Advice from Uncle Shelly

"Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me... Anything can happen, child. Anything can be."
— Shel Silverstein

This poem came up on my StumbleUpon and made my night that much better. I hope it makes yours too.

Questions Questions

pic from http://andicampbell.com

"Our doubts are traitors, 

And make us lose the good we oft might win

By fearing to attempt"

- William Shakespeare

There's nothing like that inner ego to start gnawing away at your self-confidence. Self-doubt is a killer. It's one of my biggest flaws, that fear that grips me into perpetual self-consciousness to do the right thing and be the right person. I've been experiencing the ups and downs of that questioning quite a lot this summer and I'm not sure why. The questioning has been about both my writing and my personal life.  For some reason I feel like the real me is slowly slipping away and I want to bring her back. I'm also afraid I'm not giving the new me a real chance to prove herself. I need to be more patient and trusting, but it's incredibly difficult when you don't want to waste every precious moment you have with no regrets... I'm also doubting my commitment to writing. It'd be easier to just give up and wait till I'm old and desperately wanting to write again , then I'll proceed to sift through all the unfinished notes and documents in my laptop or journal and do something about it. Why am I pushing myself so hard to write all the time when my mind clearly doesn't want to think about plotlines and my butt clearly doesn't want to stay in a chair all day?

This is all making my breezy, light, globe-trotting days a little harder to swallow.

But journaling through it all has helped me. Seeing my thoughts on paper makes it feel like I'm more sensible and I can then read over what I'm feeling and process it better. I guess it's a very writer-ly thing to feel alone and pour your emotions out. I just wish my pensiveness resulted in actual productivity in my projects. I decided it's best to work on the project that is most close to how I'm feeling at the moment since it'll feel more raw and real. Plus it's summer so I can pretty much do whatever I want. Jumping around from project to project is a fickle habit, very appropriate for right now.

That means I'm going to work on the new idea that popped into my head a week or two ago. It's about a Muslim girl and her family who have to go into the Witness Protection Program and how their life alters as they have to keep a cover until the girl can go to trial for the case. The illusion they have to keep strips them from their normal identities, but especially their visible Muslim identities, meaning the girl and her mother stop wearing the hijab. I want the story to discuss all the complexities of what an identity is, what is reality, what is truth and what is destiny. It's also going to have mystery and a bit of action as the girl tries to keep her family safe and figure out how to stay one step ahead of the enemy who is determined to track them down. 

I don't know a whole lot about the Witness Protection Program so I'm reading and researching. It's really really interesting and I'm hoping I can incorporate my knowledge into the story in a believable manner, but at the same time, what's more important is the characters than the actual workings of the WPP system. Still, it would be nice to get it right or as close to right as someone who's not an insider can get. 

Other than that, I'm going to be sketching, working on some poems here and there and hopefully, get a short story done for a Writer's Digest contest if I get it in on time what with my traveling and all. I'd like to write in a London tea/coffee shop and feel like I'm J.K. Rowling. I think that's the inspiration I'd need to finish a darn first draft maybe?

Summer Dissonance

"To see the Summer Sky
Is Poetry, though never in a Book it lie -
True Poems flee."
-Emily Dickinson

I'm back from a crazy three and a half week trip to Hungary and Romania with my scholarship group and I'm ashamed to admit my writing production was extremely low. Other than keeping a journal of the day's activities and taking notes at lectures and presentations, I wrote one measly poem during an exercise about Hungarian poetry. 


 This is the poem I wrote up in literally 10 minutes from a list of 8 words that we were given to include. (I've highlighted them)


advice to a tourist


wake up in the city or the town
listen to the never ending sound
of people playing in the cool lake
or sighing after bites of sweet cake
shake off you sleepy slumber my dear
open your eyes there is nothing to fear
with luck and a map, you can fake your way through
make a trip on the metro so you
can travel as far as the city limits
or at least as long as time permits
rake the leaves off the trees in the park
but for goodness sake don't stay after dark
enjoy yourself when you travel abroad
now i'm done with this poem, thank god




...yeah, I know, extremely lame, but I was pressed for time and couldn't figure out how to use rake and sake :(


My creativity was somehow zapped in terms of writing and instead played out with photography. I got a new digital camera and had so much fun capturing the beautiful landmarks and people and food of Central Europe. The picture above was taken by yours truly in the amazing city of Budapest:) If only my memory card hadn't filled up, I would have definitely experimented more and shot way more pictures, but between all of us in the group, we have thousands upon thousands to look through so it's not too bad.


With all the free time I have this summer, I really need to organize and prioritize what stories I want to work on. I have several potentials as I talked about in my previous post and they're all incredibly interesting but as soon as I start trying to dig deeper into any of them, I get frustrated by plot holes and just the magnitude of figuring out all the characters and background.  


I think I'm going to call this the summer of short stories and train myself to do short distance and once I have enough endurance to last me, then I can move on to the big league: the novel. I would love to write a small book of short stories if I could find a collective theme. I originally thought about just doing a short story collection about the American Muslim teenage experience since I'm having such a hard time writing just one book on it. But maybe there are other experiences and emotions I want to explore as well. 


I'm just going to be free and open and soak up anything that comes my way. I think I'm ready for a sizzling summer fling with a fictional premise.