puja-shah

This story is taking longer to write than my last one and hasn’t even reached the last one’s length of 30 pages.

But writing about something close to your heart is not easy. My last story  had a fairy tale feeling, and even with it’s sadness, had an aura of hope and love that felt magical. This story, has sadness, but holds more darkness, despite the strength of sisters, talks about problems and issues that plague their world, infiltrate and despite their strength, they can’t fight all their world’s battles.

Still, it has to be told.

Sometimes a story becomes part of you, the way your morning routine of brushing and bathing and eating does. While I am the shower, I think of things Asya would say. Think of how Amla would feel.

There are some stories that reside in you. Awhile ago,  I wrote a story about two lovers during a mosque attack that had happened in the 90’s in India. Sometimes, I go back to it and read it, feeling it all over again.

This story, will be like that. I can feel it.

Technically, tomorrow would be my 5 day deadline for the story I just started.

With so much to write, I am realizing that I definitely won’t finish, even if I stay up all night. And with this story, I could see myself doing that, I have been on a roll. I’ve got so much to say when it comes to sisters

I am starting to understand deadlines are more for when I am not diligent with this, when I see myself ’slacking’. So for this one, I am giving myself an extension for ‘when it’s done, it’s done’, so the creativity can keep flowing.

I have been editing this story for 2 days and keep taking out things, putting them back in, changing things around, changing wording.

It’s getting tiring, no wonder people hire professional editors to read their work.

But editing is part of my challenge, so I want to do it myself.

Today, I didn’t look at my story all day and then picked it up at night, realizing a lot of the changes I had made after my first day of editing were not as necessary.

I kept some, but am thinking of taking breaks between edits this way, or else I start to totally destroy it. I also will be giving it to my writing class buddy, Jenny, which I think is important to- to get someone else’s opinion on things. It channels my thoughts in a different perspective, which is nice.

But I’ll be honest, editing is definitely not the fun part of this whole thing, and very far from the world of creating stories. But you gotta do what you gotta do, right?

A FINISHED STORY…

The pen stops,

and I think, that’s it?

Always

feels slightly sad,

like I am leaving an old friend.

I’ll miss this,

but

what’s nice is the memory

of what we went through

to get here.

Knowing

I can always

visit this story again

and again.