A Resurgence of Identity

For a long time, I looked at the New Yorker as the yardstick for what The Missing Slate should aspire to be. Indeed, our original vision was inspired by the initial vision of the American journal. I suppose the steady understanding that we're operating on two very different perspectives -- New Yorker ceased being a literary journal some time ago, while for us it's a modus operandi. The Missing Slate has evolved over time into a literary journal first and foremost with a smattering of essays, reviews, and interviews that caters to the arts, rootless and aiming for true international permanence. Everything changed when I realized we can only be who we are and nobody else.

Now, our only aim is to publish as many cultures as possible and be the space for absolute free speech so in a weird way, we're providing a product and service. Up ahead, with work on our first anthology in print, it's an exciting time for me personally, the team at large and the magazine especially. Though I may complain about my day job occasionally, it has given me the opportunity and ability to comfortably undertake the financing of this passion project of mine quite easily, for which I am incredibly thankful. Part of the reason behind both is to make the operation self-sustaining.

My priorities as an editor and writer have morphed into something else -- three years ago, I'd have gone the extra mile to guide an aspiring writer, no matter how terrible. I've gotten a lot more selective with dispensing advice and encouragement now. The truth is: not everyone has a novel in them, despite what On Demand Publishers tell you. But then, I'm no longer really involved in fiction or poetry editing, delegating it to people with the same high standards as myself and who are willing to dispense advice where it's merited. My focus has instead focused itself on the occasional interview and the magazine's features and articles, but by and large, our public perception and managing the team at large falls under my jurisdiction. Thanks to our now weekly updated content coupled with the quarterlies and new print anthology, my job is a near full-time enterprise, but it helps when you're flanked by a team of increased efficiency and reliability, knowing as long as you don't publicly drop the ball, you're fine. Also important is the implicit trust they've placed in me, a luxury. They've bought into this enterprise, many for the three years we've been operational -- that's a social responsibility I value dearly.

So who are we? We are whatever we choose to be which is really what I mentioned in my interview with The Review Review -- "a patchwork of multiple cultures working toward a common goal" which is finding the best work from new and emerging work and presenting it to a cosmopolitan readership.

Trust me, I count my lucky stars everyday.  

The Evolving Persona of the Empress

It is a risk. On Monday, I sent out a letter to TMS subscribers telling them if they unsubscribed, we wouldn't hold it against them. A lot of people subscribed not knowing what they wanted to see from the newsletter, so when it hit them they didn't open it, unnecessarily reducing our readership engagement. It's difficult, trying to understand just what people want. As the editor / publisher of the magazine, it's something I have to think about while battling the writer in me who whispers gentle profanities in my ear, cautioning me to be true to identity, collective and individual.

The past week has passed by in a blur of mostly TMS-related activity which, knowing my uber-focused personality meant no writing and I'm still about 20-30,000 words away from calling this draft complete. Discomfort in my left hand when typing has made the decision somewhat easier -- writing the past two paragraphs has been... difficult. The wrist splint does nothing but make mobility harder and it's cumbersome. Adjusting my workspace has resulted in nothing very significant because the problem has now extended to the home office which is ergonomically friendly. I don't know what position to place my fingers for them to not contort and become stiff at the keyboard. The alternative: to take consistent breaks isn't possible when I'm writing -- constant breaks promotes the procrastinator. I'm a zoner: once I'm there, I hate disturbances.

As a weird segue, I think the real test of music is to be found in really listening to it, turning off your thoughts -- all senses attuned to what's going on in your ears. If you find yourself alone, in the moment with just the music you typically listen to, you might wonder what you've been doing to yourself all this time. Who knows? Your entire world might change. Sometimes, I pause to consider just what I'm listening to and I think: what the fuck were you thinking? This epiphany-like moment has come and gone over the past several years, never perpetuating for long enough, and if it did, I'd have missed a musician who opened me up to a different experience up until my discovery that I didn't want to subscribe to it anymore.

But back to knowing what people want -- that may be trudging unsafe ground. After all, the most you can do is to develop the magazine you want to read, write the book you want to read, and hope the rest will follow. A year ago we were in the stage of throwing things on the wall and seeing what would stick, but we've sombered up some, so no we know where we're going, what we can do more of, and what we're just no good at, and are entering justification for a print anthology. Half of what we do are the visuals and seeing them in full color before you is going to be a whole other sense of accomplishment.

Increasingly, my focus is going to take me away from the words that make up my soul, brick by brick, pebble by incriminating pebble, and take me into a more schmoozing role, something I think I rather enjoy surprisingly. Miracles, they never cease.

A Year Later...

One year ago, or close enough to merit association, I left newspaper journalism for the development sector in a move I hoped would bring more structure into my chaos while perpetuating the desire I left England with: to be doing meaningful work that would contribute to the betterment of people or society. Dissatisfied with my sub-editorship, I felt this would be a good move. In a way, it has been -- there are days when the work is too much and others when it isn't, and I work on my passion project I am ultimately doing all this for. Some things don't change.

I left a full-time job in Marketing & Sales to pursue Desi Writers Lounge (DWL), another passion project related to furthering the ambitions of South Asian writers, a cause dear to me, in 2010. Six months later, I left the community and organization in a move I don't regret, to found The Missing Slate (TMS) with the vision of replicating what I did at DWL except for including the arts. And then I went to the UK. The extent of just what we could do grew as my world expanded -- my entire life thanks to my education, I've been a social outsider, the transition into writing not entirely surprising. With a steadily growing editorial team and a ton of hard work, here we are three years later, ranked by readers as the third best online magazine by Every Writer's Resource, and I haven't quit my day job. Not yet, anyway. I'll confess: I'm working hard to push the magazine into other frontiers, with the first focus on improving content gradually shifting to getting the word to other magazines. We are, in a word, entering the big leagues and I'm reclaiming some of my old go-getterness I seem to have on reserve for my passion projects, that I forsake in favor of some caution. The goal is to go truly international and be the gateway of emerging and contemporary writers alike seek and gain a wider audience. We're getting closer to that level.

Once only able to identify with the outsider / social pariah (vestiges of it remain in my work), we're representing them. A lot of that's been fed by the realization that much of what I do is perpetuate a conceit that we're doing a lot, when just about everyone knows we're not. Another version of myself would've drowned in the hypocrisy -- now I'm using it to my advantage, without the nagging feeling of disloyalty. 

I'll try to blog more often if only to give my thoughts a public face again.

The Patchwork of "South Asian Lit"

I read a book recently by a Pakistani writer -- a birthday gift from a friend. I'd heard a lot of good things about it, largely from another friend who's a friend of the writer but who shares similar tastes. It's called "How It Happened", not the most original title perhaps but it did pick up on the ring cycles that are arranged marriages in Pakistan -- there is not a dearth of such material out there of course but a lot of it is either on television, film or most likely Urdu literature, that vast body of work that sadly not a lot of people know about. The twist in this book -- because we're living in the age where "twists" are what make or break a book -- is the cycle is limited to the Shi'a sect who traditionally marry other Shi'a. Of course, this is of particular interest to me since it deals with the Sunni-Shi'a conflict which is touched upon here too if only rather lightly (not a lot of detail but with much humor which can defuse a tense situation rather wonderfully, though one wonders if it's ever that simple? Still, there's no harm in enjoying escapist literature).

Shazaf Fatima Haider is the novel's author and the book was published by Viking, an imprint of Penguin and distributed by Penguin India. There's a lot of that going around -- Pakistani writers sending their work to internaional publishers based in India, the new hub for producing arguably qualitative South Asian literature which is sadly still stuck with the "South Asian literature" label. The novel was hilarious, in a laugh out loud sort of way (there was a point where I had tears in my eyes...), and instantly identifiable to anyone who's ever been through the marriage circus of being observed and looked at like you're a cake in a pastry shop. However and this may be a nitpick of someone who strongly advocates for a global rather than geographical voice, the quality of writing was alright, i.e. the language used, sentence structure, etc. Now, I like a good metaphor as much as the next discerning reader but when your senses have been charmed once and then a line later again and then in a line after that, yet again, there is something called overkill. This doesn't necessarily fall to Ms. Haider of course -- any book goes through editing by an agent and an editor and of course countless drafts by the author. But neither an agent or editor ever trumps the author -- it's a ginormous collaborative effort, bringing a novel into print. And so, while the language wasn't always pretty it doesn't negate from the fantastic humor and identification behind it, which is of course the selling point. 

The Missing Slate will try to get a hold of Ms. Haider as either an interview subject or as part of our collection of Emerging Pakistani Writers following up on the Emerging British Poets feature we're running in this issue being published on Friday (tomorrow). There are certainly exciting times ahead for the young magazine although I'm now beginning to believe we need to think less and do more -- it's strange how your mentality shifts when you're the one assuming all the risk. But we've played it cautious for a long time and in this new world, whichever way you look at it, two and  half years is almost an eternity. There is a case for slow and steady of course but we know who we're targeting and the time to start moving toward it is becoming more imminent. My reading has a lot more to do with marketing and managing now than it did for the last two years and whatever we end up doing has to be natural for us -- what worked for one magazine in the print age may not necessarily work for another magazine in the digital age. It's figuring that out that's exciting, exhilariting and yes terrifying. 

Taking stock

Blogging is a relationship. A thought that just popped into my head and an unsuccessful blog foreshadows one thing: the blogger's personal life. If you choose to bid adieu to the platform and make a formal goodbye, you extend your readers (such as they may be) the courtesy of being told 'this is a sinking ship -- I won't blame you if you jump'. But if you start, stall, vanish for vast stretches it sort of translates to a lack of commitment and a perpetual habit of moving from thing to thing, project to project without any real follow through. Of course, some times you need to know when to say goodbye (has this blog overstayed its welcome, for instance? It's been bid adieu to, seen an "it ain't over yet" announcement before finally settling down into a comfortable place I can put my public thoughts to, versus the almost diatribe-like platform it once was).

From personal experience, I've treated this blog like a good friend -- taking pains to cultivate a relationship with it, finding a comfortable balance between sharing and over-sharing, and being able to separate our lives, coming back to it again and again through new experiences and new people, before realizing my new time constraints would prevent me from being as committed as I once was but still trying to make time for it. 

The projects I've pursued have faced much the same trajectory from Desi Writers Lounge to The Missing Slate, both projects I was devoted to almost frenetically -- DWL saw a younger, less maturer me willing to throw away her professional career into an enterprise that may not have had the longevity to survive such zeal. TMS witnesses a me evolving; it helps that there is only one decision-maker perhaps, but at the end, you are the team you subscribe to. Sometimes, you really can't make it on your own. Bono's onto something.  I left DWL when staying on would've been unhealthy for both it and myself sharing a parasitic bond on both ends -- it remains a haven for the things you can't say too publicly but still need an audience for. 

TMS is a whole other story. The MA helped in understanding you have to make sacrifices for the larger narratives -- you can't do everything at once, a philosophy that has been as instrumental in my personal life that it has in writing a novel. It's been raised as one would raise a child, carefully, cautiously, not placing too much too soon on its young shoulders, tepidly pushing it along, thrusting it into the spotlight when needed, withdrawing it when needed. 

You can gauge a lot by how someone performs as a blogger. Then again, it may just be me and how I see the world, an obvious possibility. Oh well. Back I go behind the curtain.

Lost, but not forgotten.

An ode to the many people who've entered and exited my life. 

My friend,

It's taken me a long time to understand the sort of love I've felt for you over the years. Mistaking it for anything else has been a personal shortcoming for which I apologize; it was easy for my temperamental nature to not commit but that hasn't been fair on you.

I've been loathed to call it "love" because that emotion is reserved solely for my intimates; my familiars. But I'm writing a novel now that centers on the friendship of two very different individuals. From all the threads that bind it together, it's taken me the longest to understand it was always a story of friendship. 

We were friends, you and I.

I've been told to expect friends to come and go; to enjoy their company for however long they choose to enter my life. And then to let go. This has not been an easy process for me. I tend to hold on, longer than reason or loyalty should permit. Friendships, when I fully commit to them, tend to be an end-all circumstance for me. I cannot flit easily -- it isn't in my nature. I'm too reserved to found many relationships without fully cultivating the ones I have. It's why I do one-on-one meets, not group dates. Something about the crowd stymies my growth.

But that's me.

I only wanted to write this to let you know that I've been thinking about you and wonder if you've ever thought about me.

Friend, you've been a Presence in my life, and I miss having you around. But I realize that maybe our friendship wasn't forever. People change; I chronicle those changes. You might be a character in a novel someday; please don't be insulted by your manifestation. You are there because your words touched me, your actions left an indelible mark upon my soul.

And I wanted to tell you that I won't forget.

Boring's underrated...

Boring isn't what it's cracked up to be. With "boring" you know where you'll be and what you'll be doing day in, day out, have a regular life you can go home to and be settled in a sort of routine. Boring was tossed out the window the day I stepped on British soil, not as a tourist, but as a student.

I've been an international student before (and arguably my entire life) so the experience of being a foreigner in a foreign place wasn't new, but being there to pursue a program I quite honestly thought I'd never get the chance to, now that was something. It also reminded me that while I was well read and "intellectual" by Pakistani standards, I was still far from where I needed to be to compete at an international level. So there's that. When you've been given the chance to really be who you want to be and embrace aspects of yourself you didn't realize you had, you change in an unexpected way. So while I came back with my hijab and moral compass in tact, my head was chock full of ideas that weren't there before. For starters, I wanted to work aggressively, to really extend my wings outward and I would like, as the first real step, to work in publishing, an industry I'd been a part of far before it became a profession. And if that didn't work out, communications because I'm good at it. And it keeps me close to the chemistry of words I so adore.

But with new ideas floating around in my conscience, the way I saw the world began to change to the point where people who knew me before began to see marked changes in the way I was now behaving. I had become, unbelievably, a part of things. Who knew.

With it came a certain unconscionable thirst for adventure and a couple of hard knocks along the way -- a devastating car accident that seems to have permanently damaged my nasal bone, but it's only been five months and it may just fully heal yet. A desire to know what was going on in the lives of others and, instead of sitting back and wondering, leaning forward and asking. People are delightfully interesting. Flying to another city to attend a Literature Festival, meeting up with old friends who over time have seen some value in keeping me around, seeing the sea again (my lover) and being part of another adventure (getting slightly lost with a busted tire!). I've been lost with a broken down car with the added benefit of it being with friends, thankfully. I haven't had issues when I'm alone, interestingly enough.

Working at The Express Tribune was an experience that brought forward talents and beliefs I didn't even know I had; for starters I was more accepting of taking such a job. Now, I'm at USAID and it's going swimmingly. It's not easy and it isn't a walk in the park; I'm getting paid well and earning every bit of it. There isn't much time to do anything else in between and for now, I'm enjoying that giddy, busy feeling of being so completely occupied you can't imagine a life without something to do.

What time's left goes to The Missing Slate and the occasional TV show or so (I budget my time), so I've fallen behind just as fall shows begin to end. Curious timing, some would say. And whatever's left after that, I like to think I use it to think about Gray, since I am obviously not writing it. I'll figure it out. As part of my new job, I'm hoping to go down to the field and see the state of things, seeking inspiration from it to one day apply it when I'm writing a related something. As of one year ago, all my writing efforts have boiled down to telling one story, and until it's over I don't know that I can write something of some definitive length beyond one page. 

But I'll close this with an encounter related to my job; I was at Shifa Hospital recently for some routine medical tests required for all USAID employees. While waiting for an auditory test, I settled into a discussion with a woman who believed all local NGOs stole money from donors and ran away with it, irrespective of their gender. When she heard I was working at USAID, she wondered whether giving money to the corruption would ease the beast and not make the situation worse. I told her we were undertaking projects, so there was some smidgeon of hope. She stated Imran Khan may be the country's last hope, though after my response to what one single man could do in a sea of corruption and malpractice, she gloomily voiced consent and wondered, like me, whether dictatorship and martial law wasn't the only salvation left for Pakistan. Whatever his faults and the last two years of his "reign", Musharraf kept inflation low and security of the country high. PPP keeps erecting more troubling barriers which arguably increases the risk of attack versus quelling it. 

Before England, I don't think I'd have been able to sustain a conversation with a perfect stranger. One small step for Maryam, one giant leap for MP.

Hakuna matata!