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It’s Been a Year Since I Quit Teaching, and Here’s What I’ve Concluded – Journal
What a difference a year has made! A couple of days ago I realised June was almost over. Tempus volat. And it made me think. In the previous years, June could not come soon enough, the end of June was the beacon towards which I directed all of my energy. It’s as if I put…
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NaNoWriMo and Rediscovering the Joy of Writing
A blank cork board on Scrivener holds so many possibilities. Every year I talk to fellow writers just around November, and we discuss the quiet dread that surrounds NaNo: deadlines, timeframes, word counts, ideas. Some spend entire October planing and plotting for November just to unleash the ideas and fulfill the daily quota. And for…
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Ready Player One Movie: A Frolic Down the Memory Lane
It is a common occurrence that as soon as a book-based film gets released the critics start raving about how much better the book was. Yet we do seem to forget that books and films are two very different media with their own requirements and merits. In the case of Ready Player One, the movie…
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Middle of Nowhere
Mosquitoes on the glass Peer at the breathing mass Rubbing their dainty hands Expecting a feast in the sands In the midst of these parched lands Palm trees and a patch of grass Everything else meant to pass The wind tickles the spiky leaves Just a bit, before it heaves A swirling dusty cloud Of…
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Writer’s Block: Getting Out of the Rut
I’ve been working on my novel long enough to expect to get stuck in a rut at least once a week. What I make sure, though, is that these ‘recovery periods’ as I call them, do not last for long. Sometimes you can get overwhelmed, tired, stressed out, or simply frightened and short periods of…
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Adichie’s Defense of Feminism
The word feminist has been ladened with a load of negative baggage: you hate men, you burn bras, you hate your own tradition, you think women are better than men, you don’t wear make-up, you don’t shave, you’re always angry, you don’t have a sense of humour, you don’t use deodorant, etc. In her 2012…
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Love Thy Mother: Coraline by Neil Gaiman
Neil Gaiman’s mild horror novella Coraline (2002) is a book I keep returning to whenever I find myself missing my own mother, and that is definitely the case today, during the Mother’s Day weekend. The story of Coraline is one where numerous contemporary parents and children could recognize themselves: the desperately bored little girl looking…
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Sarajevo: What to Read on Your Way Home
Every day, one way or another, I end up being asked about my identity, which I need to express in the way that will be the clearest to my interlocutor. I end up bringing up my national, professional, private, or whatever identity I am required to present at the time. However, the more I think…
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Fireworks
‘Come on, get up! Wake up, come on, it’s started again! Move! Let’s go!’ The blast shook the house. Mother pulled me out of the bed and down the stairs, clutching my sister in her arms. Another blast. We stopped in the stairwell. There was a short stretch of terrace we needed to run through…
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Back Online
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Myths & Stories 