The Suspense Builds...

"It is ridiculous to set a detective story in New York City. New York City itself is a detective story."

-Agatha Christie

I'm still waiting on the results of the Sparknotes Musical Fiction Contest. I don't feel as good about winning  this one, since I haven't seen as many people mention my story this time around. I didn't win last time either, but "Lunch is Served" got an honorable mention and had many fans.

A lot of finalists were picked and I feel mine was really different. There wasn't a pressing plot or action. I guess it was more writerly, but that's how the song "Honey, Honey" was. I love the song because it's a slow building, heartbreakingly beautiful melody that makes the listener slowly piece together what's happening in the story.

In the end, I don't care what place it gets, but it's nice to get some positive feedback and gratification for the work you do:)

Contests are just good in general for making me buckle down and get some writing done, which I haven't been doing lately over these lazy summer days. Actually, scratch that, I have done some writing, but it's been spread so thinly over three different stories.

I had to put on the brakes on my NaNo story because I realized there was something wrong with it that needed to be changed. I know you're not supposed to revise the first draft. You're supposed to just write straight through a crappy first draft and don't look back. This is very very hard for me to do as a perfectionist. I have to know where things are going for the most part so I don't get bored, confused and veer off. At the same time, I also don't like outlining and planning too much, then I get too caught up in that and use missing plot points or weakly defined character as an excuse to stop writing. NaNo helped because I only had an idea and several characters at the beginning following the rules of no writing before November 1st. And whaddaya know, I wrote a good 130 pages by the end of the month.  (That's still only like a third of a novel.)

I've decided to cut out one of the characters that I thought was important but I realized how the story was split into two ideas and it couldn't survive like that. I've also come up with two novel ideas: 1) two American Muslim teens who are best friends and how boys have affected their relationship and 2) a mystery novel with Muslim girl detective. Both are stories that I'm really excited to write about and have been mulling around in my head for just as long as my NaNo novel. The funny thing is all these plots once tried to be in one book together and I have characters moving from different stories and exchanging names, family members and background characteristics. Everything just has to fit nicely for the story to get going and I feel happier about the progress.

Now my problem is just focusing on one story now that I feel they are each on the right track. I think I favor the detective story but I just need to figure out the crime and victim. Who dies and why? It's kind of annoying how as a writer, I have to also figure out what happened but think from both points of view from the detective and criminal and understand both of their motivations. I have a really good book to help me through the whole mystery novel process though, so I better get to reading and follow the clues.

Mother's Day

"The moment a child is born, the mother is also born.  She never existed before.  The woman existed, but the mother, never.  A mother is something absolutely new."

  -Rajneesh

Happy Mother's Day! 

I hope you all were able to enjoy a relaxing day with your mothers or if you're not with them, atleast sent them a reminder of how much you love them. Moms are quite unappreciated and we shouldn't really need a mandated holiday to put the spotlight on them, but it's still nice to have a dedicated time to show how important they are. I would have loved to take my mom out to brunch and tea just the two of us, but sadly she works weekends so we'll have to postpone our mother-daughter outing for another day.

I wanted to share with you what I did get her, other than flowers and a card, a fabulous book called Little Bee by Chris Cleave. 

Here's what the back of Little Bee says:

WE DON'T WANT TO TELL YOU TOO MUCH ABOUT THIS BOOK.

It is a truly special story and we don't want to spoil it.

Nevertheless, you need to know something, so we will just say this:

It is extremely funny, but the African beach scene is horrific.

The story starts there, but the book doesn't.

And it's what happens afterward that is most important.

Once you have read it, you'll want to tell everyone about it. When you do, please don't tell them what happens either. The magic is in how it unfolds.

So, sounds good right?

I've been wanting to read this book for a while and I love sharing books with my mom since she hardly has time to read and doesn't know which good books are out there. I highly recommend this book to you all if you're looking for something new to read. I have a long list to tackle and now that school is out, I can finally get to it:)

Snap Judgment

pic copyright:http://www.beyucaffe.com

"To be a person is to have a story to tell"

-Isak Dinesen

I found this awesome show called Snap Judgment, all about spoken word, poetry and sharing stories. It debuted on NPR nationally in April, but they have a website where you can upload your own stories with audio, text, pictures and get them potentially onto the radio show. They say that Snap Judgment is "putting the public back in public radio" and I'm very glad they are. 


I'm really inspired by the online community of writers and how they are trying to create more opportunities and chances for publication and expression. Snap Judgment says they are looking for the best stories on the planet. It's nice you don't have to do all the traditional grueling work of sending out your stuff and waiting to be accepted (or rejected) by an agent to get your work noticed. Now the audience can come to you, give you feedback and spread the word!


I haven't dabbled into spoken word before, but I've always dreamed of competing in a poetry slam one day. Snap Judgment has motivated me to get started. It's a great way to practice short, engaging, plot driven stories that have to keep a person's interest. Plus, it would be awesome to be on the radio:)


All the stories I've looked at have such strange, but unique titles and premises. I think I have a lot to learn about a good spoken word piece, though I'm sure many people on there are in the same boat as me. I encourage you all to check out the site and submit your stories too:
snapjudgment.org