The My Writing Process blog tour

Aspiring novelist  and fellow Sirens Conference goer Artemis Grey invited me to take part in the My Writing Process blog tour, and though I normally don’t do memes, Artemis is too awesome to refuse. So here are my answers to four questions.

1) What am I working on?

A short story about a shadow collector and my second novel, a young adult fantasy about a girl whose mother is from a Hindu constellation. I love mythic stories, so I’m writing one myself!

2) How does my work differ from others of its genre?

I write about South Asian American characters, both because that was my experience and also because there’s such a lack in the young adult North American market. Reflecting the real world for the win!

3) Why do I write what I do?

There’s so much to learn about the world and one another, and books are an excellent way to step into someone else’s head. We all deserve to see ourselves, and we all deserve to see one another in the stories we read.

Also, I believe in magic and imagination, and I love fun, exciting, well-told tales. Young adult has a lot of those. There’s nothing like seeing what came out of another person’s cranial treasure box–and plumbing the depths of my own to tell the story only my personality and experience and brain could come up with!

4) How does my writing process work?

Now that is a question! I have been rethinking how and why I write over the past year or so, but it does seem to involve a bit of procrastination and what I call Adult Onset Perfectionism, where I want the first draft to be perfect. Of course that’s impossible, so what I’m trying to content myself with instead is editing as I go along–even though I know there will be revisions (maybe even heavy ones!) once I finish the draft. Still, whatever gets the words down!

Terri Windling talks a bit about the idea that some people are inchers, that they need to dip their toes and slowly slip into the water. I’d say that’s me for sure.

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Next up in the tour is Francesca Forrest, whose blog you can find here. Francesca is the author of the middle grade novel Pen Pal: “Em is a twelve-year-old girl in a floating community off the Gulf Coast. Kaya is a political activist in a terrifying prison. They are pen pals. Em’s wistful message in a bottle finds its way to Kaya, imprisoned above the molten lava of the Ruby Lake. Both are living precarious lives, at the mercy of societal, natural, and perhaps supernatural forces beyond their control. Kaya’s letters inspire Em, and Em’s comfort Kaya—but soon this correspondence becomes more than personal. Individual lives, communities, and even the fate of an entire nation will be changed by this exchange of letters. Pen Pal is a story of friendship and bravery across age, distance, and culture, at the intersection of the natural and supernatural world.”