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Hey there! You're reading the Tuesday Telegrams, a bimonthly newsletter from author Naseem Jamnia. Every other Tuesday, I send out a Telegram that's either writing related or a personal essay. You're currently reading a writing-related Telegram, which is where I give updates on projects, behind-the-scenes look at my work, craft discussions, recent publications, event news, and other publishing things.

You can change whether to receive a writing-related, personal, or all Telegrams in the footer of this email. Go to "Update your profile" and choose from the drop-down menu.

Today's Telegram is a bit of an extended WIP check—in the sense that I'm talking about the process of writing the dark academia novella I've been working on this year. I'm in the midst of revising it for submission, and as I've been reflecting on my process for this book, I realized just how different it is compared to previous manuscripts.

Writers often break themselves into two groups: pantsers (those who write "by the seat of their pants") and planners. For years, I was a pantser, unable to conceptualize any planning, and focused on getting it "right" in revision(s). (Unfortunately, it took me a long time to discover reverse outlining; now I do a whole workshop evangelizing that process.)

I'm still a discovery writer in many ways, but I found that as I've studied craft, I found it easier to start charting out my stories before actually writing them. Truthfully, planning saves so much time. You're doing all the work of figuring out the story without having to draft the thing yet, and when you finally start expounding, it's after you've worked out the issues of the story. In theory, anyway; I inevitably find myself deviating from what I thought I'd so neatly figured out. For the past few years, I've been calling myself a plantser, a combination of pantsing and plotting, but I've wondered whether that designation is true.

(Not to bury the lede: yes! I'm a plantser, but I think as I continue to work on my craft, I will do more and more planning ahead of time. Like any art, working on craft is a lifelong process, and I'm curious to see the ways I'll play with pantsing and discovery.)

For the last several years, almost every full-length project I've worked on hasn't been from the ground up. I'll spare you the details; the TL;DR is for the past five-ish years, for every project I've worked on, I've had a (full or partial) draft, was working on it for many years, was playing in the same overall world as another project, or pantsed it entirely. The dark academia novella is the first project in at least that many years that is totally fresh—and also the first major project of my post-publication mind.

Working on the dark academia was like discovering a new side of myself as a writer—not because the project is very different than what I usually write (though it is), but because it's a project that I haven't been working on for years and years and years, so it has no baggage. It also meant it had no previous drafts I was fighting to fix (looking at you, You Came Out of the Forest), and that I could plan it before I wrote it.

I mentioned above that I am a strong believer in the reverse outline: this is when you outline a book after it's already been written to work out how the structure is working. For this latest novella, I took that approach from the beginning and tried to be as deliberate as possible so I could draft it quickly and efficiently so we could send it out.

Over the last year or so that I've had this project brewing in the back of my mind, I had very little to go on: an elevator pitch and a general sense of the players. Last fall, I began to piece together the rest. The two protagonists came together fairly quickly; I knew I wanted to have a graduate student in the sciences and one in the humanities, and of course they'd be queer people of color.

Then I figured I needed to better understand the history of my setting and began to do a bunch of research. In a sense, I almost approached the n like I would a journalism piece or academic paper: I do a ton of research, taking a bunch of notes, then build the story from the pieces. As I read into the history of the University of Chicago, my alma mater, bits and pieces of the story clicked into place by the sheer ridiculousness that is the history of a major academic institution. Considering much of the novella deals with the politics of academia—particularly the racial and class politics—there were parts that felt like they wrote themselves.

But, admittedly, that research mostly informs the footnotes and the background of the story. For the plot itself, I used Terry J. Benton-Walker's novel planning kit. If you've been reading the Telegrams for a while, you'll know Terry is one of my best friends and favorite people. I used his novel planning kit when I was planning revisions for Shang on the Path, and I figured it could help me plan the novella from the get-go.

(Also, as a reward for those who are paying attention: I have an extra copy of the Blood Debts paperback, which has a new cover, and TWO extra hardcovers of its sequel Blood Justice, one of which is signed, all of which has swag. Email me if you want one! I also have a signed ARC of Izzy Wasserstein's debut cyberpunk/noir/dystopian novella These Fragile Graces, This Fugitive Heart, and a signed finished copy of Phoebe Wagner's debut urban fantasy A Shot of Gin, so sound off if you'd like either of those, too!)

Because I had my elevator pitch, I knew the big overarching conflict and the forced at work, and the rest of the pieces clicked into place fairly quickly. I surprised myself by having an outline of the full story in place before this year started, and could hit the ground running.

Some people, like Terry, have extremely detailed outlines, with a beat-by-beat summary of each scene. Not me. I know the one sentence summary of what happens in each scene: "Naseem gets into a fight with the MegaLord and loses"; "Naseem whines in their room while their spouse brings them soup, and they have a heart-to-heart"; "Naseem's new training montage"—that sort of stuff.

Where the discovery part of writing comes for me is all the details of those scenes, and the way those details will inform later scenes and change them. Also, I didn't decide to add footnotes until I started drafting and realized that the story was begging for them, so that's become a layer I basically pantsed.

I'm pleased that I managed to pull together a draft of the novella in about a month and a half, taking another month for revisions I knew I already wanted to do, and hearing my agent tell me it's an extremely tight manuscript already. The revisions ahead of me feel way more manageable than the monstrous revisions I've had in the past.

All of this to say—your writing process changes with time, with projects, with expertise. I truly think the more you study craft, the easier it becomes to plan out at least some things about your project ahead of time. You begin to understand what your story pieces are and how they fit together, and figuring that out before you actually draft saves so much time both then and down the road. I never thought I'd become such a strong proponent of

WIP Check: The White Guy Dies First

Does this count as a WIP check if the book comes out in a few months? As some of you may know, I reimagined body horror (and monster revenge) from a trans perspective in "Break Through Our Skin" for The White Guy Dies First, a YA horror anthology where 13 authors of color reinvent classic horror tropes in our own images—and the white guy always dies first. This anthology has an all-star lineup, and I'm truly honored to be a part of it!

Very excitingly, we've gotten two glowing trade reviews already, one from Kirkus and one from Publisher's Weekly. To my immense pleasure, "Break Through Our Skin" got a shout-out in BOTH! Body horror is not everyone's thing, so having critics see what I was trying to do is extremely gratifying.

I also very excitingly got to hear audio samples for "Break Through Our Skin," which makes the project feel real to me. I was geeked to hear the samples and can't wait to hear the whole thing come to life with such impeccable Iranian American talent at the mic. More on that when I can!

Also, since we're talking about audiobooks, the audiobook for The Bruising of Qilwa is 60% off until May 10. Send me a receipt and I'll donate $26 (double the original price) to a Palestinian organization of your choice. Preorder a copy of TWGDF and with that receipt, and I'll $50 (more than double the preorder price).

Upcoming Events

My local indie The Radical Cat has its second anniversary party coming up! The Heretics' Workshop is hosting an extended write-in on Sunday, May 19, and that evening, I'll be moderating a panel of local writers of various genres on writing for social change. The Rad Cat is a second home to me (come write with me there every Tuesday from 1-3), and I'm excited that I'm actually in town for their anniversary party this year!

Links to aid Palestinians who are STILL undergoing genocide:

• ​​Operation Olive Branch​​
• ​Care for Gaza​
• ​​Adalah Justice Project​
• ​PCRF​​
• ​​Jewish Voice for Peace​​
• ​​ROOM Magazine's round up of resources; Autostraddle's round up too​
• ​The BDS Movement​​
• ​​Resistbot to contact your officials​​

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