for fame or accolades, it feels good knowing there are so many of you out there with me on this roller coaster.

I took a week off over the holidays, packing away all evidence of my writing life. The most strenuous thing I did was tackle a new knitting pattern. That blog was actually very cathartic; it felt good to get it all out and leave it all behind.

Yes,  it's only been three working days of 2012 but I feel recharged and rearing to finish this mother- this novel (you're all so sensitive, I don't know if you can handle a potty mouthed Phi).

"If you want to make God laugh, tell her your plans."

I've had this quote up on my wall for a while now because it's cheeky and applies to other people. Only the other day, at my last Bollywood Cardio class of the year, someone said, 2011 has been an amazing year for me, and I realized I couldn't quite say the same. I did have... not plans so much as notions. And I don't know who's in charge of it all, but they're sure getting a laugh out of me.

My plan was simple: it fit neatly in the little space below my name on this very blog: quit job, write book, the end. At first, things seemed to be on track. Exactly a year ago, on my last working day before Christmas holidays, I "finished" the "final" draft of my novel, saved in a folder called September 2010, and jetted off to the Cayman Islands to hang out with family. I reeled off my plans to all who asked: January I would research, February through May would be editing and by August, I'd be ready for the Squaw Valley Writing Conference where I would wow agents and editors with my complete novel, then sit  back while they clawed each other's eyes and hair out to get their hands on exclusive rights.

A month of researching Pakistan from a coffee shop in Mountain View and I was the one tearing my hair out. Seeing Wikipedia would only take me so far, I decided to go to Karachi myself, not as the foreign return I'd been the first time around (which had led to much of the inspiration for this novel) but as a writer. I spent three weeks eating, shopping, laughing, oh and researching. The only night I didn't have my notepad in my back pocket was at a wedding I crashed because my cousin begged me to leave it behind (and because there were no pockets in my sari). Upon returning to California, I knew my novel had to change based on what I'd experienced in Karachi. So I tweaked and rewrote, starting a folder called April 2011.

Suddenly it was August. I had no novel; what I had was eight chapters of mediocre lukewarm porridge. But it was time for Squaw Valley Writing Conference. As preparation, I wrote an elevator pitch, boiling my novel down to 60 seconds of succinct intrigue that would induce the clawing of eyes, etc. I harangued countless friends, wrote 29 drafts of this thing and spent the four hour drive up to Lake Tahoe reciting my pitch in an engaging, natural fashion (side bar: also not part of the plan was the $360 speeding ticket I earned but that's another story). The first agent I approached listened to the first line before walking away to talk to someone higher on the food chain. The next two people to hear it -the last two- were other wannabe writers. And then I came home.

I couldn't get over it, the dashed hopes, all the hair and eyes that remained in tact, not a claw drawn the whole week I'd been gone, and on my desk, the folder stuffed with the 29 drafts of my pitch, mocking me and my well-laid plans. Plus,  I was now on my second year of unemployment and funds were dwindling.

So I did the one thing I know how to do, the very thing that had got me into this mess in the first place: I read. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. It healed me. It rubbed  balm on my tattered ego, reminded me why I was doing this exercise in sadomasochism in the first place and gently propped me up at my laptop once more.

September 2011 is the folder I'm on now. Chapter Nine was printed this morning and added to the shoebox I began a few months ago. Yes, I'm single-handedly killing several forests, but printing out complete chapters and putting them in my orange shoebox is all I have in the world so I do it (on 99 % recycled paper, I promise).

It's been a year and a half, it's been four drafts and counting, and I have no idea what the plan is anymore. I do know the honeymoon is over; I am no longer the happy sparkly kid I was last year, Ms. Look at Me On My Writing Adventure. I know I am an unemployed vagrant who skulks around coffee shops no longer sure of what the hell she's doing while all around her people work, pop out babies, cook dinner every night and get regular haircuts.

One of the irritating side effects of being a writer is this hyper-self-awareness, so I also recognize I'm in the thick of it right now. I'm in this deep, dark mineshaft and I'm too far in not to keep going till I hit gold. Or till my hands fall off from frostbite, my blue fingers still clamped around the shovel.

I have no idea what 2012 will bring. This is not said to fish for compliments but as a fact. I could be picked up by a small independent press and earn $ 500 for my efforts. I could be drowning my sorrows in cheap whiskey while warming my hands at a bonfire made out of a heap of rejection letters.

None of that matters. From where I am, inside this tunnel, I can't see above or below. And that's probably for the best.

I no longer have a plan, I just have a goal.

Foray into the Normal

The morning of my 30th birthday, I arose and announced that I was buying myself a guitar. That afternoon, after five rounds of "Time of Your Life", which my sister had taught me a few months before, I decided to teach myself a new song. I settled on "American Pie". Of the ten or so chords it involved, I was familiar with three. I did not balk at this calculation. Not normal. But really, it was a simple matter of check chord chart, arrange fingers, strum and sing, check chord chart, arrange fingers, strum and sing and bada-bing-bada-boom, twenty minutes later, I had sung my way through the first verse. I felt like a rock star. A folk rock star. A geriatric folk rock star, but a rock star nonetheless. But see, then I put the guitar away and went back to my day job.

Not so with another whim I once had, one that has turned my life upside down, inside out, and half-way right side up again.

One day, while looking for a painting class in the Adult Ed catalog I came upon Intro to Fiction. I need to take a moment to ponder what would have happened if the catalog hadn't been arranged alphabetically. Meh. So, three weeks into the class, we did a timed writing exercise: ten minutes on X subject, go. A scene came to me that I couldn't stop thinking about, or writing about. Nine months later, I had a novel. Three years later, I quit my job to write the novel full time. Not normal.

The problem is, that's all I have. This one novel.

Recently, I've been freaking out because other writers seem to have short stories, poems, essays to their names. The other problem, the real one, is I don't care. I really really wanted to learn "American Pie", and I did. I can now play verse one in twelve minutes, eight if I forsake exact chords for a good foot-stomping beat. And I really want to write this novel.

My new plan for it, one that I think may help me reach the end (not The End- that's been reached several times with varying degrees of Bollywood Kitsch/Melodrama/Passable but not Perfect- but completion). It's what Anne Lamott says in her book, Bird by Bird: when you're feeling overwhelmed, look through a one inch frame. Write what you see there. It's been working like a dream. Well, a nightmarish dream, since it means working brilliantly but sloooowly, section by painstaking section, completion pushed somewhere beyond 2020. Still don't care.

In a further attempt at normalcy, I've decided to apply this plan to this blog. Because like everything else in my life, I was complicating it. Yes, Phiroozeh Romer can complicate blogging, which by definition is quick and easy, a mind spill, really. So no more two hour entries, no more faux poetic blurbs, from now on, I'm going to be normal. I'm going to write, in a few lines, something about my writing. Like my (newly published) friend, Annam Manthiram.

Here's to being normal like everyone else.