i’m nadirah, your guide on the protagonist express, a newsletter where i share my thoughts, experiences and maybe rants as a global-south-based Muslim writer pursuing traditional publishing.
consider this an invitation into the inner world of my pursuits, aspirations and the threads that bind them all together.
Long time, no post. I wonder about the etiquette of returning to a publication abandoned. There’re no rule books so I’ll simply apologise for my absence. Sometimes, more than I’d even like at the moment, I am not a writer— I’m a medical student bogged down by obligations and a desperation to make it out of school with results as best as I can manage.
Fortunately, even when I don’t write, I think about writing. And recently, I’ve been thinking about writer rooms. A Google search will tell you it’s a workspace where writers of a TV series pitch, brainstorm and workshop episode ideas. That explanation, I feel, is pretty sanitary (whitewalls and uncomfortable chairs, bleugh) and my head imagines these things are even more intimate than they are made to sound.
Of course, at some point, one decides if writing is something they want to pursue as a career. And making that decision of course changes things but there’s so much wonder to still be found in putting ink against paper. One of the ways I’ve been finding my wonder is a personal writing room where I meet all my muses and allow myself to open up to theories and ideas that I’d like to pursue in my writing.
It needn’t be thoughts about a work in progress and might even be something as throwaway as sentence 29 in my room: thinking about water, wells and all the things they could tell us. What does that mean? Maybe nothing. But also, so many things and what’s more exciting than possibilities?
Put on something comfortable, get snacks and open your writing room today. Anywhere.
writing updates
revising my young adult dystopian novel (dread nation x the reapers are the angels) set in nigeria, 2084, amid a redacted collapse amongst other things. it’s a lot of work but i’m finding new ways to love the elements in my story and arrange them in a manner worthy of what i’m trying to say. even though i might just be figuring out exactly what that is.
currently reading: my heart is a chainsaw by stephen graham jones. i picked this up last year and i loved my first peek into it but i was in a very horrible mental state at that time and had to put it down. picked it up a couple of days ago and even though i’m reading very slowly, i’m loving it.
thank you, everyone, for reading. and before you go: