read later: https://www.huffingtonpost.

in/entry/reading-romance-novels-
women_in_5eec8cf7c5b6a16ed75f783b

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I am Mehnaz. Though Mehnaz isnt me. - Wajid on Kite Strings as coming straight from her heart

//18 novels and counting, Young Adult, romance, sci-fi and horror.
Recently, a couple of her books have been optioned by film production houses. Wajid started off with
slice-of-life stories about young Muslims but has broadened her scope with each book

THE HINDU INTERVIEWS:

If you read my earlier books like My Brother’s Wedding and the more recent ones like The Crunch Factor
or Asmara’s Summer, there’s a decided shift in the way my heroines behave and think. There is lesser
assimilation of what society expects and more assertiveness in the characters. This was a deliberate
choice. I wanted to write stories everyone could relate to, and not just a ‘this is what happens behind
closed doors in Muslim houses’ story which exoticises and otherises Muslims.

My characters’ Muslimness is secondary to the story and sometimes, even incidental.

“I am flabbergasted when I meet with questions like, why didn’t you write this book in Urdu? How come
you wear a burkha? There seems to be a big disconnect between my work and my personal appearance.”
This is what you had told me years ago, in an interview for your first book, Kite Strings. Have things
changed for you since then? Or have you changed?

Both. Things have changed because I think people have stopped seeing my burkha when they see me,
which is what I’d wanted all along — people to focus on my work and not my appearance. I too have
changed in the sense that I’m more tuned in to the world around me, especially in the current political
climate. If I don’t feel comfortable wearing a burkha somewhere, I don’t. The choice is mine and it
always has been, actually. I just didn’t know that with as deep a conviction as I know it now.

---------------

“I don’t think about it,” is the reply. “I like to write and don't stop myself by saying, ‘I’ve finished a book,
I should take a break”. There are so many stories inside my head and I want to put them all down.”
How does she keep track of them, I wonder. For one, she works only one story at a time. Second, she
notes down ideas and this, she says, is very important. “They can evaporate if I don’t put them down. If
there is an idea worth exploring, I put it down somewhere. When I get to a stage where I am wondering
what to do, I look at it again.”

When she decides to develop one, she starts writing freehand. “I put down whatever I want — initial
thoughts about characters and their back stories for my references — which may not go into to the book
or make sense to anyone else.” Once she is ready, she begins to start writing.

With a foot in both worlds, Andaleeb weighs in on the self versus traditional publishing debate.
Accepting that she too once looked down upon the former, she terms the stigma associated with self-
publishing as “unfortunate”. The answer to my questioning look is “It gives control back to the writer.

---------------

It’s difficult to tell how many book ideas she stores in the folds of her burkha.

: liveMint

She writes one chapter, or around 2,000 words, every morning. When she’s not writing, she says, an
uneasiness envelops her.

When we look at older people, we don’t really care about the lives they have lived. After I wrote this
book, I looked at them differently," - on The Sum of All My Parts

She wrote her first novel Kite Strings from the perspective of a young girl who—as she tells readers in
the introduction—“has a simple desire …to be someone other than the roles society has defined for her."
She is “bound by a few conventions of her orthodox family and her experiences may seem limited.
Nevertheless it is the only life that she knows and all she wishes is to make it bigger and better."

After I got married, I was left alone," she says. She was the first woman in her family to get a job, and,
the first woman to travel solo and stay alone in a hotel when she went for the Pune Lit Fest.

In her early books, all of Wajid’s characters were Muslim, because it was the easiest way to write
authentic stories. Now she’s an expert in the craft and experiments with a wider range of characters. She
supplements her income with creative writing workshops.

“I get scared easily, I don’t know why I’ve started writing horror," she says. “When I watch horror films
like The Conjuring, I read the entire synopsis first to see who dies and how invested I should get in each
of the characters." She ensures she watches horror films only during the day
I'm not a happy person if I'm not writing

like breathing

How I'm so prolific? I treat it as a job, write everyday.

My inspiration is stephen king. Can't limit myself to one book a year :)

You should have a mixture of both. Don’t entirely depend upon self-publishing as it still does not have
that legitimacy which traditional publishing offers.”

TIPS:

If you want to write, you have to read. Develop a love for it and not just do it as a chore
Learning to observe the world around you
Keep your phone down in the commute. Observe.

For upcoming writers, she suggests drawing a rough sketch of what you want to do before you actually
sit down to write. How the story will pan out, it’ll help you if you get stuck in between your story.

Having a routine is important because it gets work done.

If you devote 2 hrs a day, definitely at the end of 2 months, youll have a book - about commercial
fiction, not necessarily literary fiction

Books on

Ramzan: Sehri in childhood vs as adult

https://www.huffingtonpost.in/entry/i-was-named-after-a-book-and-it-changed-my-
life_in_5c9dfcade4b00ba6327b182f

a childhood of reading,

comics then vs netflix now

Although I feel nostalgic about the old days, nothing makes me happier than my Kindle and the access "
to the hundreds of books it affords me. At the same time, that anticipation of settling down on a rainy
afternoon, curled on a sofa, clutching a paperback is something that has eluded me for the longest while
"now

https://www.huffingtonpost.in/entry/writing-by-hand-still-a-magic-to-
it_in_5d2824dee4b02a5a5d5888ef

Milan Vohra, author of The Love Asana, said she writes her entire first draft by hand, a feat that leaves
me speechless. She even has specific conditions. “The paper needs to be loose recycled sheets of A-4
size that I feel free to let the words race across. A fresh untouched sheet is daunting, it puts too much
pressure to make the writing be good. The pens have to be light, the throwaway gel pens kind. And there
is nothing that feels better than chucking those pens as they run out because it means you are on a roll.
.And no better feeling too of looking at a handwritten manuscript once it’s been published,” Vohra said