Writers write

My first writing life was brief. This one I intend to keep.

Jun 01, 2026

It’s gloomy in Pasadena. May Gray and June Gloom. I learnt that these are the words to describe Southern California’s late-spring weather pattern, May and June being the cloudiest months of the year. I look at the alarm clock on the nightstand by my husband’s side of the bed and it reads 8:27 AM.

My phone is not in the room, which is good. No doom-scrolling in bed, yet I find myself staring at the closet. Then staring at the door, thinking how beautiful it would be to paint it red. Or lilac. Or both — the door lilac and the edge red. Clearly, doom-scrolling is not the reason why I don’t get out of bed as soon as I’m up. And I think it was a simpler time when I could still blame it on my phone. But it’s alright. I’ll blame it on May Gray. And next month, on June Gloom. July is far away.

It’s 8:54 AM and I cannot stay in bed any longer. The main character in my novel has places she needs to get to. She needs to have coffee, then head out of her apartment. She has someplace to be at 11:30 AM. Then it occurs to me: I, an actual person, have to get up and take care of a fictional character whom I, an actual person, have created. It’s like not having a dog, but waking up early to write about walking it: step, step, step, wait for it to go, step, step, step, clean after it. It’s like the Za Zoo! The virtual pet keychain we played with in the 90s. We managed the pet’s happiness and health by playing mini-games, feeding it, and cleaning up after it, and if we neglected our Za Zoo, it would run away or die.

It doesn’t make sense and yet I can’t wait to make my main character a cup of coffee and get her day started. It doesn’t make sense, and me wanting to do it anyway makes it not make sense even more.

I don’t have an exact date (although I should try to place one and start celebrating annual anniversaries) but my writing life started here in the US. It started last year, around this time. You know what? Let me go check, hold on. On April 6th, 2025, I sent my friend the first chapter of the novel, which means that I must have written that chapter in March of the same year.

This isn’t, though, the first time I’ve had a writing life. Around 2011-2012, I was freshly 18 years old and I had just moved to Beirut for college. College didn’t matter that much to me then. I was there to work as a journalist and to simply live in a big(ger) city, alone. At that time, I attempted to write a novel. Something I never took on again until March 2025, fourteen years later. In a different city and in a different language.

Living a writing life, to me, implies two things: to read fiction and to write fiction. Back in 2011, I was reading novels in Arabic. Off the top of my head, I remember reading Elias Khoury, Jabbour Douaihy, Abbas Beydoun, Bahaa Taher, Rabih Jaber, Rachid Daif, to name a few. Now I find myself reading novels in English: Alexander Chee, Garth Greenwell, Ottessa Moshfegh, Yasmin Zaher, Jhumpa Lahiri, Kaveh Akbar, Rachel Cusk. I’ve read a lot of French literature throughout my life, but it was always at a time when I wasn’t writing fiction, so it doesn’t count as a writing life. Although my years studying French literature at the University of Balamand sometime around 2014 were simply a good life (you can read about it here).

8:00 AM, Sunday

On April 5th this year, I joined an MFA-style fiction workshop with Yasmin Zaher, author of The Coin (which I highly recommend you read). Prior to that, I had a vague sense of what an MFA workshop was. And prior to that, I had never used the word workshop as a verb, always a noun. But now I can say that I have been workshopping my manuscript for nine weeks.

Every Wednesday, two participants share their pages with the group, no more than 20 pages. It can be anything as long as it’s fiction: short stories, very short stories, opening pages of a novel, ending pages of a novel, or any excerpt of a work of fiction. Then, every Sunday morning, the rest of the participants discuss the pages for 25 minutes while the writer is muted. The writer then gets five minutes to discuss their work, ask further questions or clarify a point. The remaining time follows the same format for the second participant.

I wake up at 7:00 in the morning every Sunday. I am always more or less sleepy, but I manage to wash my face, do my skincare routine, put a little tint on the cheeks and the lips, grind my coffee beans, froth my milk, and sit at my desk by 8:00. I prepare my notes, everything I scribbled down as I was reading the two writers' work. At 9:00 AM, I join my husband back in bed and sleep until 11:00 AM, wrapped in what feels like a sweet interruption. Every week, I count: how many of those Sunday mornings do I get to have? Now I have four left and I wish they were fourty.

Wednesday and all the other days

Ever since I joined the workshop, I feel like my life is a writing life. I go about my week knowing that, every Sunday, I am meeting with a group of nine other writers, all incredibly smart, incredibly talented, who give the sharpest, most insightful feedback. Every Wednesday, I know that two of them will share their pages with me and the rest of the group. And all the other days, I write my novel or write this Substack. I like to dedicate Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday to the novel because the energy the workshop gives me on Sunday makes me want to glue myself to my desk forever. Then on Thursday or Friday (like today), I write this essay, propelled by the energy the coming weekend gives me. Sometimes I wish I could only write the novel. Then I open the dashboard on Substack, often encouraged by my husband who doesn't let me drop the ball, and I like this pale beige background… so I write. And in the meantime, I read.

Evening Showers

Last Sunday, one of the writers in the workshop asked about writer’s block. What do you do when you don’t know how to move the work forward? Someone suggested going for a walk. Someone else suggested writing imperfect sentences just to keep the flow. I suggested resorting to sprinter.com, a tool I discovered recently.

I’ve only used it twice because everything I need, I find under the shower. I take evening showers, and the trick is not to use the big lights. I use my reading lights on the warmest yellow setting. It’s light and moody and I always find myself getting out of the shower, towel wrapped around me, hair soaking wet, running to the closest pad and pen.

Unconventional approaches to the Self

Two Saturdays ago, I took the metro from Pasadena to Highland Park. I walked to Comet over Delphi, one of my favourite coffee shops in LA, ordered a latte and a Lyft. I arrived a couple of minutes late to the in-person workshop hosted by my friend Scott Broker, author of The Disappointment (which I also recommend), to discuss one of my favorite subgenres: autofiction.

Prior to the workshop, Scott had sent us material to read. Six works of autofiction by six different authors. I read some in bed. I read some at The Boy and The Bear and I read the rest at Ideology Coffee. They lived with me, in my purse for an entire week. I read some once, most twice. The night before the workshop, at 10:00 PM, I made cake bites. Packed them in a food container and into a tote bag.

Everybody loved them. And I loved being there, in a living room, shoes off, a good cup of coffee and a plate of fruit and an everything bagel, the sun coming in from floor to ceiling windows, and all of this centered around very good literature. The reading material, six different and very unconventional approaches to the self, gave me permission to write however I want to. I was just happy to be there.

What is Style?

I am taking an online class with Garth Greenwell, the author of Small Rain (please read it!). One morning, last winter, I woke up with a longing. I sat on the sofa and stared at the bookcase in front of me. If I stared at it long enough, would it come to me? I stared and stared, and sipped, and stared some more. Half an hour later, I mustered my courage, got up and reached for Small Rain.

I didn’t want to read it again, not particularly. I wanted it near me. I wanted it in my lap, or resting on the sofa grazing my thigh. I gently petted it as I sipped my coffee or responded to text messages sent to me while I was asleep. I lifted the pages of its upper outer corner with my pointer finger as my thumb rested on the cover. Then I brought it to the level of my chest, closer to my face, and flipped its pages. The movement, like a small fan, created a light breeze that caressed my face. I went through the pages faster, then at a slower pace, then I stopped halfway, then again. I placed it on my chest. I let my head rest on the back of the sofa. I wrapped my arms around the book. I hugged Small Rain and I found that, in the process, I was hugging myself.

For the next three Saturdays, I will spend 90 minutes with Garth Greenwell exploring style which, according to him, is one of the deepest mysteries in writing.

All the not-writings

I sit in my chair for two days straight; blinds shut, no sunlight, my writing playlist on loop. And I write. On the third day, I go out for coffee, meet a friend, or run some errands. I’m surprised there are people. Real people who drink real coffee and have real places they need to get to.

My life gets in the way of my writing. Eating, sleeping, working out, texting friends, going out, taking a shower, making my bed, doing laundry, watching a movie, feeling tired — all distractions. Whether I need to do them or want to do them, no difference. Everything that isn’t writing is not-writing. And all the not-writings get in the way of the writing.

My husband says I talk about my fictional characters as though I had no agency over them. That’s because I often tell him: “Guess what? Turns out this character has been at the same job for over a decade.”

They are all buried in me and all I do is excavate.

Accord mets-vin:

My husband, Elias Kammoun, chooses a song each week to accompany the essay. We both feel that the art of listening to music the way we read or watch a film is becoming a lost art; music is usually the backdrop to something else, never the thing itself. This is an invitation to give it the same courtesy. Play the music, sit down, and just listen for the length of one song. (Find and follow the playlist on Spotify here.)