Between worlds: The MISFIT Journey
I bet everyone has a question about my story. Maybe for you it isn’t what inspired it, but what it means to me?. Why did I shift from my ‘niche’ into completely new territory?. I will attempt to answer all the questions while not failing to make this just another blog about someone’s decisions, good and bad. But I will be as real as I can.
MISFIT began as fragments of dreams, literally and figuratively. A big part of it, though, came out of daydreaming, embracing the art of Dolce far niente while the world of science tried to figure out how to keep us all alive in the wake of COVID. So I want to take this opportunity on behalf of myself and the people of Ankora in the very distant future, in the year 4300 A.D., to say a very big thank you for preserving what is, and for giving what is to come a fighting chance by figuring this modern-day plague out and very quickly, too. Sparing the creative community from being burdened with curating a perfectly attuned rhyme that beats its counterpart “a-ring-a-ring-a-roses, a pocket full of posies-”, if you know what I mean.
Anyway, not to digress. So yes, while I do believe that stories should challenge us, MISFIT was not just a challenge but a call for me to figure out what identity truly means. MISFIT was written to help everyone with that gaping question, too.
And by everyone, I mean everyone, because I do believe that everyone, irrespective of race, does go through an identity crisis at some point in life. Mine started at the age of eight. YES EIGHT!
I recall a hearty chat with my brother, who was already gaining popularity in primary school from writing stories that everyone chased after. For me, he was where I drew inspiration from, inspiration to write my first story “The Widower’s MIGHT”.
That was the title of the first story I wrote at the age of eight years old. Impressive right. And I was proud of it too. I put down the final full stop, read through to make sure I had crossed my T’s and dotted my ‘I’, and was off to show my story off to the one person I was certain would sing my praise. I was wrong, praise was very far from what i got instead, i was told off on how I never paid attention in class and why my spelling was still so bad. All I got was harsh criticism.
My understanding of ‘widower’ was incorrect; I should have used ‘widow’ instead, because the main character was not a man but a woman. Instead of praise and encouragement, all I got was pen marks in my story in pencil, circling every mistake, every wrong spelling, every grammatical error. I recall walking away with a heaviness I had felt for the first time, crying quietly inside.
Unknown to me, that experience will find a quiet corner and stay there for the rest of my developing years.
The me today still weep for the child back then, who never got what she should have at eight, for even attempting to write a story from her own imagination. And perhaps that’s why I feel drawn to the early-year grades. I feel a deep sense of responsibility towards kids struggling to fit in, because that was me, at every point in my development. From adolescence to my Teenage years, I never quite fitted in. I felt like an NPC, only existing to give directions and for others to stop and have a chat with.
After that experience, I did not write a single story till I turned 13, and fate forced my first story into reality. Grief-stricken, I was forced to watch the might of a widow in the person of my mother, who lost her husband to a war he had no business being in. I found writing again, but not because I enjoyed it, but because it was the only thing that didn’t talk back at me; it was the only thing I had to keep me sane.
This journey has been anything but easy; however, every day has been rewarding ever since I took the reins of my story and told my publishers to go burn the sea instead of wasting my time. (In very professional language, by the way, and not in the slightest bit rude). And the aftermath of the whole creating process brought a whole new challenge, ‘Self-Publishing,” which is a story for another day.
It is amazing how much you can accomplish if you truly put your mind to something, and I am proud of my ability to push myself beyond what seemed impossible. At every point in my life.
So to everyone who picks up my book to read, know that you are not healing wounds; you are making a writer feel rewarded and appreciated. And to anyone struggling to make sense of anything at all, I know what it feels like to be between worlds, but whatever it is that soothes you, reading, writing, cycling, creating, singing. As long as it heals aspects of yourself, don’t give up on it, even if all you get is criticism. I don’t boast about being an amazing writer, but I knowI am good at it! and that is all the attitude you need in life! And don’t let anyone put impossible in your dictionary.
When life gives you lemons, it’s probably trying to see if you’ll make art out of acid. Joke’s on life, because I DID!
