What's next?

I wrote a book. Alhamdulillah. A novel, to be precise. It feels fantastic to be able to say that after four start-stop years of writing it. And I have a publishing deal. Summer 2025 insha’Allah, which doesn’t sound so far away now that it’s 2024.

Now I’m back in a place I’m familiar with, a place of what’s next? It’s the place that got me started writing the first book in 2018. I was in the final stages of completing my MFA, I had moved to Connecticut with my family, an experience which I wrote a little about here, and I was tired of writing short stories. I knew I needed to keep going, keep working the creative muscle. (The Land of What’s Next is also why I’m writing this right now. I was reminded recently by a friend that I have a Substack <insert facepalm emoji>). 

I’ve been in a creative slump lately. Mostly because I’m waiting for the genocide of Gaza to stop and so angry that over 20,000 people have been murdered funded by my country and our tax dollars. That Sudan is in crisis and it stopped being news after non-Sudanese were evacuated. That Congo has been enduring a silent genocide for decades and I only recently learned of it. That that that…<insert tragic event that could be stopped if all people were viewed as full human beings with rights to life and peace>. If I waited for humanity at the political and global power level, I would never write another word again. 

I keep seeing that quote from Toni Morrison about how this is the time when writers get to work. This, in her case, was after George W. Bush’s reelection in 2004, and that admonishment actually came from a friend of hers as she nursed her own despair. She was talking about important work though, capital W work. Work that makes people think and ask questions, look at themselves and ask who am I? what do I stand for? what are my tools and how am I using them for justice?

But what if your work is a romantic comedy? That’s what I wanted to write before this big hole of sadness opened. I almost couldn’t wait to finish the first book so I could start on this story. And I did stop occasionally to take notes when I couldn’t get the story out of my head. I love Love. Love stories, romance, falling in love. I loved fairy tales as a child. Happily ever after was deep breath satisfaction.

And if you’re smiling right now I’m going to muck up that image real quick. I loved fairy tales because I was a lonely, sad kid. My parents had an ugly divorce when I was still a baby. I have one picture and exactly zero memories of them together. I’m 44 years old and only beginning to understand the impact of that on my life. 

I’ve started writing about them, my parents, now that they are both gone from this world. Nothing like death to make the living start questioning. How did you come together? Why did you break apart? I’m writing a coming together love story and a broken apart love story, at the same time.

I read A Living Remedy by Nicole Chung, a memoir of her parents' deaths. I read of her parents’ long partnership while riding in an airplane and cried cried cried silent tears in my seat wondering what if my parents had stayed together. I watched American Symphony about Jon Batiste composing a symphony to perform at Carnegie Hall while his wife fought a second bout of cancer and cried cried cried over their love for each other.

How do you write about kick up your heels, spin around a lamppost love while sitting in a hole of sadness? I’m asking a question.