Fareeda Abdulkareem

Easy. I have always wanted to see more stories about how profound love can be among friends-we overemphasize romantic love to the detriment of friendship sometimes. My bestie aka my soulmate and I are queer and we have been each others writing spouses for many years. This was a way to honor that bond.

I wish I had a more regimented answer. Alas I approach writing the way I approach life, almost entirely on impulse. As with every protagonist I write, the character was built off a personal quality of mine/an experience I’ve had. In that sense my character is always fully formed when I start writing. The plot is what usually has to catch up. My guiding question as I developed the narrative was to always ask “how do you exemplify/prove the specialness of the bond between this two unusual and spectacular people?”

It's a tie. Between the scene in the ocean because it never happened(work of fiction duh) but it absolutely is true to the spirit of me and my soulmate. And the scene where she quietly reflects on what her life could have been versus what it is. Because it is a tender scene. As I get older I am leaning more into tenderness. As a result of healing my trauma, my characters are also healing.

The primary challenge was to overcoming the influence of graduate school on my creative writing. 2 years of writing technical papers on economics, finance and business impacted my creative writing skills. Now I know why so many corporate workers tend to be terrible storytellers. Thankfully I had an amazing editor who gently nudged me back into rediscovering my powerful gift. It was dormant not dead.

After finishing sink and swim, I want my readers to take a deep breath, unclench their jaws and call/text their friends to say how much they love them. I especially want tormented intellectual nomadic sexy bisexuals to know that peace is hard but it is attainable. And if my story helps people to be less ignorant in their views of queer men? Well then color me happy!