Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize, to the confusion and disillusionment of the desi crowd over at the Lounge and from the reading I’ve been doing lately, at large. One of our writers and site’s moderators, based in Washington was at hand during Hamid’s readings at Barnes & Noble, and read the book. The vote was unanimous: it just wasn’t up to par. So why has it been shortlisted? Everyone else, it seems, is wondering the very same thing.

Is it the theme of the novel? The overdone Muslim living in America-fallen in love with an American-now looked on with suspicion-in a post 9/11 world-thing again? It might be. The literariness of things which so concerns us, doesn’t seem to concern the English community as well. Oh well. I suppose beggars can’t be choosers. Or something like that.

Fortunately, we’re not discussing Hamid’s latest attempt at an international bestseller coming a few years (but not enough, it seems) too late.

My last post ended with the intimation that this one was going to be about book clubs. Well, it is and it isn’t. Blogs are so hard to classify sometimes, don’t you think?

Book clubs are, to put it quite simply, non-existent in countries like ours where government officials refuse to allow now exonerated politicians to enter their countries, and instead deport them elsewhere, even when the Supreme Court has ruled otherwise. It seems some things just don’t change. But I digress. Book clubs aren’t evident here, and if they are, they’re mostly private gatherings (although I confess: I haven’t heard of any local or national or domestic, for that matter). But the whole “this thing isn’t here either. Screw the country!” is getting a little old for me. I like to switch things around a lot, which is something the readers of this blog will become accustomed to over time. Although, if you’re ree-eeally interested, check out my space (shameless self-promotion, I know. I’m a horrible human being, let’s move on).

So granted, there aren’t book clubs and let’s get down to the dirty stuff: we at DesiWritersLounge.net know what you, as readers and possibly, budding writers want – a place to discuss everything. We provide it. Interested? Good. Frankly, I was hoping I raked your interest much earlier in the blog, but as mentioned before, beggars really can’t be picky.

Fortunately, Dawn provides an escape with its rather well-worked, although concededly poorly edited, weekly – Books & Authors. They’ve got book reviews, interviews with authors, the whole shebang. And if it weren’t for this thing, my Sundays would be largely boring and banging-head-on-the-wall days. Fortunately for both of us, it exists. So if you haven’t subscribed to Dawn yet, do. I’ll admit the newspaper in itself, is paltry compared to the hardcore news The News provides, but it’s plethora of extras is well worth it, especially if you’ve got an internet connection and can skedaddle off to their website.

So that’s one problem down.

Dawn’s extras are miles better than the ones The News provides. Sorry, The News fans (of which, I used to count myself as one. Things change…or I’m more open to the good stuff), but it’s true. You, Us, Instep, The News on Sunday…can you really compare yourself to ScienceTech (or whatever it’s called), Young World, Books & Authors, The Review, Magazine, Images etc? I mean seriously, can you? It’s not just the amount of pages on display here, it’s the content they’re stuffed with. I love the SWOT (I’m in love with the acronym) column that appears each Sunday at the very end of the Magazine. And of course, there’s the Gallery, a review of artistic ventures in the country. So really, if you need to be aware of anything literary or artistic, consult Books & Authors and the Gallery circulations. They’re decent.

Also, all those Lahore-walay out there, there’s an excellent bargain book store on MM Boulevard, right next to the Telenor building, called Readings. Of course, if you’re an Islamabad resident, you’re well aware that what it lacks in literary activities, it makes up for with its variety of old book stores. I found a treasure in a book store in Jinnah – in the Vogue furniture store line – Rilla of Ingleside (the last of the Anne series, which I own). So they are all over the city, although I haven’t been able to find any in its most youth oriented district – F-11. But who knows? One might spring up. There are three in the F-10 area and of course enough to write home about in F-6, F-7 and F-8. I lived half my life in the latter two.

Anyway, aside from domestic chatter, I’m off.

Next post (whenever that might be): writing strategies, or to be more specific, how to get the work done, instead of staring at an empty page all day. Having been there and back again, I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve. But more on that next time.

A few months ago, a discussion sprung up on the community about the viability of podcasts in the writing world, or to be more specific, in the Desi Writer’s Lounge writing world. It has, like most great ideas, petered out until someone revives it (presumably me).

Podcasts. In case you’re wondering what they are, they’re broadcasts for the internet, subscription based and mp3’d so you can download them to your iPod or mp3 player of choice, hence the term – “podcast”. i”Pod” and broad”cast”. Nifty, eh? It’s one of the best ways to create literary awareness, and contrary to public speculation, there are a wealth of podcasts for Pakistanis by Pakistanis and if there aren’t literary based podcasts, well someone has to create a market for them, right? For something to have a market, it has to be created. Basic economic theory. To create demand for a product, supply it and if it’s decent, people will flock to it.

I don’t think the writing community has really understood the impact of podcasts – I have seen a few sites that offer readings of select pieces as a podcast – but they aren’t updated regularly, and subscribing to their feed is entirely pointless. And why should we limit ourselves to readings? If we can start a show about literary offerings in the country – have scouts around the country in major cities – and ask them to monitor and keep an eye out for any happenings, well…? T2F (The 2nd Floor) in Karachi is doing an interesting job of it – they’ve got readings by some newer local authors, and impromptu readings by aspiring authors – they haven’t limited themselves to just that, they’ve incorporated government policies as well. But that’s in Karachi, and anyone who lives in Pakistan, knows that Karachi is a country in itself, separated from the rest of the country in both geography and population. If it were closer to either Lahore or Islamabad, traveling there wouldn’t be entirely impossible. No one wants to spend close to Rs 18k for one trip there, as opposed to the 1k it’d take to take a return trip to Lahore via Daewoo.

And that’s another advantage podcasts have over their more traditional counterparts – location. You don’t need to be in either of the reporting cities, or even in the same country, to get the information – readings, people talking about h-interesting things, the latest happenings in the arty world.

So expect podcasts to hit DesiWritersLounge.net’s airwaves over the next few months or so. This is one idea I’m not prepared to let go of just yet.

There is other news: preparing for the fourth issue of our e-zine in April ’08, I’d like to have assigned editors in charge of our various column/sections (The Poet, The Writer, The Rambler and The Abstract Thinker). So if you’re interested, drop me a line at maryam@desiwriterslounge.net. Be prepared however: you’ll need to do this pro bono, like the rest of us. So if you’re looking for a way to make some extra cash, this isn’t it. Sorry.

We’ll also need podcast gurus – people who have interest in creating a show and/or being a correspondent for their city – and those who have experience in creating one. True, I hail from a Computer Science background, but those days are largely over. With my jobs spanning from being a project manager to technological consultant (largely marketing) and now, an entirely marketing job. I’ve done my fair share of programming, etc but would prefer to move out of that life although I do run a website, but hey! We’re hiring…or…well, you know what I mean.

I do however, encourage you to participate in the forums first, to see how well you and your experience would gel into our existing community.

Oh and news: we’re starting our official Book Club. True, we had one before but that was more of a “let me tell you what book I’m currently reading” or “I’m confused, people! Tell me what I should read.” Beginning this month, we’ll all start reading a book together and then meet every two weeks to discuss, which brings me to my next post.

Book clubs and reviews.

later.

To start with, I should confess: I don’t know much about teaching, but I can list the qualities I would like a good creative writing teacher to have, if we must learn about writing. I’d much prefer a creative writing ‘guide’. I for one, don’t believe writing can be taught: you either have it or you don’t.

At the most, a Creative Writing MFA can give you a structured life and a writing support system in the form of writing professors, a community of writers and your peers. It enforces a writer to do just that: write, no excuses. You can hope that the program you choose, and which ultimately accepts you has a program which is both flexible and whose instructors don’t condition you into a predefined mold, encouraging you to diversify and experiment with your work. At least, that’s what I would look for.

My reasons to apply for a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing are primarily a chance to focus on my craft solely and completely, to get that perspective and direction, focus and concentration. My intentions and reasons are, as you can see, quite pure. I don’t want the glory and I’m not doing it for the publication (which is blurry as it is – no program guarantees you publication upon graduation. If you do get it, consider yourself lucky. It does however, stand to put you on the map). I want the knowledge of realizing that I’ve done something I set out to do, accomplished a personal ambition – the degree will be an extremely personal endeavor. Above all, I want the experience of working with like minded peers.

However, I do know what focusing exclusively on writing can do to you and I think it’s quite normal to lose your mind. I know this, because I’ve experienced it. On multiple occasions. A friend tried to explain it by comparing it to a relationship: it’s entirely one sided and you often don’t get much in return. So you need to know what you’re doing, going in and know that this will be the most demanding and taxing job you will ever commit to. Don’t underestimate that. Above all, know that the pangs of loneliness you will feel now and again, are perpetual and they’ll never end. Not when you’re surrounded by friends and family, not even when you’ve met the undying love of your life, because inevitably, you’ll be spending much of the time alone. Alone with your writing and your mind. It’s one of the things that appeals to me about writing – that one can survive quite well on one’s own – of course, you’re human: you feel lonely, but eventually those pangs pass and you’re writing again and everything just melts away.

So the MFA in Creative Writing program isn’t a “how-to” guide for writing – it’s for serious writers who want the structure, framework and time on which to focus on their craft – and working towards a goal, which in their everyday lives, they wouldn’t get a chance to. Think of it like a retreat…away from home, from people, from the world and where you will be expected to be alone and write.

I know a lot of Sub-Continental (Pakistani, Indian, Bangladeshi, Afghani etc) writers who have pursued the MFA have used their perspectives once outside of their countries of origin, to write a more informed representation of their countries and the politics within. It does give you perspective after all.

I’ve been a prospective applicant and I’ve devoted the last four years to exclusive research on the program and all it entails and what it sets out to accomplish.

One thing though: writing? It isn’t for the faint of heart. You have to be committed and have the heart to see it through, wherever your path takes you, whatever depths you have to plummet, and heights you need to scale to reach your destination.

Know that and you’re all set. Have a great weekend!

Till my next post.

The last several posts have denoted a void for members or aspiring members, of the literary circle and this one introduces a diversion: writing competitions. Are they the necessary evils to propel awareness into our society and create a workable market and solution around the problem?

As a rule, I don’t like competitions. I think a piece of writing is largely subjective and open to interpretation by its readers, and as such, can it really be judged and not only judged, but (horror of horrors) compared? But then, we subconsciously do it all the time when we compare one book with the other, one author with another, one genre with another. So my rules should be discarded, shouldn’t they?

Writing competitions are, like other literary pursuits in this country, a forgotten breed. That when they do arise, they bring a wealth of submissions denotes a promising thing: there are aspiring writers in this country, or at the very least, earnest amateurs. One noted example is the recent Young Writers’ Competition on Women in Pakistan held by the Heinrich Boll Foundation in conjunction with the Goethe Institut, Karachi and Oxford University Press. Out of 600 submissions, the top 20 writers were selected by a panel of literary heavyweights to participate in a workshop held at the Heinrich Boll Foundation, Lahore to prepare their texts for publication by OUP on International Women’s Day. This is the first serious venture taken in Pakistan, exclusively for young writers. Now that’s promising. One can only hope, this is one step in a continuing series of right steps.

Now of course, there have been other competitions open to Pakistani writers in the past, most notably the Commonwealth Writing Competition, but those are almost entirely for school going young adults, and don’t cater for the 18-30 year olds that form a key subset of the current population.

The Young Writers Competition provided a good approach – there were cash prizes for the monetary inclined and the chance to pursue a workshop under the guidance of a published author – for the more serious writers, and of course the chance to see their work in print. My advice would be for more competitions of this kind and to open up a realm of mainstream literary journals to encourage writing and publication. Because if the only option for publication for serious writers is still Jang’s Us – Magazine for the Youth in five years – I’ll jump off a cliff.

Giving examples of either the US or the UK is laughable, because those two countries are far ahead of us in every mainstream field, and it goes without saying that they’re beyond us in this one as well. One of the reasons for that of course, isn’t just the lack of competitions, but the lack of understanding that writing and literary pursuits are not derogatory and nor should they be made to be. There are a handful of universities offering liberal arts degrees, and good ones. Most recently, Beaconhouse National University opened its doors to providing a solid, decent experience with an excellent staff of teachers. This information is still unverified, since time and chance hasn’t allowed me to take a look at their campus, although I have been to their website (http://www.bnu.edu.pk). Among its notable features is the MA in English Literature which provides workshops by established Pakistani authors, which needless to say, is an excellent thing! It’s a marvelous step in the right direction.

Now all we need are more universities who offer their students a rich, diverse literary experience and an environment to really dive into, and we’re all set.

Another consideration is the art of teaching creative writing, which brings me to Creative Writing programs, most notably the MFA (Masters of Fine Arts) in Creative Writing which is becoming a craze for the younger generation of writers, with particular reference to local authors because of a lack of opportunities here. In my next post, I hope to discuss whether pursuit of this program is the most lucrative option available, whether writing can be taught, and just what the MFA experience offers.

Till then…

I am a writer. Agreed. But I want something more – I want publication – is that wrong? Given, I want it eventually, on my own terms and when I believe my work and I are ready for the commitment. Of course, writing in itself is a commitment.

But that’s not the point. Of course.

To this end, I’ve tried to do my research. There are options here, but not many – there’s your traditional Oxford University Press, who until recently had stopped their liaison with local authors – and then there’s Al-Hamra, which also runs it’s own literary journal but circulation and printing is just alright. I’ve bought a few books Al-Hamra’s reprinted and they’re passable – the grammar freak in me shudders and dies every time. But that’s beside the point.

So what else is there? The publication industry in itself is a relatively impossible one to break into in any country, but in Pakistan it seems a conglomerate of red tape. That Pakistani authors are published by non-locally affiliated publishing houses (Fabier, Bloomsbury, Penguin India etc) says they are publishable. So why doesn’t anyone pick them up locally? That, my friends, is the world’s biggest mystery.

We’ve got some very talented writers who aren’t branded or even publicized under the local banner. We do have playwrights associated with well known theater houses who write about socially tabooed subjects, but that’s not the same thing. There’s nothing in the mainstream, and it’s not for the lack of talent.

It’s extremely frustrating.

Why should local artists look outside the borders of their country to their neighbors, or cross the Atlantic in search for better opportunities? Why can’t there be a market for writers within our own? So yeah, DesiWritersLounge.net might seem a little ambitious in its goal for creating literary awareness and encouraging literary voices to be heard. It’s a slow process, absolutely but it needs to be done.

There’s been another update – our main section forums split into your traditional poetry, prose and non-fiction – have now branched into more specific sections. Non-fiction was more like creative rambling – well-written to be sure – but not groundbreaking or anything. So we’ve renamed one of our e-zine sections to The Rambler and taken the existing section The Abstract Thinker and given it a complete face lift, encouraging writers to write political rhetoric, creative commentaries or any other journalistic venture, where thinking outside the box and writing to set the world on fire (to spark a “hmm…s/he’s got a point”) are the definition. I’m hopeful. Our members seem to have responded well to the playwriting ordeal.

So there is a market for local writers – sure, it’s a small publication and we’re picky with who we choose to let in – but we’re a committed band of people. And chances are, our policies although in core values remain the same; will shift to incorporate a set of differently evolving, and opinionated set of writers. We want quality. That’s all we’re promoting.

Take a look, and if you like what you see then hey! Join.

You’ve got nothing to lose.

later.

I’m waiting to hear from the HR department of my sister’s company asking me for some employee details, and I find myself here again.

A few days ago, I decided to add two new forums to our existing standard (poetry, prose, abstract non-fiction) – scripts. There was a bit of on site discussion on how well it would do, or whether or not we even needed the addition. The points raised were valid, primarily copyright issues. But here, I should mention that the pieces considered for the e-zine can always be vetoed by the author if he/she doesn’t want them put up and made public. The forums are currently members-only.

Because the community is Pakistan based, and copyright laws are practically non-existent here unless you have a plethora of contacts and the money to back you up, we could risk losing the creative material we so boldly put up. But since the e-zine’s already out there, there’s nothing we can really do. Besides, I’ve known former classmates rewriting O-level (high school) English assignments from young people’s magazines like Jang Group’s Us, so there goes the morality thing. However, thanks to a member’s research, our work is now licensed under Creative Commons – it can be reused as long as the original author is credited, or the link is pointed back towards DesiWritersLounge.net, it’s not put to commercial use and no derivative work from the original source is published. I am however, looking into creating a copyright for the site and all its contents in the US since that’s where our server’s based.

So once we’ve cleared the copyrights issue for the scripts, we’ve got another problem or so it seemed: because the jargon is entirely different from traditional prose, there will be added things to consider, so what if readers can’t move past that or don’t understand something or find it too distracting? My answer to that is: choice. They can choose to enter that forum, knowing that a screenwriter’s job is different from an ordinary writer’s and move past that or simply click on something else. Nobody’s force feeding them anything, here.

Those issues are now effectively out of the way. The next thing that hounds me is quality. Will this arena suffer as well? Will we be plagued by younger writers? We need an older set of people writing on the community – what we’ve got now are two very clearly defined age groups. The 15-20ers who all write in a particular way and the 21-35ers who have an entirely different take on things. Members from both sets are active, although I’m sad to say some of the more talented younger members from the Orkut community don’t seem to have made the transition with us. This can only be a failing on our part, so ideas and suggestions to improve would be very helpful.

Lastly, because I want the web version to be the first step to creating literary awareness in Pakistan (many of the South Asian countries are far ahead of us in this regard), I am very interested in taking this offline and into the real world as a print publication. However, knowing that that would take a lot of time, planning and smart marketing, I’m willing to let this be the beginning. To create the willingness to be published in our off-line magazine, whenever that comes to fruition, we need to have a serious literary online presence. People need to know that we take our work and what we publish very seriously, and in that respect I feel the polls are a hindrance, something that will inevitably bog us down rather than push us forward. They almost seem painfully amateurish.

To explain the polling system, let me expound: there are two separate forums at this point. One catering for writers who want feedback but held back, who don’t want the brutality the desi writers have become almost known for. The other forum holds nothing back – ‘your balls for breakfast’ to quote the forum description – also known as the e-zine forum, so anything posted in this automatically becomes a potential consideration for the quarter’s e-zine. Polls are set up on every e-zine bound piece and select pieces from the regular forum, where members are encouraged to vote on their favorites. Deadlocked pieces – ie an equal number of votes for and against the piece – are set aside and judged by an independent jury of moderators. Since last quarter, I allowed pieces sent in by a few votes in, we now have a required minimum of votes before the piece can be voted in. Less than that, and it doesn’t qualify which I think, is only fair.

So yeah, the process was definitely more defined and organized this time around which I want to perfect when we bring out our next issue in December.

What I’m really looking for of course, are serious writers who share our goals and are willing to take the criticism we give and give theirs in return on other pieces. We thrive on community participation. Think of it as a daily writer’s workshop, 24/7, 365 days a year and a very thankless job.

That we’re now on 153 members has been solely on word of mouth although out of that number, less than 10% post which is the heartbreaking reality. So when I say “serious writers”, I’m referring to writers who actually post, who make our hard work mean something.

God! This is an impossible responsibility, but we’re still rallying forth, can’t give up yet can we?

I remember when the community first started – it found its home on an online networking community – more popularly called a “social network” – Google’s Orkut. It began a little slowly but then quickly grew to a modest size, although a very small faction of its 600+ members actually posted. I never understood the reason behind joining a community and not letting your voice be heard. It’s a problem we’re facing on the site now, and it becomes irritatingly acute when the moderators of the site are involved in the intensities of their own lives.

Although we’ve since moved off of Google’s servers and onto our own, establishing a dream we’d planned out for two years before it formalized and took concrete shape, thanks to yours truly. Yes, I am going to toot my own horn here, and frankly, I don’t see why I shouldn’t. We would still have been on Orkut because the other moderators, bless them, are brilliant writers but horrible implementers.

And that brings me to the site. A little marketing rumble, if you please. We’ve got a quarterly e-zine with a first of its kind polling system to determine which pieces should make it (remember that strange little thing called: democracy?), and we’ve got the forum where all of it “goes down”.

But, and here’s the catch, there don’t seem to be a lot of people aware of it. I mean, we’ve got a burgeoning mass of people keen to join the now, moderated Orkut group, but relatively fewer people flocking to its very prevalent successor. That community, for all purposes, is dead. Its forums are lifeless and people who do post aren’t, pardon the chauvinism, writers from any stretch of the imagination. And we like our writers – we have a system of approving requests based on a valid reason for joining – are you a serious writer? Looking for some serious criticism? Because you’re going to get it, and if you think you can handle it, that’s who we’re looking for.

We’re trying, in our own way, to encourage literary and creative thought in the desi population – a fast fading thought, it seems – but I rebel! There are people out there, who like us, are looking for an appropriate forum to voice their thoughts. And I’m here to tell you: there is hope.

And there is a lack of desi writing forums out there – I know, I checked – I searched intensely and found a lot of “desi forums” but nothing catering to readers and writers. Sure, there’s desilit.org and desiwriters.com which, by the way, was formed by a member of ours, but lacks our official seal of approval. Hey! The man stole our domain name, I think we have a right to be picky here!

So, we’re here for any interested. The blog’s here, the website’s here, the forums are there, the e-zine’s up and running with a newly created editorial policy but more on that tomorrow.

Lovely! I’ve got something to talk about tomorrow.

later.