Writing What I Know 🤔

I tried to park it for later. It didn’t let me.

I’m back to avoiding my desk and deadlines. A friend told me to interrogate why I’m struggling to write certain sections of my book (writers tend to gift prompts, not answers), and it feels a bit redundant, but the simplest one I have is that I am avoiding the feeling of being pulled under.

My siblings keep telling me to write a rom-com next—“just write something easy,” they keep saying. It’s a bit of a moot point, but sometimes they ask me why I’m not writing a rom-com right now and why I have chosen this particular topic and gone so far as to have signed a contract. I don’t have a neat answer. Part of me agrees with the instinct behind their question: that maybe I shouldn’t be writing about this at all.

The best I can say is that this is the book that came first. Not because it’s timely in any smart, market way, but because it wouldn’t move aside. I tried to park it for later. It didn’t let me. It was inconvenient but also clarifying.

Another answer is this: if I didn’t first address my being Palestinian—name it without flinching, trace where it lives in my throat and my silences—then nothing that came after would land true. Not even the coziest rom-com with stakes trimmed to the nub. I could write charm (maybe). But I couldn’t write honestly. I couldn’t “write what you know”—advice often given to young writers—and what I know for certain is how I tried to wash the Palestinian parts of me away and why that was so easy to do.

The book feels like absolution, though that’s too tidy a word for a process that keeps undoing me. What I have is a page that asks the same question every morning: how can you stand fully in yourself if you keep misnaming your own origin story? A way to say: here is the part of me I kept negotiating with, minimizing, or filing down so it would pass. I don’t want the next thing I write to sit on top of that gap.

It’s easy to admit that I am the worst person to have signed up to write this book because I avoid writing it at all costs. Every day, I trick myself into sitting at my desk and working. I have multiple snacks (mostly things that don’t need two hands to be eaten), an expensive kitchen timer that matches the aesthetics of my desk (this could have been solved with my phone or a $3 kitchen timer, but it felt necessary that it be something I wanted to look at), and various pillows and desk props so that I can adjust how I sit or stand when I feel the need to flee from a single position. If I get anywhere close to 500 or more words out, it feels like a godsend.

All the while, my internal critic has been LOUD these last few weeks. She keeps telling me that my writing is crap; she has a point. Almost all writing at the beginning is crap, but she doesn’t let it go, and I’m pretty exhausted by her. A friend tells me that when that happens, I should offer her a cigarette and a cookie and tell her to take a vacation. That sometimes works. But not for long. I think what has been working more is telling her that I will get back to her later. Like: “Oh? What? Yes, I hear you. I’ll respond to you in a bit,” and I hope she disappears in the meantime. Mostly, I’m just trying not to let her take the reins because nothing good comes out when she’s in charge, though of course, she doesn’t believe that.

Orangey-red blossoms are sprouting from the tree outside my window, which I see when sitting at my desk. They’ve kept me company as I continue to fidget in my seat. The days are still long in London, the sun has been shining pretty much nonstop since April, but I am ready for the fog and the rain. Until then, I’ll keep trying to write because it’s better than letting myself drown in something else that’s uncontrollable.

I am taking a break from reading news on Instagram, but I do still receive daily and weekly emails about what’s happening in Palestine via The Britain Palestine Media Centre (media monitoring and briefings) and the IMEU (backgrounders and on-the-ground updates). I recommend donating or signing up to help ensure that journalists have access to the most up-to-date information in Gaza and greater Palestine.