Climbing the mountain to write
Uzma Jalaluddin’s secret dream is now becoming a reality
I’ve always wanted to be a writer. I never thought I would be a writer.
This juxtaposition exists in the minds of so many people who have a dream. “I want X. I don’t think X will ever really happen. Still, I can’t stop trying because I love X so much.”
For me, this secret dream was further compounded by lack of diversity. When I was younger, there weren’t a lot of stories written by people of colour. There definitely weren’t any stories about Muslims. Not that I noticed – I was addicted to stories, and I would consume them as they came. But maybe some part of me did notice.
“Your uncle in India used to write well,” my father told me, when I expressed an interest in writing. “He wrote the most interesting letters. Writing is a good hobby.”
“I used to read all the time, in Urdu, English, Hindi and Telugu,” my mom told me when I brought home my latest book haul from the public library.
(Side Note: Libraries are amazing and miraculous and I can’t believe they are free.)
Neil Gaiman, an author I admire, shared this important reaching-yourgoals advice in his famous 2012 convocation speech:
“Something that worked for me was imagining that where I wanted to be — which was an author, primarily of fiction, making good books … — imagining that was a mountain, a distant mountain. My goal. And I knew that as long as I kept walking towards the mountain I would be all right. And when I truly was not sure what to do, I could stop, and think about whether it was taking me towards or away from the mountain.”
My first attempt at writing was a picture book titled Icy Water’s Bad Day. It was about the life cycle of an ice cube. By the end of the book, Icy Water is melting in someone’s stomach, so actually it may have been a dark comedy about existential despair. I wrote it when I was 8, so I can’t be certain.
It was a school project, but still — I was heading towards the mountain.
Later I would write for community papers. I wrote for a South Asian bridal magazine — Suhaag — for a few years. It was the first time someone offered to pay me for my words; the first time I felt I deserved to be paid. I wanted to write novels, but this helped too. The mountain was a tiny bit closer.
When I was on maternity leave with my second son, Ibrahim, I started my first novel. I didn’t tell anyone that I was writing a book except my husband. It was a big, fragile secret. My first book was about Muslims in Toronto, their relationships and family drama. It wasn’t a great novel, but it brought me closer to the mountain. And it taught me a few things.
The first thing it taught me was that I wanted to write stories about people who looked like me. The second thing it did was uncover my fear: I was afraid that nobody would be interested in stories about people who looked like me. All the stories I knew that featured Muslims were about terrorists, fundamentalist death cults, people in South Asia being forced into arranged mar- riages, or oppressed people in the Middle East living miserable lives. All of those things may be real, but they were not the stories I wanted to tell.
Neil Gaiman also offered this advice: “Start telling the stories that only you can tell, because there’ll always be better writers than you and there’ll always be smarter writers than you. There will always be people who are much better at doing this or doing that — but you are the only you.”
This advice is saved on my desktop, for easy reference.
One day I had The Talk with then-7 year old Ibrahim. After I got over my embarrassment, I wrote about it, and pitched the story to the Star. I’ve been writing columns ever since, writing stories only I could tell. I began to see the mountain rise up before me.
Two years ago, I had another idea for a novel. I threw out all my old drafts and started from the beginning. I took an unpaid sabbatical from teaching, because I knew what I needed most was time. I wrote and re-wrote my book seven times. If I craned my neck, I could see the very top of the mountain now, and I knew it was time to start climbing.
Each step I took was harder than the last. I kept going anyway. Why stop now, just because I wasn’t sure where I would end up? My path was windy and circuitous, but I was headed in the right direction. Up. I’m glad I kept going. My first novel, Ayesha At Last, will be published on June 12 by Harper Collins Canada. It will also be published in the U.S by Berkley (Penguin Random House), and in the U.K. and other countries by Atlantic Books. My novel is the one I wanted to write — a deliciously fund ram edy, a Pride and Prejudice-inspired diverse romantic comedy. And it’s set in Toronto.
Keep walking towards your mountain — the world needs all types of stories. Mine will be available next week in bookstores and online. I’m still pinching myself.
“When I truly was not sure what to do, I could stop, and think about whether it was taking me towards or away from the mountain.” NEIL GAIMAN AUTHOR