I haven’t published a blog as regularly as I did last year and the reasons are twofold.
2022 has been a tough year for me and has left me vulnerable in too many ways.
It was a big anniversary year. Thirty years is a long time, but there are days when it only seems like yesterday that we lost our son. I’ve felt sadder than usual this year and I wonder if it’s because I’ve actually told people how I feel about losing him. How that child, who on a molecular level, is still with me or is it because as I get older I’m reflecting on my life more.
I’m in an anxiety loop and this is what it looks like.
I push beyond my well-being and can’t say no to additional work. When I mean work I don’t mean the paid sort, but just stuff that gets piled onto my to-do pile.
As the list gets longer and longer everything crashes down on me and I don’t do any of the things on my list.
Instead of making inroads into ticking off items on my long list, I start something else.
This year it was a free short story to give away to my loyal newsletter subscribers, in monthly instalments not quarterly.
Last year I published Made in Heaven, Red Ribbon Winner, WSBA. A contemporary romance set in France and England, a retelling of Jane Eyre. These writing divergences don’t bother me, at least I’m honing my craft and ideas are ideas. I’m adding plot outlines and character voices in my future novel pile.
Then I try to fit in too many things into my day, and finish nothing and then wham, I’m angry, I’m frustrated, I’m useless.
I join courses on how to final edit, market, understand SEO, and understand keywords on Amazon. Nothing really helps with the anxiety and the panic. Negative words bounce constantly in my waking and my sleeping.
Somehow I keep editing and throwing out scenes from my current work in progress and then I’m stuck.
This year I thought I would join NaNoWrMo. You might have heard of it if you're a writer. Every November writers join a community for accountability and help to finish that novel. But, I knew that committing to writing a designated amount of words per day throughout November in my state of mind wouldn’t help. So using my Cognitive Behaviour Therapy prompts.
I joined Inside Story with Marian Keyes with Curtis Brown Creatives.
I read chapters that didn’t work; I wrote assignments from writing prompts. The best part of this weekly course was I got feedback from fellow writers. And it felt so good, an honest criticism from people who are knowledgeable.
Discover books by Sapna Bhog, Sonali Dev, Kevin Kwan, Meera Syal and Helen Hoang - Link on image
Just before the course started, I got confirmation of a book recommendations piece I wrote on Shepherd, a new book recommendation site that isn’t owned by the dreaded Amazon. Hop across to read my recommendation and many others link in the image above.
I’m back to my final editing of the fifth book, rewriting my sixth book and there’s a story that keeps coming into my head. The characters are forming into solid beings with tics, and words. A standalone that I want to write and publish.
The anxiety loop is diminishing, it will never leave me. I know how to recognise it. I’m grateful that I’ve learnt this, it’s taken me half a century, but better late than never. Thank you to my family and friends. I am thankful that I am without the worry of fuel poverty, food poverty and wage poverty. I am blessed that I’m safe. People around the world aren't as lucky.
I’ve learnt to ROAR
“I used to bite my tongue and hold my breath
Scared to rock the boat and make a mess
So I sat quietly, agreed politely
I guess that I forgot I had a choice”
It’s that time of the year again, so here’s what I’ve taken part in if you missed it.
Raise awareness of child loss, which meant joining a panel discussion for Sands.
Raise awareness of East African Asians in Britain with South Asian Heritage Month. Sneha Purohit and I attended a discussion at Kingsbury Library on why she wrote Brit:In – British Indian Journeys of Migration and Integration, which is coming out in the new year. And why I write stories of East African Asian families. Listen to an extract from her book and other East African South Asian Writers. on my home page.
Collecting oral histories from people of East African origin in the South Asian Community. More in the new year on this.
Raise awareness and support for emerging voices in film making.
Raise awareness of representation in advertising. A short transcript of what I said at a diverse panel discussion with the Diversity Standards Collective for the advertising and marketing industry. They are all about amplifying under represented voices. Link to Instagram for my contribution.
“We don’t all fit in one box.
If you’re trying to represent a South Asian woman in her 50s, please do not put her in a saree, please do not put a bindi on her head.
Please do not make her meek and mild. We roar a lot.”
Recently, to support one of those emerging voices in the South Asian community, I went to the Criterion Theatre to watch Shai Hussain’s Settling. There I met with a fellow author, someone who is from South East Asia, an even smaller minority than South Asian in British publishing and she told me of her experience at a Book Trust event. Read Eva Wong Nava’s blog.
Which brings me to what has happened recently regarding a certain palace aide in the British Royal family.
Ngozi Fulani experience is not unique, it’s happened to all of us who are visibly different. Some people argue about her age and say we should give her some respect.
People like me have been here for hundreds of years. What about respecting me? I am an individual. Don’t touch my hair, don’t infantile me, or eroticise me.
Many people came out to condemn Ngozi, including people of colour.
The question wasn’t a simple, ‘I’m curious why do you have your hair like that.’
‘Where does the fabulous dress you’re wearing come from?’
It was a series of questions for her to understand how she fit in her perception of who Ngozi was.
The worst part was that it happened during 16 days of Activism, in a space where the women invited by the Queen Consort, should have been protected from all forms of violence including verbal abuse.
I’m not saying I don’t hold an unconscious bias, we all do it, especially if you’re anything like me. Categories and labels are my thing. The palace aide must have said the same thing before. It’s only Ngozi’s roaring, instead of sitting in silence politely.
Now is the time for public facing organisations to educate themselves in diversity sensitivity, don’t tick your boxes and add a diversity statement in all your publicity. Walk the walk and learn.