Q: Please introduce yourself! Share your name, pronouns, and something fun, interesting, or random (your choice) about yourself.
A: I’m Mariya (she/her)! I’m a 25-year-old writer based in Toronto, Canada and when I’m not writing, I’m working as a Speech-Language Pathologist. I love that I can work with language and connection in so many different forms throughout my days and I love helping people find their own words and build their confidence as communicators.
Q: What genre or format do you write in? (for example: romance, fantasy, short stories, poetry, etc.)
A: I like to say that I had a schoolgirl crush on poetry before growing into my love for short stories. I do still write poetry and I love the craft but there is something so incredibly fun about the short story form and the many different ways it can be manipulated to tell a tale. Having said that, I do still have several ideas that I believe are best realized as novels—there is a chance I may be working on one already.
Q: Who do you write for? Who is your audience, and are you seeking to reach a particular type of reader with your work? Why?
A: Ultimately, writers create from their own identities and draw from their own subjective opinions and worldviews. Given this, I write for anyone who is a part of the global diaspora, I write for young Muslim girls, I write for second generation immigrant children. I write for people who feel the weight of the world on their shoulders, who are filled with equal parts anxiety and rage, and who are both confident in themselves and who constantly feel lost.
Q: When did you decide you wanted to write?
A: I don’t think that the act of writing and being a writer in itself is a conscious choice—I think it’s simply that this is the craft and artform that we are drawn to much in the same way dancers and visual artists are. I think the conscious decision we—and all creatives— make is whether we decide we want to share our work with the world. In this context, my choice to share my work with others came along during the pandemic.
Q: What do you do to hone your craft?
A: There are so many ways to be a writer and so many ways to manipulate language to draw out the reaction that you want from readers. When I find a piece of work that speaks to me and that I absolutely adore, I like to revisit it and analyze it at the craft level to understand how that particular writer manipulated language to draw out reactions from readers. I need to understand why I loved that piece and how the writer achieved their goal.
Q: What tricks do you use to get out of writer’s block?
A: Writer’s block is simply fatigue or getting stuck in a rut; be it that you’re mentally or physically drained, or that you’re tired of looking at the same manuscript. Given that, I like to take a step back and switch up what I’m doing. If I want to continue feeling like I’m working on the project at hand, I’ll change the form that I am using. For example, I’ll create moodboards, work on character sheets, or make playlists. Sometimes, I need to take a break from the project, that might be doodling or drawing, crocheting, or doing another creative hobby. If I don’t have the energy for even that, then it’s time to seek out art made by others and let that guide or inspire me.
Q: Would you mind telling us about your writing process?
A: Creating a consistent writing process or writing habit is one area that I struggle with. My writing process can best be described as haphazard. Sometimes I’ll begin with a word or phrase and let that turn into a poem. Sometimes I’ll have a vignette sitting in my notes app for months. I have snippets of worldbuilding and short story ideas littered across my notes app, notebooks, and the occasional sticky note. If I want to make progress, I truly do need to sit down and simply force myself to write. I hope to find a process that works for me one day!
Q: Where do you get your inspiration?
A: Tangentiality is king. Sometimes, someone will say one thing, or I’ll see something out the streetcar window and it will trigger a whole new idea or help refract a plot hole or stubborn rhyme scheme into clarity. Everything sort of fits together along a giant spiderweb in my head.
Q: Would you like to share anything about your current work in progress?
A: Currently, I’m in the process of revising my first short story collection; it was a collection surrounding the experiences of second-generation Desi-Canadians. I had shelved the collection as a whole due to difficulty with publishing independent pieces but I do believe it still has merit and value and I’d like to see what I can find. I’m also currently in the process of collecting research for my first novel (it has dragons)!
Q: Do you consider yourself a minority? If so, would you be willing to share the ways in which you are?
A: I do consider myself a minority, yes! I’m a second-generation Indian-Canadian Muslim woman. I also believe in pineapple on pizza supremacy.
Q: Does this impact what you write about? If so, why and how?
A: I mentioned this before, but writing is subjective. We cannot separate from ourselves and write objectively. It is all seen through the eyes of our self, our lived experiences, our identity, our beliefs and politics and everything that makes up who we are. So, I don’t think I can write separately from my identity. Beyond that, I do hope to uplift young South Asian voices. South Asians are so underrepresented in the literary world and our stories and cultures and histories are so rich, I believe that they deserve to be platformed.
Q: What do you wish you found more of in books today? Why?
A: If there is one trend that may be found across genres, I believe it is the author’s tendency to now tell rather than show. I miss being able to infer and being able to read between the lines—there are several reasons as to why this has been a recent trend and certainly it’s much too big of a topic to answer in a single question.
Q: What does representation in literature mean to you? Is it important to you? How so?
A: While I write from the perspective of my own identity, I think it’s important to state that this does not mean that I only write for those who share aspects of my identity with me. I don’t think that is the purpose of the writing. In centering my identity, I hope that readers who differ from me learn about the universality of experiences—there is so much that the global diaspora has in common and there is so much that simply exists beyond cultural bounds. Having said that, I do think there are some experiences that are so nuanced and integrated into certain cultures or histories that there is no other way to experience them than what is shared through stories—stories act as open hands and welcoming arms embracing others and letting them into new worlds.
Q: Does representation play a role in what or how you write? Please talk about why or why not.
A: I don’t approach it as it having to be representative of my culture or background or of it having to be educational in any sort of way—that is not a responsibility that I want to put on my shoulders, I don’t want people to look to my writing specifically to be able to learn something about me or the identities that I belong to. If I were to do that, then it would simply feel like I were centering whiteness in my writing. I have tidbits in my writing that may feel educational or different or uncommon, but I do not present them as such nor do I explain them, I present them as integral parts of the characters’ lives, because to those with such identities, these experiences are not alien, they are simply a fact of life.
Q: What advice would you give to new writers?
A: Don’t place your work on a pedestal, it makes you afraid to be messy and it makes you go into the work expecting perfection. It’s not going to be perfect at first and if you expect it to be, it’s never going to exist.
Q: Do you have any work already out there that you would like to talk about? If so, please tell us about the project, why you wrote it, and what you hope readers will take from it.
A: While I don’t have any complete collections or independently published works out there, I do have several poems and short stories floating around the internet and in print. My most recent poem was published in The Selkie, With Hearth and Home a Phoenix May Rest.
Q: Where can readers find your work? Please share links and pertinent information.
A: You can find a link to all my published works, social medias and contact here: https://mariyakeeka.carrd.co/ and I’m in the process of setting up my Substack for monthly newsletters, if you’d like to sign up: https://mariyakika.substack.com/subscribe?params=%5Bobject%20Object%5D
Q: What would you like to share or say to the Underground Bookshelf audience that hasn’t already been brought up?
A: I’d like to shoutout some of my favourite independent writers and authors! Madeehah Reza has a lovely novella, Orphan Planet, that was published just this winter. Some of my favourite poets include Divyasri Krishnan, Leela Raj-Sankar, and MJ Gomez.
Q: Thank you for sharing your thoughts, today. Any final words?
A: Thank you for giving me the space to chat and share my thoughts!
Add comment
Comments