Another Evaluation

Back before the summer I wrote a lot about writing and those concerns of mine about the responsibilities attached to it. Every couple of months I find myself re-evaluating my writing — which I think is a good thing — to keep myself in check. I want to keep in mind the idea that anything I write should have a purpose to it and that I am not writing just for the sake of writing. This is certainly a temptation provided by the web log, particularly once an audience has developed. Indeed the presence of readers presents the writer with a number of issues that he/she must confront honestly: the question of intention is perhaps the most important, but there is also the matter of just producing copy so they have something to read, forgetting the important adage that we should speak good or remain silent.

What is the purpose of a web log? Well that’s a good question. The intention behind my writing has changed over time. When I first started generating copy for a website I had in 2001, it was entirely dawah orientated. When I transferred all of my writing to this format just over a year ago, I initially had in mind the idea of countering the representations of my faith and fellow believers in newspapers and on the radio which didn’t bare much resemblance to my personal experience. As it has developed, the web log has become a means of exploring my own faith, particularly in light of the valuable feedback I receive from visitors. But I guess it is quite easy to get drawn into just writing with no real aim, just because we can.

A word is an act: let us keep this in mind. We are commanded to be careful of our tongues, and so by extension we should be careful of our typing fingers. Back in April I reproduced four questions on this site which read:

Question 1: “Are these words true?”
Question 2: “Are these words necessary?”
Question 3: “Are these words beneficial?”
Question 4: “Are these words kind?”

Though difficult to achieve, to be sure, the advice that followed was that if the answer was no, those words would be best left unspoken and unwritten. No doubt we all make mistakes. I have learnt that when I reach a particular low it is almost always followed by short-lived, hyperactive humour before I return to normal, and as a result I sometimes say and write things that I later come to regret — mostly regret at coming across as an idiot. Yes, we make mistakes, but we would be wise to keep those four questions in mind, to take them to heart and live by them. Unfortunately some of us can’t help ourselves. A web logger from whom I take enormous inspiration has the misfortune to attract readers — Muslim readers — who feel the need to leave comments beneath her posts which criticise and insult her. They may do so believing that they are helping her in some way, but sometimes I think it is just a disease we have.

On Friday evening, taking the time to listen to some worries I had, my teacher told me about a tree in paradise reserved for those who reserved criticism for themselves in life, sparing their neighbours from assault and leaving alone what did not concern them — a tree providing shade for the distance it would take eighty years to travel. It need not takes us long to realise that certain principles are of key importance, permeating the teachings of our Prophet, peace be upon him: our neighbours have rights that include being safe from our tongues; when we give advice we are commanded to do so with the best of speech; we are told to think before we speak; when taking any action, we are ordered to remove anger, rancour and envy from our hearts before doing so.

The responsibilities are great. With regards to my fiction writing, I am more and more convinced that it is something I should leave behind. Ever since I started focusing on learning the Qur’an a couple of months back, I realised that it is not novelists that this ummah needs more of, but people who know their deen. Friends of ours lent us a CD about the ignorance of our time the other day and, although I have not listened to all of it yet, this element stood out for me. All of us think that we are playing our part for this ummah by choosing to become writers, doctors, engineers, lawyers, geneticists — but who is to say we are not deluding ourselves? If we are taught that knowledge will not be removed from the earth as a result of it being removed from our hearts, but as a result of the death of the scholars, should we not be using this time to sit at their feet?

Some of us have been thinking that we will turn our situation around by establishing “Islamic” models of existing structures – so some have focused their efforts on establishing newspapers, others on setting up satellite TV stations and still others, like me, on writing novels. Now it may well be that all of these are worthwhile activities, but should they be our priority? The answer that I am reaching — however difficult on one level — is that for me it should not be. My heart is inclining towards the more difficult road, even as another part of me resists. For years now I have made myself busy in my spare time with this project or that, mostly working on a piece of writing or some design work, but as I make progress in learning the Qur’an at last, I feel the need to get rid of that Protestant Work Ethic and fill my spare time with learning instead of work. So that’s where I am with the creation of fiction.

As for this web log, well it’s a matter of refocusing on its purpose, which is why I’m going to do some pruning. Already I have moved anything to do with writing, publishing, the media and computers to The Othello Press website — although the future of this is also unclear given my quest to use my spare time more productively. You can access those still via the Articles menu.

I can see myself cutting out quite a lot of content, particularly when I clearly only put it up to give you the reader something to read — a favour to readers perhaps, who must also evaluate the time spent browsing the Internet. I have some criteria in mind: are the words true, are they necessary, are they beneficial and are they kind? This cyclical evaluation is one I need to do. Forgive me if I write about all of this again in two months time. It’s not déjà-vu — it’s just my heart.

Changing Times

Weblogs have come under quite some fire recently in the newspaper I regularly buy. Janet Street-Porter’s comment last week was followed a day later by an article by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown. In both cases their generalisations are quite amazing. For me and many others this medium is a mere tool.

Around 1993 my introduction to the world of publishing began with a desk-top publishing (DTP) programme on my brother’s Amstrad PCW. I used to produce a newsheet – “TIM’S”. A couple of years later I initiated two student magazines linked to my interest in development and human rights, “Modern Times” and “Circulation”, which I produced on my own first PC, a 486 machine running Serif PagePlus. Other publications followed. I self-published my first novel with its miniscule circulation using that same machine with Word 6, my trusty HP Inkjet and a binding machine.

At university I spent my second year laying-out the student magazine using Adobe PageMaker. While doing my Masters in 1999, I added Quark Xpress and Adobe Photoshop to my portfolio. Then in 2001, I discovered the internet as a publishing medium and so began a website called “My Journey”, which later became “Our Journey” when I got married. “Euromuslim” and “AlienNation” were two group efforts I toyed with for a while.

You see, for over a decade I have been interested in publishing and writing, and the weblog is just the latest tool in this process. I am really not interested in “blogging” per se, but in communication media in general. I read only two weblogs on a regular basis, one which provides media analysis and one which encompasses matters of the deen. I occaisionally browse other Muslim blogs to get an idea of current thought in western Muslim communities, and a couple of private novel blogs belonging to fellow writers who wish to share their work in progress, but this is the entirety of my engagement with the “blogosphere”.

I write and publish because it is a hobby of mine, as the years have shown. Is there something special about a weblog? Not really. I use the software provided by Blogger because it is more convenient than the FTP method I used when I first discovered the Internet and the DTP adventures before that. I have had so many people coming up to me recently, telling me that they read my “Blog” and I find it quite embarrassing. I’m somehow ashamed to find myself part of this great global trend. But then I remind myself of the same condescending criticism of DTP ten years ago. “Real Publishers” turned their noses up at these upstarts, just as “Real Commentators” mock those who use the medium of weblogs today. No doubt the internet is awash with detritus, but please: so is TV, Radio, Magazine Publishing, Book Publishing and the Newspaper Industry.

I can understand the snobbery on one level: the media and publishing are industries which are intensely difficult to enter. Despite my job interviews with all the big names in publishing I never got my foot in the door given all the competition… so I can appreciate why those on the inside are so protective of their position. But times change. The traditional printing industries died with the advent of the Apple Mac and digital repro in the 1980s. The men who created plates with lead characters protested in their time. And many a small press cried when the DocuTech arrived, whilst others thrived. Times change and media come and go. Newspapers have seen their circulations diminish in recent times, perhaps with the advent of the internet. It is still possible that they might all but die out, newspapers becoming the realm of enthusiasts alone, just as the skills of the calligraphers and copiests of old petered out.

For me, IT has always been a tool, a mean to an end and not an end in itself. No doubt I could have established for myself a great career by now, with great wealth in the bank, had I viewed IT differently some years back. Instead I saw software as a means to achieving my goals, as tools to help in the creative process. Just as a wordprocessor helped me to write, the software of the Weblog now helps me to publish. It is a tool, not an end in itself. A newspaper is a tool too, aiding communication. Those who have let it become an end in itself will awake one day to find it dead. Those who see a tool for what it is will move with the times and adopt whichever gives them the edge. Flint tools gave way to bronze and bronze to iron. This is the way of man.

Burning Books

Apparently Brick Lane’s Bengali community doesn’t think much of Monica Ali’s novel, Brick Lane. Although the makers of a film adaption of the novel have now agreed not to capture the story in those streets, some of the protestors are still threatening to burn the book in public if filming goes ahead. The disgruntled claim that the book insults their community in Shoreditch, East London. For one thing, they argue, it is written by someone not even from the area.

The thing is — and forgive me — Brick Lane is a novel, a work of fiction. I guess the culture of protest concerns me because I have been working on two novels of my own for quite some time, each of them containing characters framed in both positive and negative light and who come from different communities. In the first novel, for example, one of the main protagonists is Christian… but, look, I’m Muslim…

I guess my concerns come down to this: How do Muslim authors write for a non-Muslim audience without being accused of being propagandists? Is our audience mature enough to consider our words impartially? If my writing contains a Muslim character who is a hero or a victim, will it be received as art in the making or as propaganda? Similarly, will I receive death threats from within our community because one Muslim character happens to be portrayed in a negative light? I fear minority writing is often judged through people’s existing prejudices and not on the basis of what is actually there.

What’s a writer to do? All of my characters are multi-faceted, you see the positive and the negative… reality reflected in art, but fiction at the end of the day. Must I prepare myself for the sight of my work going up in flames too? Welcome to our enlightened age.

Conversation with the nafs

These days I am repeatedly having a particular conversation with my nafs. It always goes something like this:

Realisation: It’s time to put everything aside, to focus on my deen and on increasing my knowledge.

Nafs: But what about your novel? Are you really going to abandon it now after all that work you already put in?

Realisation: It will have to wait. My deen is more important.

Nafs: But it’s important that this story was told.

Realisation: I’m still young. Why hurry?

Nafs: You know death could come at any time. You should write before it’s too late.

Realisation: Yes, death could come at any time. And what have I prepared for it? I have to prioritise.

Nafs: So all that work goes down the drain?

Realisation: If death comes tomorrow, the novel will not help me. If longer years are decreed, I will return to it in the extra time.

Nafs: Don’t you want to achieve anything in life?

Realisation: Whatever I achieve will be worthless if I fail on my basic duties…

A story: how I started writing

I have been asked to write something about my love of writing, where it started and so on. It is an interesting question, especially when I look back. I am not well read nor am I learned. I did not have this interest throughout school – or at least I don’t think I did – although I have always been my own story teller.

It being a means of self-expression, perhaps, was the one main factor that drove me to write. I do not have an eloquent tongue; in fact I frequently find I have a disconnect between my brain and what passes through my lips. Throughout my childhood I was extremely quiet and I believe this continues to have an impact on me today, although I am much better than once I was.

My opening to writing only came around the age of sixteen when I left school. I had spent the previous decade in a private school in which I did not perform well. I was constantly at the bottom of the class, receiving poor grades, predominantly I should say because I was lazy. It was only in my final year that my conscience began to stir and I began to want to learn. It was too late for the school however, for I had already decided to leave. I had low esteem to a degree you would not believe and my departure was something of a protest.

When I moved on to Sixth Form College I felt it was the first time in my entire life that teachers had treated me as half intelligent. No doubt the academic standard here was not as high, no doubt I had once stood beside the cream of the crop and now I was more amongst my equals, but the change of environment really was an aid. My low esteem continued to hold me back, but it was the start of something. I made a poor choice of A-Levels, choosing those subjects I thought I would enjoy, not those that would dictate my future career: indeed I had no career direction. I feel indebted to one of my teachers at that time however.

I had chosen to study English Language; I suppose this was the poor man’s alternative to English Literature. Poor in will that is. This course was all about writing, rather than a study of the work of the masters. I was not skilled at the time: my grammar was poor and my vocabulary was constricted. One of my tutors, however, looked beyond this and did everything she could to encourage me. Though my writing was poor she fostered my interest. Though it was immature and no doubt at a standard I should have reached years before, she continued to expend nice words on me. Her name was Eleanor Marsden and she is often in my thoughts.

My first forays into authorship were some whacky tongue-in-cheek adventures in time travel. There were the tales of Professor Ivan and Dan the Time Travelling Man. There was the instruction manual for a time machine. I have one of those stupid English senses of humour; the very subtle dry irony. Those stories were mockery of literature in a way, the natural response of one who was not well read.

In my final year of College I did not apply to attend university as my friends did. My mood was still low and I did not believe I would pass my exams. When I did it was something of a surprise. I decided to apply for the following year and spend this year doing something else. What, I wasn’t sure. Somehow I convinced my parents that I was going to be a writer and amazingly they tolerated me. While my brothers had each been given a Hi-Fi when they passed their O’Levels, I had received a 486 personal computer. Towards the end of my days at school I had developed an interest in graphic design, utilising my eldest brother’s Amstrad green screen word processor. I decided I wanted to pursue this and so my ever generous father had a computer built for me. The machine was invaluable. During those summer months after college I began to write a script for a short film, sitting at the keyboard in my bedroom, tapping out the words.

As September approached however, it was time to look for work. The son of the publisher of the Parish Magazine was visiting our Church and he happened to mention in passing that he was looking for students to do some product acceptance testing on an IT project he was managing down in Cambridge. It was an opportunity for me, so I packed my bags and travelled down south to take up the work. I was the only student who lasted more than a day; my colleagues were soon replaced by some mature fellows, redundant, unemployable and taking whatever work they could. During that time I met a project manager called Robert Yelbeck who had an interest in writing in his spare time. He cast his eyes over my manuscript and gave me perhaps the most useful advice I have ever received. ‘Don’t give up the day job,’ he told me.

It was quite a blow. He was saying my writing was poor, he was saying it was immature and foolish. It was a knock-back, but funnily it was inspiring. It made me want to write. It made me want to be good. It made me want to stick at it, to really work at it, to do whatever I could to be more than a failure once again. When my contract finished I returned to Hull and my parent’s home, and there I began to process of writing my first novel, taking that pathetic manuscript as its foundation. You will know what I think about this if you read the earlier post.

What follows may sound strange, but essay writing was probably the one thing that improved my writing no end. I finally got a place at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, to study Geography and Development Studies. I enjoyed writing essays; yes, it was a hard work at the time, but I enjoyed doing research and then arguing the point. Essay writing is quite intensive training: you often have to make wide-ranging points, reviewing great bodies of research in the process, and yet you must do so within the confines of a ridiculously small word limit. But writing essays on obscure subjects such as the contribution of industrialisation to water pollution in the River Ganges or environmental degradation in sub-Saharan Africa was great training. What is more, it made me read. I had to read, and in doing so I not only read the arguments, but also observed how the authors wrote.

Since then I have just been writing: writing, writing, writing. Often it is just a release for me, but sometimes it serves a purpose. I always have at least two projects in mind, although I never seem to finish any of them. Whatever I write, however, it always gets sucked into that other passion of mine: creating beautiful pages. I do not have what one would call a career; I am not a skilled worker. So the little I do have I am determined to cling onto with all my might. That simple desire: to create beautiful books.

Troubled Writer

Exactly a decade ago I spent every day, between the hours of about two in the afternoon and three in the morning, tapping out a novel called The Beauty of the Lion. I had just finished a short contract testing mapping software on the Science Park in Cambridge and had returned to my parents’ home. I don’t know how they tolerated me, but I spent about five months solid writing that book. When I had finished, I printed five limited editions on my HP inkjet on some plaid A5 paper I had bought from WHSmiths. My father then took the pages with him to the office where he had them bound.

Shortly afterwards he kindly ordered me a dozen packs of guillotined A4 paper, which arrived in thick A5 blocks wrapped in brown paper. A few more copies promptly popped out of my printer. I say promptly, but there was me printing the odd pages from each one of the twenty-nine chapters, each one stored in a separate Word file, turning them over, setting the file to print back-to-front and then printing the even pages. My sobs when it pulled multiple pages through the printer at once were audible throughout the house. When I had finished I flew off to Tanzania to spend forty-nine days with my missionary uncle.

By the following summer, after a year at university, I had decided to re-write that novel, having concluded that the original was a pile of #@£$. I wanted to make a decent book out of it, so I spent my entire summer holidays working through it. Again, I don’t know how my parents tolerated me, but they did. The first draft had been all about race, the new one more about religion. The shift in my writing reflected what was happening in real life, as attested by The Neurocentric column published in the student magazine. I never finished this draft for by the following summer I had embraced Islam and was shunning the creative life.

The Neurocentric disappeared from the student magazine and all work on the novel ceased. A couple of years later in a fit of disillusionment I deleted the files from my computer and threw the printed copies away. A week or so later I wondered what on earth I had done; the writing may have been poor, but those books were part of me. I frantically searched for some software to restore my files, for they were long gone from the Windows Recycle Bin. I searched my Zip disks, my floppies, the odd CD-ROM. Some files, at least, I was able to restore, but half a dozen chapters from my latest work were gone. There was once a manuscript from that one circulating amongst friends – it is the only remaining copy of those words – but I have no idea where it is, even if it still exists.

I have written on this web log before about why I ceased to write in this fictional setting. I stopped for three or four years, although there were moments now and then when I returned, or thought about returning. The urge to write remained, but I was often disillusioned. I did not know if I still could, or still should. There was another aspect: in the past I had been a rather angry chap and so I used my writing to work things out of my system. As a Muslim, however, I no longer have that anger, or at least I cannot sustain it. If I am angry, my prayer makes me calm again. With five prayers in the day it is nearly impossible to use that anger, to put in down on paper. Rage is such great inspiration, but Islam has made me calm.

Around four years ago, however, I finally came to some sort of peace, reconciling my desire to write with my Islam. I perceived a need. And so began a new novel at last. It is a tale about the way power can corrupt and temptations overcome us. Progress is incredibly slow, but at least there is a work in progress. These days I am employed full time and I am a married man. I cannot lock myself away for hours on end; especially since I haven’t even shared a paragraph with my good wife in three years. Progress is painfully slow. No more than 90,000 words in three years. But at least I am writing again.

Despite the constant requests, I am reluctant to share my novel even with my wife or a writer friend of mine because it is disjointed at the moment and would not make sense. I have long since abandoned the first chapter which I wrote three years ago, thus my original second chapter is just hanging there while I rework everything. Alas it was not a short chapter either, so it is quite a substantial gap. While reading a bit of Wilde and a bit of Dickens recently made me re-evaluate my chapter structure and make them much shorter, those early versions were 16,000 and 36,000 words respectively. The early text was also set in a fictional town circa 1993, while it now encompasses a very real landscape and a new decade – so continuity is hugely wanting.

What is more, the way in which I am writing this novel causes reluctance. As I have said before, I describe it as “layers upon layers”. I usually start by rushing the dialogue down, then I would go back to really work on that dialogue. Later I would move on to the environment, the setting, the details. Sometimes it’s the other way round – I have swathes of atmospheric text I am really happy with, but the dialogue is hollow. I would say I have a continuity of twelve chapters now which could be considered a complete first draft – from what was my new first chapter – and the original long second chapter, but beyond this all I have are islands. Some of those islands are there because I haven’t got to them yet, but many others are there simply because they are so difficult and I am avoiding them as long as possible.

People think I am crazy: I am the author after all. Why am I making things so difficult for myself, they ask. It is the gap between formulating the story and my ability to tell it as I want it to be told. It is really hard work. My writer friend was asking me why it is taking me so long a couple of weeks ago. I explained that I tapped out my first novel over just a few months a decade ago, but it was a load of rubbish: it had no stylistic merit whatsoever. This time I want to write something that is “good” at the very least.

I have picked it up twice this week, but only managed five sentences. I am lazy, or easily distracted, or I have a very short attention span. Emails took me away from it. The Neurocentric took me away. The call of my garden pulled me away. A forum for writers distracted me. My evenings pass me by too quickly. I do not want to neglect my wife. So much to take me away. I may pick it up again this evening. It is Friday night, I may work into the early hours. I may.

But then again, I said I would cook a pie tonight; I said I would do my share. Sorry, dear novel, I must neglect you once more.