Whenever I would read a book by a writer I admire (think Bossypants by Tina Fey, or either of the books by Mindy Kaling) my number one frustration was that they talk about their pre-success struggles, and then suddenly their staffed-as-a-writer successes, with very little look at the in-between of it all.

“Why??”, younger-Arezou would lament. Why do they never discuss how exactly they landed those first jobs, what steps they took to land them in minute detail? It’s unfair! Besides now realizing that that kind of thing probably wouldn’t make for good reading, as someone now in that on-between place herself, I’ve landed on the answer.

It’s because it’s freaking hard.

Oh, sure it isn’t that hard to lament face-to-face about your struggles when you’re on the verge of being where you need to be. Just ask any of my friends. But to detail the process as you’re going through it, with no idea what the outcome will be? Freaking hard.

But for the sake of…posterity I guess, and to not totally disappoint younger me, I thought I would start chronicling my process as I go through it. This is either going to be a very cute retrospective when my career really takes off, or it’ll be a sad…actually no. I’m not putting that out there. This is just going to be the cute retrospective.

The Series

A few months ago, I optioned Canadian young adult series to adapt for television.

“Oh wow”, you say. “How do you do that?”

Well, isn’t that the million dollar question. I’m writing it myself so that’s one step down. Once that’s done, I can start looking at getting other producers involved to take it to the next step. Because while I have all the love and the drive, it’s a big undertaking for a first timer.

So where is it at now?

I’ve just started on the second draft of the pilot. The first one was such a dry, garbled mess I didn’t let anyone read it. They would 100% think less of me if I did.

The best thing going into draft two is realizing that I don’t need to slavishly stick to the structure of the novel. I think I needed to get all the way through the first draft for it to really stick that these are two different mediums and that they just CAN’T be written the same way. Just chalk that up to something that I should have known that took me way too long to figure out.

Other Writing

Last week, I wrote a piece for the website SW Rep Matters, a site dedicated to showcasing representation in the Star Wars universe. If you know me at all you know these are two things that are very near and dear to me and it was super exciting to be featured on their website.

If you’re interested you can read my article on their site: “From Sand People to Doctors: An examination of Middle Eastern Representation in the Galaxy Far, Far Away“

It was a great experience to write for and be published by someone other than myself, and I hope I get the opportunity to do more of that in the future.

If you’ve made it this far down, thanks for sticking with me!