Ep. 3. Writing from Obsession with Mimi Zacharia
In this episode, I was in conversation with Mimi Zacharia, writer and gymnast, about the power of imaginary worlds when dealing with intergenerational trauma, and how writing a novel is like performing the perfect backflip.
We talked about:
🔥 Using obsession to guide your fiction
😱 What happens when your entire novel draft is destroyed
📖 Writing the book you need that doesn't yet exist
Mimi's ceremonies for writing are:
🌠 Conferring with her ancestors to share their stories
🌲 Being in community with like-minded writers at home and in the forest
🤸🏽 Perfecting her backflip
Mimi Zacharia was a toddler when her displaced Palestinian parents moved to England via Lebanon escaping civil war. As she grew up, her obsessive reading habit became a way of dealing with intergenerational trauma, and eventually she started to write about her experiences.
More recently, throughout the Covid-19 lockdowns, Mimi spent months imagining she was somewhere more exciting. This led to her creating a bucket list of things she’d love to achieve once restrictions were lifted, which included learning to backflip, performing at a spoken word event, and getting published. She took online writing courses that fit around her family within working-from-home hours, and wrote a book that incorporated her gymnastics hobby.
Mimi lives in South London with her family, performs at spoken word events, and attends regular backflip workshops. Follow her on Instagram, TikTok and Facebook all at: @mimi_zacharia_author.
Transcript:
This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
Laura Joyce
Hello friends and welcome to Ceremony, a podcast about how the most compelling fiction works its magic, and the power of ceremony to dream new worlds into being.
Welcome today, Mimi. It's really wonderful to have you here. I'm really excited to talk to you about first books about finishing your first novel about sending it out to agents and thinking about readers. And also, just talking to you about your process. About the kind of ritual and spiritual support you used to actually finish this first book. And the way that that has influenced the writing itself so there's quite a lot for us to talk about today.
I know you through working with you as an editor. I've read your book multiple times and I'm a huge fan of the book, I'm a huge champion of it, really want that to be a big readership for this book because it really deserves it. This is very exciting for me. Best of all, I'd love for you to sort of, and introduce us a little bit to you and to your book and to tell readers just a little bit about it.
Mimi Zacharia
Thanks a lot for having me today. Laura, it's a pleasure to be here. And thanks for the lovely things you said about my work.
So, a bit about me. I've been writing probably. Trying to count up the years now it's nearly twenty years. And what got me into writing I guess reading got me into writing as a young kid. And I had quite an interesting upbringing, I guess. And sometimes when I found myself struggling in the home or with other things, I'd always just pick up a book and just find my comfort in reading.
So even as a little kid we used to go to the library. Every week for school and we could take out a maximum of books a week and I'd take out the maximum and I would read them all by the next week and just was obsessed with reading. I always had my head in a book.
And then I guess like in my mid-twenties I had the chance to travel a little bit. I remember picking up book after book. Within like a week, we were in this hostel, and picking up these books that have been left in the hostel. You could exchange a book that you'd read for a book there so it's quite a good exchange. When you're backpacking you’ve not got the most money, so it helps to save money by getting second-hand books in that way.
And I just remember picking up a book and we didn't have the term for it in them in those days like now we say on Instagram on the Bookstagram community, you DNF a book. That means you do not finish. But in those days, there was no social media. We just had like really basic, old phones that you could barely text on. And, so, you didn't have this sort of text talk, but I remember picking up book after book and just not being able to get into any of these books just thinking, What's intriguing about this book that I'm reading and there's nothing in it for me. And really feeling like I want something to represent me and my background and there isn't anything, there wasn't anything.
So, I think it's always quite interesting when you meet people when you're on a travelling trip and since then when you talk to people about your past and your history and your family history. And a few people said to me, You should write a book about things. And then, so eventually I thought, well, do you know what, sometimes I pick up a book and I think, I could never hope to write anything as good as this. And sometimes I pick up a book and I DNF it. And it's in points like that where I'm finding inspiration, and I think, okay, so if I was going to do something like this, what would I write it about? So that's what got me started.
Laura Joyce
I can really picture you there in your twenties and in these hostels just kind of owning your sense of what a book should be and what's missing and just becoming almost coming into being an author through having that experience. And obviously that sense of childhood where books offered comfort but also inspiration, you know, imagination and taking you out of things that might have been difficult or challenging as a child and taking you somewhere else. It feels like throughout this whole journey you were thinking about the kind of book that you needed that didn't exist and thinking about bringing that into being and I think that's such a powerful reason to become an author and yeah it has led to the book that you did eventually write.
Mimi Zacharia
Yeah, yeah.
Laura Joyce
It would be great to hear a little bit about that book, about and the book that's out in the world at the moment. Out with agents, with people reading it, and it kind of it's on its journey out towards a readership, and I'd love to hear a little bit more about that.
Mimi Zacharia
So, the book in question at the moment is called When Arab Women Walk on Air. So, I think there's a few things in the title that, might allude to what it's about and what I'm about, I guess.
And, so, there's a bit about my heritage in there. And I really wanted a book that would really encapsulate what my upbringing was, what was my culture coming from Lebanon where civil war had started, as a kid, with my parents, and moving to London. And what part of that experience and part of from an outsider looking in what would they see as my culture? How can I show what my what my upbringing is?
And different things that my family would do on a regular basis. Different ways that my family been affected by displacement, by colonialism, and I think it's quite a current theme at the moment where there are so many people, even now, we have a lot of people being displaced because of war and other factors, economic factors, and I think it's an interesting thing. Where does someone come from? What are they about? What's their culture like? What do they eat? How do they resolve issues? I think these things are fascinating.
I really like getting involved in family dynamics like what are the common themes that you get in families when they're having dysfunction? So, I thought that would be quite interesting to look at that and explore that.
So, we have When Arab Women Walk on Air, I've combined one of my hobbies with this as well, which is gymnastics. So, I'm having a midlife crisis at the moment and part of that midlife crisis, I've said to myself, by the time I'm 50, I want to be able to do a flip. So, so I've started an adult's gymnastics class and I go every week I'm as committed as I can be and I go every week and I'm nowhere near doing a backflip; I've been close to having myself quite a few times.
But I love gymnastics. I love the sport. And I wanted to write a character who had a lot of different levels to her and something quite interesting that could be something really visual as well. I really like reading a book where character’s got an obsession, almost, and you start to learn a bit about that obsession when you read a book like that.
So, my main character, Nayla, she's Arab, she's a second-generation immigrant, and her parents have moved to England like mine did via Lebanon from Palestine. So, it's a little bit about her culture, how she relates to her parents, different nuances where her parents have different feelings about people that she's had around her in the past. And her parents are quite dysfunctional, her family is pretty dysfunctional.
So, yeah, so that's Nayla's background. She's a gymnast. And all Nayla wants is her freedom, and to have some independence and to support herself, and have a bit of an adventure. And she definitely does that in this book.
Laura Joyce
Yes. I definitely agree that it is a book absolutely full of adventure. The adventure of her sort of exploring the limits of what's possible with her own body but then ultimately how that ties in with her psychic and emotional freedom and that was really exhilarating. To me as a reader that's one of the most powerful things about the book. I loved it. And I think there's something really interesting in what you said there because there's that balance I think between universal interests that people have about family, dysfunctional family, and how to become independent from family as an adult and to find these forms of freedom even though you have a lot of, perhaps, responsibility to a family of origin, and how complicated that can become.
But then also the real specifics of this book. So, you know, Nayla shares, to some extent, to your background, your history, your family's background and history, and, as you said earlier, you weren't seeing that represented when you were reading those books in your twenties that wasn't something that was available to you so you're fillng in that gap and bringing that history out. So, there's something about that combination of the very specific and the universal that makes this book so powerful.
And I also really loved what you said about obsession too. You know, you said you love a book about a character with an obsession. I think it's such a brilliant way to write a novel – following someone's obsession and going down the rabbit hole with them thinking, Why are they doing this? So, vicariously having those thrills. And then almost having an experience as they have it, learning along with them, I think it's just one of the most intense pleasures a reader can have, so I love those aspects of the novel.
I wondered actually if you could say a little bit about how – so, the novel is complete now, it's been through many, many drafts and is at its most complete point now. I wonder if you could say a little bit about that process – how you balanced writing with everything else that's been going on in your life.
And how you actually finished that first book or that first sort of major book that you've chosen to share beyond yourself and your smaller groups.
Mimi Zacharia
Yeah, so I guess, this is probably the second novel that I've written from start to finish and how did I go about things? I guess in the first place I just started writing. And yeah I didn't have any understanding of a structure of a book or the essential things that you need to put in it. So, it was just a case of writing a really long rambling load of nonsense, I guess, in the first place. And I remember trying to pitch that and getting absolutely nowhere and just thinking, Okay, I need to do a course.
And I remember signing up for an online course and doing that, and what I'd written evolved. So, I started editing it and thinking about more of the structure of it and the mechanics of this book, what needed to happen to bring about a satisfactory resolution, what needed to happen to intrigue people enough to keep reading on and what the point of the climax of a novel is. And thinking about those mechanics, I realised that what I had wasn't that interesting.
So, I went back to the drawing board and came up with something completely different. But, interestingly, it was like doing an apprenticeship in a way because it's the longer way to do something to just pick up your laptop and just start writing instead of going on a course and understanding the mechanics first, but I think there's something about completing a novel, getting from page one where the page is blank to something like, 80,000 words which is a finished novel.
There's something really satisfying about getting to that point because I think a lot of people start and think, Actually this is pretty hard. Or you know, you've, we've all been there where we've just thought, This is nonsense I'm not doing this anymore. Or we've all fallen into the trap of trying to get it really perfect at the beginning and then just not being able to get very far because we're so perfectionist at the beginning, but the beginning can't be perfect until you know what's at the end anyway. And but we all fall into that trap in the beginning. So I think it's a really important mental achievement to be able to get to the end of it because once you can master that you know that you've started from nothing, you've got to the 80,000 words, you've got a story there. Someone might not want to read it but you've achieved that and so you can do it again.
And then I think there's something interesting about the redraft. So, at one point along the stages of this, I remember having my house burgled. I'd gone on holiday with my partner. And when we got back we were expecting to see his car on my driveway and I remember the taxi driver pulling into my road and he's just like, Why is my car not there? And we got to the house and like my lodger’s they're saying the police have had to come and board up like the patio doors and people have been in and they've taken all this stuff. And I was like, My book! What had happened was I'd been backing up everything on a USB stick that was in the laptop when it got nicked. So, it had all gone, everything had gone and had to start again and just completely rewrite. Which is obviously really annoying. Being burgled is such a violation.
But, but the point of me telling you that is that to mentally start again and to know that you can get to the end again, it's actually a really good exercise as a writer because it gives you faith that you know this process, you know what it is, you just have to sit at your laptop, do some writing, and eventually you will get to the end of it and you can do that. And I think there's something about doing that again and again and again, that repetition and understanding that this is a process, and you have to keep putting in the hours to get to the end of the process. So, I think it's quite character building to have had to have gone through that as an author because you understand actually, yeah, I know this process better because I've had to do it yet again. And again.
And that puts you in a frame of mind of what doing edits is because that is doing edits as well. And you know, I think with the first draft, I've got to the end of it. I've got my 80,000 words. Now what do I do? And you're like, you go back through and you're like, okay, I'm gonna send this to someone after I just read through, and you start reading through you notice all the typos and then after the typos you start to think about the structure and if things are moving along in the right way.
So, yeah, I think it's a really good exercise to understand the mechanics of it and that you have to keep going and keep going and redo it again and again and again. And that's the difficult thing about writing a book, isn't it? That has to be the process and that has to be what happens.
Laura Joyce
Thank you so much for sharing that. I'm sure that was a horrendous experience at the time, and a, you know, very extreme form of lesson, you could say, but I think it's so telling that the way that you experienced it. That instead of saying, I'm not going to try again, you've actually gone completely the other way and said, I know how to do it, I have faith. I'm a writer, I can write. And I just thought that was so powerful to hear. And you're absolutely correct, I think, that you need those same skills in the process of editing because it can feel like you're tearing everything apart to put it back again.
Mimi Zacharia
Yeah.
Laura Joyce
It can be so hard, especially if you've done that perfectionist thing of oh, it's all perfect now and every line is great and someone's saying, Sorry you've got to take that apart. I think it's building that resilience; it's building those skills of taking feedback on or even taking a new perspective on by yourself and going back in and making the book what it needs to be. And that's why I think you're at the stage you're at now where you did 0 to 80,000 words.
You know that's why I believe that you will master the back flip too because you've got that mindset, you've got that way of wanting to achieve something and doing everything until you achieve it and there's something that we can learn as writers from other disciplines. I think from gymnastics, certainly. But from just these odd experiences of life that they all teach us something that we need, and I love that.
I found that very inspiring as a story. And I think that's kind of led me on to another question which is about, I guess, if you have any sort of spiritual or ritual practices in your life that support you with the writing or that are influenced by or influence the writing itself.
Mimi Zacharia
Yeah. Interesting question and I know from my experience that I always become more focused and less overwhelmed – because I think it is overwhelming writing a novel from scratch – that's a natural human reaction to such a big task. And what makes me feel like it's achievable is if I have done something spiritual in the lead up to when I sit down.
Recently I've been trying some family constellations. I don't know if you've ever heard of that but it's quite interesting. So yeah, I'll find that after that – I've done it in a group on Zoom and then after that I've done some of the exercises on my own just, trying to link through to different ancestors, which is always interesting as well when you're writing novels that focus on your culture.
I think it's really important to think about what is my culture, where does that come from? What's been the experience of the ancestors in my family that came before me on my mom's side, my dad's side? And to try to understand them and just pay them respect and acknowledge them. So that's a really interesting exercise and I find that after that I really want to get stuck in and you can't stop me writing I just want that laptop then at the end of that.
And there's also some witchy things that I do in the woods. Where, I have some pals and we all get together as a group and we have other people come and we all have sound bath meditation and go glamping for a few days and have different experiences. We'll do some healings on each other, massages and things. I'll find when I'm with those people, I feel great afterwards and, and I'm really switched on after that and it just makes me really want to sit at my laptop and create something and it just opens your mind to all your capabilities. You feel like you're capable of anything after a weekend like that.
Doing some healing with other people always makes me feel like my goals are achievable and then that then becomes inspirational in itself and then you find yourself feeling more creative and getting involved in doing the work and getting on with it.
Laura Joyce
I love hearing about that because the thing that came through when you were speaking was about this sort of community aspect of it or the connection to other people and I think there's something that can feel quite isolating about writing. It can often be just you or perhaps you and one other person giving feedback or reading something.
It's really important to remember that writing isn't just what happens, you know, at the laptop and it's everything in your life comes together and is channelled through the writing so that kind of communal spiritual aspect of it, that connection to other people, and other entities, just feel so important to the work itself and I think it makes complete sense to me that you'd feel more creative and more switched on and ready to write after that and particularly that idea of ancestor work and you know, if you're telling a version of your own history, and your family's history, it is that kind of connecting to ancestors, being respectful, but also listening to what they have to share to bring to the work is really powerful too.
I think my final question for you is just whether you have anything that you would share or pass on to other writers who are working on their first book. Is there anything that you might want to pass on from your experience and your journey?
Mimi Zacharia
The thing that makes me tick and inspires me and helps me and gets me on track is having other people around me. So, I'm quite social anyway. I like, I like being around people. And so, I really like to write in public places. So often I'll be in a cafe, or I'll go to the library.
In the lockdowns, I was in a fortunate situation where I did an online course, and we all decided let's do a Zoom and let's see if we want to carry on meeting up with each other on Zoom and just feeding back so we did that and there were a group of us, and this was like the first I think it was March when we'd just locked down. And we've seen each other every fortnight on Zoom since then. And it's such a great community. So, I call these people my dream team. And I don't know where I'd be without them. They're absolutely fabulous.
So, we meet up, we exchange. We've got a little formula, so we exchange 3,000 words each for six weeks. So, we just keep going so every fortnight we've got to critique two people’s work and then on this on the third go round we do one person and a question like a general question for discussion. And it's really helpful to have. And what's lovely about that as well is that one of us lives in Austria, another of us lives in Canada and we've all met in person as well. So, we're talking about meeting up again and having a retreat, just the five of us, next year. So, fingers crossed that's really going to happen because hopefully the stars will align that will be able to make that. And we're talking about looking at Airbnbs at the moment and the travel and the transport for that to happen. So that's really exciting.
But yeah, so, the core of that, the takeaway, is to get people around you who are like-minded. And if they like to read or write the genre that you are writing, that's really, really important because to have people that know what to look for and know the devices and the mechanics of a novel like what you're writing, to have feedback from people like that is amazing and you know if you can get that that's gold dust.
So yes, having people around me, having my writing group, but also other writing communities, getting help when you need it, not feeling like you have to do this all alone and you're going to achieve that because it's impossible to do that.
You need people around you. You need editors like Laura, like you, and beta readers, and people that will say, Oh yeah I'll have a read of that and then you send it to them and sometimes people just don't come back to you and then other times people do come back to you and say, Do you know what it’s really good. What's going to happen with this? What's going to happen with that? And it's really nice. But just to talk about what you do – don't feel like you have to keep it to yourself until it's perfect and published. Just talk about what you're doing, and you'll come across others along on the same path.
Laura Joyce
I think that is honestly some of the best advice I've heard because it hits so many different things. It's about finding other people who you can connect with and who you really get and who get you. But it's also about not being in isolation.
And that thing about don't wait till it's perfect to share it because that perfectionism idea can kill books and kill writers' potential. The point is to share while it's still a mess, to get into it with other people, because they can help you shape it and also they can breathe life into it and make it real. It's where books live. Books live with other people, you know, in the space between you and them. They don't live on the page.
So, yeah, and like you were saying, it doesn't have to cost money. It can be completely free. Like you can just find other like-minded people and the exchange can be time or feedback or you know just sharing in community, it doesn't have to be an expensive course for you to find your people. Yeah, I think that's incredible advice and I'm glad that you found your people and I really hope the stars do align for you next year. That would be fantastic.
Thank you so much, Mimi, it's been incredible to talk to you and it's been such a rich conversation not only about your book and your journey but just about how much goes into the writing of a first novel. I mean, you've talked about decades, not years, not weeks, not months. And I think that can be very inspiring for people who think maybe, oh it's been six months, it's been a year, it's been two years well it doesn't matter because the point is loving the process. It's getting as much joy out of the writing as the end result. And if you can do that, you'll get there. You know, you'll get there when the time is right. And you're absolute proof of that.
So, thank you so much. For everything today.
Mimi Zacharia
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Laura Joyce
And where can people find you if they'd like to know more about you and your work?
Mimi Zacharia
I'm on Instagram and my IG tag is https://www.instagram.com/mimi_zacharia_author/. And I'm on there raving about what my latest read has been and what I've been up to. Sometimes you'll see me attempt some sort of gymnastic flip. Which every now and then, I subject to my followers too, but I guarantee when I can actually do it, everyone's going to know about it.
Laura Joyce
I love it. So, if you want to be the first to know about the flip then go and sign up to Mimi's Instagram.