Rukhsana Khan's Blog, page 22

Great expectations…

What an interesting few days I’ve had.

Been meaning to take note of it, but sometimes life just gets too busy.

On Monday we went to the new aquarium downtown, and what a fascinating experience it is.

Made me feel like a real fuddy duddy.

I’ve never been that much into the latest high techie stuff, and this was totally high tech, and way cool!

You start with the Canadian Waters exhibit, and it is way cool to see the huge tanks and fish up close and personal!

Then we headed into the Dangerous Lagoon and it was the coolest thing! A HUGE glass walled fish tank that contains loads of sharks, rays and sawfishes and just wow!

[image error]

You stood on this conveyor system that took you through it while the fish swam overhead and all around you, and it felt like you were among them, except that you were safe and you could breathe!

At one point there was a sawtooth fish lying on the glass dome, right up top, and you could see it’s little mouth, and it’s gills moving when it breathed.

And as we emerged from it, I thought YES, that was worth the price of admission, and then the aquarium went on!

And we saw the jellyfish and all the other stuff.

A very very interesting visit!

And two things happened with the human denizens that really took me off guard.

Problem with interesting exhibits, is that you are bound to be looking at the exhibit, and not always looking where you are going. So at one moment, I brushed against this lady who was standing there, a foot from the glass wall, adjusting her camera.

Of course I mumbled, “Sorry.”

And then she just speaks out loud to her companion, right in the air, without even looking at me or acknowledging me in the least, “Look at that! No manners. They don’t even say EXCUSE ME!”

And the calculated way she said that really really irked me.

She was a white older lady, and my first thought was not that she was saying it because I am brown.

That didn’t occur to me as a possible explanation until much later.

My first instinct was to tell her, “I’m REALLY REALLY SORRY. Didn’t mean to brush against you.”

Again she did not acknowledge me whatsoever. She just kept staring into the viewfinder and repeated her comment about people not even saying ‘excuse me’.

Grrr.

That really bothered me.

I certainly hadn’t meant to brush past her.

I didn’t even BUMP into her! Maybe if I had, then her behavior would have been more understandable. And I kept telling myself, oh, never mind, don’t let it ruin the visit… but I knew it would bother me.

And yup. It still does!

Not sure why she was so miffed.

But never mind, these things will happen.

The funny thing is it wasn’t even super busy there. It was a Monday morning around 11 am, it could have been a LOT more packed.

See? I said I’d never mind about it, but it’s obviously still working me up.

But anyway, later on, something else interesting happened.

I was at the place where we could stick our hands in and touch the un-barbed sting rays and this little girl came up to me and asked if I was Rukhsana.

It was so surprising!

I was recognized!

How weird is that?

Reminds me of the time I saw my grade four teacher in K-mart. It was so disorienting to see them out of place like that.

And I couldn’t help wondering if I looked all right.

Was my hijab on okay?

Did I have any stains?

It’s weird but it’s one of the drawbacks now.

I do have to be careful how I dress when I go out.

Way back before I used to be careful, I was on the way to the gym and I stopped to fill up on gas when a lady recognized me and started asking my availability for some event or another.

I was wearing my rough old white hijab (did I mention I was going to the gym?) and a rough shalwar kameez, no stains but it had definitely seen better days, and just as she finished asking me, she glanced down, just once, at my clothes, and I felt my face get hot.

I should have blurted out, “I’m on the way to the gym.”

I should have said SOMETHING!

But you know how you never think of that till it’s too late, and they’ve already left.

Never did go to that event.

Maybe she changed her mind.

But since then, I do watch what I wear when I go out.

I’m not going to dress nice to go to the gym, but I won’t wear anything too rough either.

And despite the inconvenience, I do have to admit, it is kind of cool at the same time. To be recognized like that.

Reminds of what Philip Seymour Hoffman said, that when you present to an audience (or did he say perform) make sure that they’ll always remember you!

I definitely aim for that!

 

 

Serendipity…

It’s interesting how things can come together.

You can be mulling something over, and then you get an email from some random reader talking about the issues of voice appropriation and then a day later you read an excellent column on the New York Times by Christopher Myers, the son of the impeccable Walter Dean Myers, who is an accomplished author and artist in his own right.

His article was called The Apartheid of Children’s Literature. Read it earlier and I’ve been mulling it over all day.

I agree with him completely.

There is a real disconnect between the demographics of modern society and the diversity to be found in children’s literature and I think I know why it exists.

It’s because of the ‘white doll’ phenomenon.

When the civil rights movement began in the ’60′s and people started getting all righteous about providing role models for little black girls and they actually made little black dolls, astonishingly enough many of the black children, when given a choice, still chose the white doll.

White being the dominant race in the world, is the powerful race, and thus the default setting when it comes to literature and any other art.

On a tangential note, I went to a Native school a while back to do a free program and to help revamp their library collection. I thought the librarian would choose some really good titles including native ones.

Nope. She chose whitey white white titles like ‘Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing” by Judy Blume and Percy whats his face, the Lightning Thief.

Oh yeah, Jackson.

I was really surprised, and kind of disappointed that the librarian wouldn’t take this opportunity to purchase titles that would more reflect the diversity of the kids, but then I remembered what I felt like when I was a kid.

I would never have chosen a book that was too pointedly aimed at my demographic. It would have felt like I was *expected* to and that would have turned me off.

And I recalled another school I went to where the grade five kids had all made posters of their favourite authors and their favourite books. A white girl had chosen me and Wanting Mor and the one Muslim girl in the class, who even wore hijab, chose some Judy Blume title.

Yup. I would never have chosen a “Muslim” book. Not unless the other kids had approved it, loved it, and recommended it first. I just wouldn’t have had the confidence maybe. Although, I do know I would have LOVED Wanting Mor!

And at the end of his article, when Christopher Myers moans about the “Market” it’s actually counter productive.

There is a reason why ‘white’ is the default setting in society. Every other color, every other culture, comes with baggage.

And most of the time you simply can’t ignore the ethnic background of the character.

And then another serendipitous coincidence occurred, I read another article, I think it was in the New York Times as well, that talked about the nice things white people do for each other. How the lack of diversity in upper management is often because those jobs get filled by people who know each other, a friend of a friend, that kind of thing.

It’s not necessarily that they’re trying to deliberately exclude minorities from those higher positions. It’s not an active omission, but rather a slipping sort of omission. ie. they’re not out to EXCLUDE minorities, they’re just out to INCLUDE their friends.

I think the problem with the idea of diversity in children’s literature really does come down to market, but not in the way Christopher Myers says.

And you can’t ‘blame’ white people for not buying a book with a black character on it. He makes the point that people buy music with black people on it.

It’s a matter of socialization.

We accept that many black artists have shown their exceptional talent in the field of music. We get that they’re some of the best, so of course we wouldn’t be put off by seeing black people on the cover of an album.

But that just hasn’t occurred to the same degree in terms of children’s literature.

And it’s the same for Muslim literature and the same for native American literature.

In these fields we don’t see the breakout superstars.

So how can it change???

It all does come down to Market.

The diverse books will sell…to schools. But not so much to the general public.

And that’s because unlike individual parents, especially white parents, who have the money to purchase books and understand the importance of encouraging their kids to have a library in their rooms, most ethnic minorities don’t purchase books.

At the most they’ll borrow them from the library.

That does not give the publishers the incentive required to bank on diverse authors.

Basically they WANT to publish diverse stories.

But first and foremost they have to publish something that will sell!

And so you have the whitey white white series that make money because they appeal to the lowest common denominator in kids: gossip, popularity, sports and sex (or pseudo sex).

Some publishers use those types of popular fiction, that doesn’t even try to make a kid think, to almost subsidize their more literary ventures.

The native American person who emailed me liked my article on voice appropriation.

I remember when I started writing. I was in such a huff over how Muslims were being portrayed in fiction. In particular I had a real hate on for Suzanne Fisher Staples. (I still do)

But over the years those views have really changed and matured. And I’ve come to realize that Suzanne Fisher Staples wrote the book she could write, in her limited view of the situation. You can’t fault her for that.

And I hate to admit it but she probably had good intentions.

What I told the Native reader is that honestly if we ethnically diverse people don’t write about our cultures, then white people will, and they’ll get it all wrong.

So it behooves us to stop kvetching about the way things are, and just keep going.

And it behooves us to encourage our various demographics to BUY MORE BOOKS!

Invest in their young people. I tell parents during literacy workshops, “There are parents who will plunk down $50 on the newest video game but won’t spend $10 for a new book their kid wants.” (And I’m often talking about the parents in the session.)

And I wish parents would realize that while toys and video games might break or go out of style and then be chucked in the trash, a good book does not!

I am still reading books that are practically falling apart, to myself and to my grandkids!

Once we start putting our money where our mouth is, and it’s NOT just the schools and libraries buying the diverse titles, then things will change.

Or…

Just write a book that appeals to ALL demographics, where even though the main character is from an ethnic minority, the story is SO UNIVERSAL that nobody cares!

Kinda like The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats, or Mama Do You Love Me? or ahem, please pardon my boldness, Big Red Lollipop.

It can be done.

It just means that we ethnic people have to write by mainstream rules and sensibilities. While still being true to our cultural vision.

Not easy, but definitely doable.

 

Sometimes I think I should have to pay…

to storytell to a great audience!

The feeling is phenomenal!

To share some of your favourite stories in a room with great ambience, to a group of about a hundred people who have voluntarily shown up on a mild Sunday, and paid what they can, to hear some good old stories!

I’m talking about the Mosaic Storytelling Festival event on Sunday.

It was in a the basement of a little church.

The organizers had made the place cozy with a nice deep carpet, some couches pulled up and chairs.

Donna Dudinsky started first.

She wanted to.

She told me I was the ‘headliner’ and she didn’t want to follow me.

It felt so strange!

I guess because for so many years I’d go to an event and assume no one ever knew anything about me, and yet this time people were actually coming to see me and Donna.

Donna had told me I had fans. That she’d gone a few weeks ago and when I was announced for March 9th people had actually cheered, saying, “Oh yeah, we love her!”

It’s very humbling!

I got up and I told two of my favourite stories: The Courage of Dajan Tigh and The Clever Wife, and then I gave them Big Red Lollipop.

Oh it was fun!

There’s something infectious about people laughing heartily at your best lines.

And even though I was intensely tired, had driven down an hour and a half from a writing retreat up north and hadn’t slept all that well for the previous two nights, I was in good form, if I say so myself.

When I looked at the time we ended the program, we’d run a whole half hour late even though I had asked the organizer if it was okay to tell Big Red Lollipop. The organizer told me that the audience hadn’t wanted it to end!

And that made me feel even better.

Afterwards people lined up to buy my books and it turned out the regional representative of Storytellers Canada had been in the audience and so were three different teacher/librarians. They’d all come especially to hear me.

The organizer said they had the best crowd yet!

So it was really really wonderful!

I’ve designed most of my presentations around my books for good reason, so it’s a real change of pace to actually flex my skills as a storyteller doing good old fashioned folktales!

*happy sigh*

Beware Arrogance…

The biggest worry in being a ‘do gooder’ is not the risk of stopping the doing of good. It’s getting arrogant about it.

Ooh, arrogance, that most insidious of faults! That creeps up on you till you really do believe you’re better than others.

And in believing that, you prove that you’re not.

Yeah, there’s more than just a little bit of irony in that whole situation.

I heard one hadith where some of the companions of the Prophet (peace be upon him) threw dust in the face of those people who were praising them. I remember thinking at first that it was really rude of them, but then it later went on to explain that these companions did so to stop the people from praising them to their faces, because they feared growing arrogant about the good they were doing.

And that’s a legitimate fear!

I’ve said before and I’ll say it again, that I’m really fortunate to be surrounded by family members who love me enough to tell me when I’m getting full of myself!

I absolutely count on them for that!

Maybe other people don’t have that around them.

I know of one particular author who embraces every cause! Who rides like a champion out to slay the forces of darkness, kind of. And boy has he become obnoxious over the years!

I never used to think so.

I recall a friend saying that her son thought this author was really full of himself and I remember being shocked and jumping to his defence.

But later when I heard of some antics he pulled at a school where he’d been invited to speak, where the kids hadn’t participated in his little scenario to his satisfaction, where he stormed out in a huff and promised to give the school their money back, and what a sour taste it had left in these teachers’ mouth, I thought ‘wow’. Maybe my friend’s son was right. And I reserved judgment.

I’ve been watching a lot of Dr. Phil, and I’ve been sensing him getting a bit of a swelled head. He’s become more belligerent when faced with foolish people on his show. It’s sad to see really. He used to be more patient with them, to the point where I thought, wow, the guy’s a saint!

Um, not so much any more.

And you know how you can see his signature, at least I think it’s his signature, on the big sign at the back of the stage? Where the ‘P’ in Phil has a huge belly to it? Well I was observing it one day and I thought of something I’d read about handwriting analysis that said people who make huge loops or bellies in their name tend to be arrogant, and I thought, “Hmmm.”

Recently I received some interesting feedback.

I’m doing a storytelling set at the Mosaic Storytelling Festival on March 9th with Donna Dudinsky at 3 pm. It’s at St. David’s Parish Hall, 49 Donlands Ave. (Donlands and Danforth right off the subway).

Donna had emailed me asking how we would conduct the set, whether we’d do interspersed stories or take a half hour block each. I said half hour block and I’d like to go first.

The reason I wanted to go first was so I could get it done and then just sit back and enjoy listening to her stories. But Donna emailed me back and asked for the first half hour because she said I was the ‘headliner’.

That was news to me!

She also said that I had my fans and that they’d want to come up to me afterwards and take a look at my books. And I thought huh? So she told me that she’d been at some of the previous storytelling events through the Mosaic Festival and when our set had been announced and particularly when my name had been announced, some people had yelled, “Yeah! We love her!” or something like that.

Wow! It felt so strange to hear that.

And then yesterday I went to a school, actually very close to that area! I hadn’t seen the librarian for about ten years! She still remembered me, and had invited me to speak to her grade 7-8′s (my favourite group!) about my novel Wanting Mor.  Well ever since the India trip, I changed the presentation to straight storytelling minus any technology and it actually works even better! So I was doing the presentation and there was some sort of kerfuffle with one of the teachers who grew a bit belligerent and took the boys of his class out of my presentation because he wanted to give them a health test.

It was weird.

I’ve never been in that situation before.

He was yelling and being quite rude to the librarian and I actually felt sorry for him because he was making a fool of himself.

When I finally started the presentations (and was talking fast to make up for the late start) he actually came back to get some of the girls who hadn’t exited with the boys and the librarian refused to allow them to leave. Well this time he started shouting! And I had to pause for the noise to go down.

Anyway, later, during the third presentation, it went along swimmingly, many of the students came up to me and told me they remembered me from other schools in the area! And they had heard parts of the presentation before, and yet they loved the presentation again. I asked them if they were bored? No, not at all! They assured me.

In fact some of the girls who’d stayed behind, from that belligerent teacher, had snuck in to see the presentation again because they enjoyed it so much!

And I thought wow! The fact that kids would actually sneak in to see the presentation again…just wow!

And then one of them asked me to sign her agenda, and while I was signing, I grew alarmed because I noticed that my signature had changed a little.

The belly of the ‘R’ in my first name and the loop in the ‘h’ in my last name were really quite big! And I thought of Dr. Phil’s signature, and I grew afraid.

And I wondered if my previous thoughts weren’t some form of projection, where you see your own flaws magnified in others.

It definitely brought me down a notch or two.

And if I had some dirt to throw handy, I might very well have tossed it, not at them, just in the air, to remind myself not to become arrogant.

And to definitely not take myself too seriously!!!

Dealing with getting antsy and turning to social media…

When I was first starting out in this field, I had to go through a sort of discipline process.

I actually think that everything I went through was necessary, it was a sort of preparation for where I am now, but it is definitely possible to get stuck in a phase.

When all you have are your dreams, and then the internet beckons…it’s easy to get caught up on it instead of at work on a new manuscript.

I spent YEARS on a politics and religion forum, defending my beliefs to a body of complete strangers whom I had never met.

That was extremely valuable!

It taught me how to handle myself when I was being attacked and challenged…you know how blunt people can be behind the anonymity of a computer screen! But after about fifteen years of trying to convince the same old die hards the same old points…I realized that the usefulness of the process had run its course.

It was hard to let go.

I thought of some of these people as my friends. I had genuine affection for them and I was reluctant to leave.

But then I realized that there were a few people whom I thought of friends, who really weren’t. Long story short, I abandoned it, finally, and moved on.

Besides learning how to handle myself in a very volatile and hostile situation, I learned that some people who attack you with arguments, aren’t interested in the truth, only in proving you are wrong.

If you engage them legitimately, type out pages of proofs, they will counter with the flimsiest of arguments and present them as ironclad proofs with so much of their own confidence that it might actually shake your own.

Think of the way Republicans can obfuscate an issue like climate change, and throw enough bogus but legitimate sounding facts till they feel they’ve actually clouded the issue enough to have created some doubt.

I dealt with a LOT of obfuscation!

I researched everything and people complimented me on the soundness of my beliefs, the way I had thought everything through, and then eventually some newbie would come along and attack me all over again and I had to go back to the defence. Till one day this person stated that she lived in a university town and there were a lot of Muslims and she had a strong feeling of bigotry towards them and couldn’t seem to help it. Then she challenged me to change her mind.

I told her, “Frankly, lady, I don’t give a damn.”

And she got royally miffed.

And finally, finally, I didn’t care.

I finally realized it’s not my job to change anyone’s mind about Islam and Muslims.

If they want to be a bigot, hey it’s a free world!

I learned so much for those days, but I got to a point where I thought why am I expending so much energy on such a small forum? I need to put that energy into my books, and so I did.

Then came along Facebook and social media, and I see many rookie authors making somewhat the same mistake.

A few posts ago I posted Neil Gaman’s commencement speech, and I keep remembering something he said: He looked at where he wanted to be as an author and saw it as a mountain peak in the distance, and when he came across an opportunity, even if it was a very good opportunity, but it didn’t bring him nearer his mountain peak goal, then he didn’t take it.

Social media is like that.

Even sometimes I worry that this blog is taking away too much time from my wriitng but I look at this blog as a kind of give back. I often try to share the lessons I’ve learned along the way.

And anyone reading will notice that there are times when my posts are few and far between and the quality of them drops off. Those are the times when the writing is going smashingly! Masha Allah.

Right now I’m busy with some projects, but I did want to warn anyone who might be reading this, to limit your time on social media. Especially Facebook!

Someone told me that people who spend a lot of time on Facebook tend to be depressed!

I can understand why that would be true. It would be easy to look at all the bragging that goes on, on it and get sad about the state of your own career.

But on the other hand, I’ve come across a lot of useful articles I wouldn’t have found except that they were recommended by friends. I post very little.

I’ve seen authors take it far too seriously!

It’s much more important to keep your website updated, and keep on top of email correspondence than it is to see how many ‘likes’ you get! Or comments you generate!

It’s just a big popularity contest! And who needs that??? What you really need, what you really want… IS TO WRITE THE BEST DARN BOOK YOU CAN!

Something that will ADD to the body of literature worth reading!

And you can’t do that while farting around on social media!

 

 

Okay so I missed a few steps before “just do it”…

My husband said I left out two major steps in my last post and that’s the one where I talk about doing it, and the other one is where I complain about doing it.

So let’s just call them: “I should…” and “It’s so hard…”

Fill in the blanks.

I know it sounds like whinging (that’s the British way of saying whining and I like it a lot more as a word because it has more onomatopoeia in that it sounds like what it is) anyway, before I actually do ‘just do it’, I spend a bit of time, okay okay, sometimes a CONSIDERABLE bit of time saying to myself, “I should do …”

But then I do that in so many aspects in my life and honestly I don’t really see anything that wrong with it.

I’ll be sitting on the sofa thinking of all the chores I need to do. And my kids would actually  make a joke of it. I’ll say out loud, “I should go clean the bathtub.” And then I won’t. I’ll sit there and think of other things and then after about five minutes have passed, I’ll say again, “I should go clean the bathtub…” only this time I’ll add, “It really is quite grimy.”

And then another five minutes will pass thinking of other things and I’ll say again, “I really should go clean the bathtub…” only this time I’ll think of how nice and shiny it will look when it’s all clean, and I’ll smile to myself, as if I’ve actually done it.

And then another five minutes will pass of me thinking of other things and then I’ll say, with a LOT more conviction, “I really should go and clean the bathtub…” and I think of how happy my husband and son (the only other people who still live here) will feel stepping into a nice clean bathtub, and I’ll feel kind of righteous because I’m going to take care of my filial duty towards them, and there’ll be that hadith in there somewhere that says ‘cleanliness is half of faith’ and I’ll be thinking that hey, cleaning the bathtub is like half of my faith, and then FINALLY I’ll lean forward, rest my hands on the armrest and get myself up and go and actually ‘just do it’.

Maybe my husband, being the annoying person he is, would just go think it and do it, but I’m not like that.

There’s a process.

The bathtub eventually does get clean, the chore eventually does get done, and the story eventually does get written, so what’s the harm?

And then after the bathtub is clean, or the story is written, I feel all righteous inside and I think to myself, “Wow, that was a lot of work! I scrubbed really hard! It wasn’t easy.” and “Oh I really like that story! Not sure if the publishers will, but that part, ooh, it gives me the shivers. Well done! That wasn’t easy! I had to go deep for it!”

And this is the part my husband would say I’m whinging, but really no, it’s just an acknowledgement in a way of the effort I’ve expended, and really what’s wrong with that???

It’s not like I say this to him.

I’m really only saying it to myself.

Kind of a pat on the back, an ‘attaboy’ or ‘attagirl’ because I just did a task that no one ever really thanks me for, but one that still needs getting done and yeah, I’m glad I did it.

If I didn’t write the story… I know perfectly well that the world would still keep revolving.

And who am I kidding, would people’s lives really be the poorer for it if I hadn’t written the story??? I’d like to think so, but it’s really true that you don’t know what you’re missing…

And yet years later, when the story does get published insha Allah, and I get some email out of the blue saying how much it meant to someone, I nod to myself, and think, “Oh yeah, they did like it. Alhamdu lillah”

And then the hardest part of all, I have to build myself up to go and start the process ALL OVER AGAIN!!

Hmmm.

Which reminds me.

I really should get back to work on that story I was thinking of!

*g*

Just Do it…

Been thinking of the Nike slogan lately.

There’s so much darn wisdom in those three little words.

One of the things you need in this writing field, besides a complete misunderstanding of the odds of success, is someone at your back that will push you to do things you kind of, sort of, feel scared and/or intimidated by.

It would be great if the world just beat a path to your door now, wouldn’t it. But that’s not the case.

People it seems can very well carry on their lives without ever  having heard of you or your work.

And sometimes I think it’s crazy that I want to write stories that are so good, so excellent that they simply HAVE to track them down and read them or else their lives will be the poorer for it.

I know, I know, I’m smiling to myself even as I type that.

The  nerve, eh?

That’s the old guy critic in the back of my head speaking. He’s saying loud and clear, “Who the hell do you think you are???”

I don’t even bother arguing any more, because from the little success I have had, great literature doesn’t come from big loud actions. It seems to come about almost by accident.

For ten years I was telling my version of the Big Red Lollipop story (you can watch it here) and then my editor asked me to rewrite the story in Rubina’s perspective, wrote it in fifteen minutes and voila, it became the hit it is.

And Wanting Mor didn’t even seem to be marketable to me. I just wrote it to find out what would happen to this poor abandoned girl in Afghanistan.

In both of those cases I never set out to write something fantastic. I just did the job.

But when I was done with Wanting Mor and it didn’t achieve the success that Big Red Lollipop did, I felt tired. Exhausted!

And I might have mentioned before that I never came closer to quitting the profession of writing than I did back then.

You write your heart out and yeah, some people notice, but not EVERYONE!

And then it’s back to the drawing board, start all over again, find something that stirs the passions within me, and hope to God that the story comes out good.

Anyway, the point I’m trying to make in my long rambling way, is that success is a series of kicks in the pants, just go and do it. Even if you probably WON’T succeed, even if the old man critic in the back of you mind laughs and says, “Probably won’t??? You mean DEFINITELY WON’T” just go and do it anyway.

There’s an old saying, ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained’.

When I first started out in the biz I applied for lots of arts grants. I fancied my grants were even well written.

Just over the weekend though I cleaned out ALL my files and I came across the grant applications I’d written and oh they were sad!

The chutzpah!

The unmitigated gall I possessed!

And yet now I’ve often been fortunate to receive grants, especially travel grants!!!

And to be perfectly honest, I still possess an awful lot of chutzpah.

Because I’m not there yet.

I’m not even close.

There’s so much more I want to do.

And even though it’s scary, I just get up and start doing it.

I will continue to ‘just do it’.

Chipping away at the stories I want to write. Clearing my throat till I say the things I need to say.

Even if it’s scary.

Even if it’s crazy, because fundamentally I do believe that the greatest authors don’t have anything that I don’t have. I just have to reach down deep and pull out my best.

And just keep keepin’ on.

Just do it.

The Death of Philip Seymour Hoffman…

They say that most writers are frustrated actors.

I find that funny because I never wanted to pursue acting, not that it was ever a choice. Acting was considered a licentious profession in Pakistani culture and that was actually something I agreed with growing up.

Besides, I never had the confidence in my looks to think I could make a go of it.

But something about drama on stage does appeal to me, and luckily I’ve got the storytelling to fill that need.

Anyway, getting back to Philip Semour Hoffman…every once in a while you do come across someone who is extraordinary at what he does.

I first noticed this actor in a low budget movie hardly anyone seems to know about called Owning Mahoney. It’s a Canadian film from the seventies I think, and it has that gritty fuzzy sepia look of a lot of the movies from back then. It was filmed in Toronto and is about this Mahoney guy who committed the biggest bank fraud in Canadian history because he was an addicted gambler.

It’s a fascinating little movie if you can get past the technical flaws. Hoffman puts in a performance that is remarkable because he actually makes this really weird guy sort of understandable.

Now that’s hard!

Because people are a lot weirder than fictional characters and it’s really hard to take a true story and show the motivation of someone who committed a crime that seems inconceivable according to his character and lifestyle.

I finished watching Owning Mahoney and made a note to myself to watch out for this actor.

Then when I saw him in Doubt…all I can say is wow!

Everytime that the movie Doubt comes on, I’ll sit down and watch it.

Mind you, Hoffman was playing against Meryl Streep, and they’re both in very fine form! By the way Meryl’s another actor who is fabulous, but then everyone knows that!

And he played an obnoxious reporter in Red Dragon, that really brutal prequel to Silence of the Lambs with Ralph Fiennes. It’s really good! And Hoffman is really obnoxious. A completely different character again!

And yet watching him in Red Dragon, where he’s pictured in his underwear superglued to a chair before he’s tortured by the Ralph Fiennes character, makes him look quite vulnerable because he’s quite pudgy.

And seeing that made me wonder if that would affect his confidence like it affects my own at times.

I told a relative recently that I have absolutely no business having any confidence whatsoever…and yet I do. When I get up on stage I don’t even think of how much weight I have to lose.

I get caught up in the story I’m telling.

Weight just doesn’t matter.

People seem to like me despite of it.

I wish I was immune to the way we’ve been socialized to value the thin, but, hey, I’m not. And I bet Hoffman wasn’t either.

Apparently it was no secret that he suffered from drug addiction.

And I thought, I think I know why.

Maybe the drugs take you away from your insecurities for a while. Maybe they offer a release. And once again, I thank God that they are forbidden in Islam, because if they weren’t… shudder.

And then I wondered but didn’t he come in contact with people who constantly told him how much his films meant to them?

I have.

And then I started to wonder if Hoffman listened to their kind words and then dismissed them after a while because his inner demons were calling.

And then I thought of how easily kind words and compliments just wash right over me and it’s always the stings and barbs that linger.

I think we need to focus instead on the love.

Remind ourselves constantly of it.

Even while we strive to overcome our deficiencies.

I’ll stay on my diet, and I’ll keep going to the gym, to bring the weight down, but I’ll also remind myself that my work has touched a lot of people and I am blessed.

So give it a break.

Alhamdu lillah.

 

Pan’s Labyrinth…

Sometimes I feel like if I could only delve into magical elements, I could write a bestseller so easily!

I think having religious restrictions can make it much harder to write an engaging story!

Alice Kane is considered one of the grand dames of storytelling. She came from Ireland I think, which has an epic storytelling tradition, and she was of the opinion that a storyteller should really only sit completely still and let the voice tell the story.

Funny how she could captivate an audience in such a manner!

When I was judging Iran, I met another storyteller who used a similar technique. She was a tiny little creature, very petite, very pretty, named Anna Sophia (can’t remember her last night) and was from Portugal. She had a drama background, she was actually an actress, but when she did storytelling she deliberately prevented herself from moving. She sat quietly on a chair in the middle of the stage and told such a powerful story about a community and their elders that it blew the entire audience away!

And mind you, most of the audience didn’t speak English! They spoke Farsi, and yet such was the power of her storytelling that they could feel the passion of her words, even without the translation!

Alice Kane was apparently that good too. She wrote a book about storytelling that some in the Canadian storytelling community almost considered to be a bible of sorts.

There’s a poem in there that she included (not sure if she wrote it) that I often quote in storytelling workshops I have run:

The dreamer awakes

The shadow goes by

When I tell you a tale

The tale is a lie

But ponder it well

Fair maiden, good youth

The tale is a lie

What it tells is the truth.

 

Love that poem!

But anyway, later on in her book The Dreamer Awakes she says something interesting about folktales. She said that folktales have their roots in paganism. That they’re actually a bit on the subversive side towards religious thought and society.

Being a practicing Muslim that sure didn’t sit well with me.

But I definitely understand where she’s coming from. Some of the most ‘satisfying’ stories have elements of paganism in there. And it behooves me to be careful regarding my faith, when I’m navigating that terrain, and navigate it I must if I want to be proficient at writing.

The stories I choose to tell to audiences are always based on true tales, or personal stories.

And the stories I write are definitely firmly anchored in the real world. The truth of what she said is in fact one of the reasons that I abandoned fantasy.

There was too much shirk in it. Shirk is the Islamic concept of ascribing partners to God.

Oh how I used to love fantasy! It began with The Lord of the Rings but then I just got to reading all kinds of really bad stuff that I got turned off all the glowing orbs and levitating stones and nonsense. I think the kicker was A Wrinkle in Time which I rather enjoyed until it got to the fact that the villain was a brain in a jar for Pete’s sake!!! Ugh!

But…

Pan’s Labyrinth… ah…what a masterpiece!

It’s worth studying it just to admire the way Guillerm del Toro put together this amazing story!

As a storyteller it has all the aspects of high storytelling at its finest! As an author I just couldn’t believe how beautifully he wove the disparate strands of the story from the Spanish civil war backdrop, to the fairytale with Ofelia and its Greco-Roman/Pagan flavors.

It really is exquisite! Much better than most of what Hollywood produces!

I can’t do that with the realistic fiction I write.

And yet when I looked at it years and years ago, I decided that realistic fiction can be every bit as compelling as the strongest fantasy because ultimately the power of a story doesn’t rely on how elaborate the ‘magic’ conceit that you infuse your story with is. The strength of a story always relies on your characters!

And the problem with too much fiction today is that most of the characters are stale!

They are interchangeable.

Insert spunky heroine or self-doubting hero. Blech!

In Pan’s Labyrinth, Del Toro creates a very interesting character in Ofelia indeed! At once archetypal and familiar and yet also fresh and new! And I love that the characters aren’t Hollywood good-looking. The Mercedes character is even quite plain looking, but her acting abilities…ooh!

Oh it’s a gem!

Even if part of me cringes at all the Pagan references!

And the fact that it’s in Spanish with English subtitles…wow! I think the Spanish is absolutely crucial to conveying the mood of the story.

 

 

The best ones…

Went to a publisher party the other night and had a number of very interesting experiences.

It was chock full of people, most of whom I didn’t know, but I did see a dear acquaintance of mine and went over to say hello. She’s always worked on the business side of children’s literature. She’s attended conferences and festivals all around the world.

We were talking to a couple of people in the media and shamelessly, I name dropped that I’d met Cornelia Funke. And I told the media people, “Oh she was so nice! So down to earth.”

And then my friend said, “I met her too! And yes! She’s just lovely!” And then she added something interesting! “All the really good authors are!”

And I thought, “Wow!”

On one level that makes so much sense!

Forget all the movies you might have watched where people are scrambling over each other, and stabbing each other in the back. Oh yes, that does happen, I’m not saying it doesn’t, but what my friend was saying is that the people who really make it, who are really big, are very nice.

And I think I agree.

Wouldn’t you think it had to be that way? Because you don’t publish in a vacuum, and if you’re not nice to people, then they really won’t promote your work to the fullest extent. Even if your work is fabulous, even if you’re making them tons of money, if you’re a jerk to them, they’ll play it out because they know that sooner or later your star will fade.

But the people who really make it, who show consistent quality, and then rise to the next level…well those are people who are being supported by the companies with which they work, consistently.

They have forged good relationships, I imagine.

In short…people WANT to work with them.

Now being nice won’t get you published, but once you’ve got something worthwhile to sell, being nice and easy to work with really goes a long way towards people wanting to work with you again!

That’s what I’m saying.

And then of course, I had to look back at my own behaviour through the years, and I realized that the more successful I got, the nicer I got.

When I was first starting out, I think I was a bit prickly because I was scared people were trying to rip me off. Not so any more.

Food for thought.