MÜELLIF: Introduction and Airplane Story
Writing about my writing. Part one of a new series now out every Friday!
My hair had gotten so long that I started to look unruly. I gained some weight too. It must’ve been early in the pandemic, or maybe it was earlier this year before I cut my hair; I don’t remember when it was exactly. One evening, with everybody out of the room, I took a very long look at myself in the almost-body length mirror we got here. First I was unhappy with how I looked. But that faded, and in my eyes I stopped looking like a woman. I stared so hard at my face, playing around with my hair, trying this and that pose, that at some point I saw a stranger reflected back at me. I remember asking myself if I liked them, that person in the mirror. The answer wasn’t really no, but it wasn’t really yes either. That evening, I took that as a win.
That is how I feel to write about how I write. Everything fades away at some point and it’s just you. You in front of an audience. Frankly, that is the scariest thing in the online sphere to me. Not “the mortifying ordeal of being known”: I am writing this Substack. I don’t mind being known. But being known for being me? Ew. It’s the utter fear of stepping in front of the stage, all the lights blinding you of the audience but every member of the audience seeing you with utter clarity. But I wrote about parasocial relationships. I wrote about my favorite records. It can’t get worse than this, or more cringeworthy than anything that came before it. So here I am! Stepping up to the stage like a timid protagonist of a musical about to belt their little ballad!
Welcome to the first of a four-part series detailing how I write. Originally I intended to call this Schreiberling, but after finding out that the dictionary defines it as an author that writes a lot and badly at that, we’re not doing that to ourselves. No self-hate this early into the series! The Turkish dictionary provided me with a better word: müellif. It comes from Arabic and means writer. Peep the elif peeking out of there with a double L! A writer talking about their writing, but as that topic is predictably broad, I summarized the things I want to talk about into three topics:
First, the process. I believe - and have witnessed - that this will change according to every project. As you write, you’ll try out many different things and every project you tackle will require something different. I want to sample some of my ways from which an idea springs that I translate into a concrete story, how often I write, and so forth.
Turning even more inward, for the second week I want to discuss themes and motifs that come up in my writing. This’ll also be a good opportunity to talk about some formative influences and inspirations, as I think that is the invisible side of the iceberg that is the theme and motif.
Finally, and this is the one I dread most, what does writing mean to me. The emotion of it all. I honestly suspect this will be a thing that every writer feels to a degree, so here will be my contribution.
All these posts will come out on Fridays. Hopefully you’ll feel like you gained a bit of insight, or, at the very least, some entertainment for lunch.
For this post, I wanted to talk about when I started writing (more or less as hobby since 2010) and what (original fiction, Beyblade fanfiction, K-Pop, Kuroko no Basket, K-Pop again, original fiction, and now I’m kind of writing K-Pop fanfiction again? But it’s just a phase. I swear), but that’s not really proving you the concept. What would really be proving the concept would be showing a work I’ve written. We call this proof of concept or POC for short in computer science and software design (unfortunate, I know)
With this in mind, here is my proof of concept. I asked, and you confirmed it: here is the story I got rejected on. I called it Our Thing, The Paper Plane when I submitted it. I believe it’ll give you a good idea of what I’m about and serve as a baseline of what I’m talking about when I’m talking about my writing. Find it below the art I made of it.
FINAL NOTICE the flyer has once read, black on yellow: BULK GARBAGE TO BE DISPOSED OF MAY 17 WIEN-SCHOTTENTOR. Now it reads FINRBAGEWI NOSPOSEDRIN, thanks to Enes’ folding skills.
“This isn’t funny,” Robin says. Any minute now, the drones will fly aboveground and reverberate in the subway hallways. Her hands twitch. She could crush the paper plane in her hand, and him, that’s how frayed her nerves are.
“It’s not,” Enes agrees, black curls bobbing.
“Did you call me just for this?”
“Hm?” He raises his eyebrows, green eyes big and expectant. “Yes. That’s our thing.”
Yeah, but they’re the bulk garbage. This is a notice about their imminent death. The end is so close -- too close. Enes always stares blankly whenever the topic turns to the disposal, which means all the time these days: she’s chalked it up to the same numbness, the Ehkloar, that she sees in others. When he isn’t staring blankly, he’s on his own corner, in his little telephone cabin, back turned to the world. All this, she understands. But this borders on actual stupidity.
Enes yanks the plane from her hand. “Guess I'm shooting it then."
“Enes,” Robin starts. “You can’t just--”
Enes narrows his eyes. He lifts his free hand and pulls his other arm back. A step, a skip, and then a half-run: then the plane soars high, close enough to touch the ceiling, and flies towards the little hill, around which the tramway cars used to climb up and down. On normal days, people sit on the yellow-red grass patch to see a little bit of the real world, any light that’s not fluorescent, avoiding responsibilities, owezahring, as Robin’s parents put it. But everybody’s feeling the Ehkloar these days: of course they weren’t going to make it. Of course they would die. Figures. Right now, the hill only hosts a sole tree stump that blossoms to violet this time of the year thanks to the covering ivy. It’s really the only blot of color around Schottentor -- once a subway station, now a sorry place of concrete and washed-out neon signs. And for as long as Robin has played with Enes, all their paper planes have tried to land here. Some even managed to.
Her heart lurches. She’s supposed to let all this go for some senseless war?
“Napon!” Enes shouts: what are you doing? He pushes her before she can answer. So Robin stumbles, walks a little, but the plane is so far ahead that she soon half-jogs towards it. She hears an indignant huff and though he doesn’t say it, Robin can hear it clearly: Napon, Robin! Robeen! She can’t help but groan, but fine. One last time.
Her steps echo off the concrete. Her heart thunders in her chest, every muscle in her body alert. The airplane, guided by a lucky wind, soars even higher, towards the top of the tree stump. Robin stretches her arm to catch it. In her vision, it’s so close… so close…
Then her foot hits a tiny wall and she’s on the ground. She lifts her head up: the plane draws a lazy curve towards her only to unceremoniously fall on top of the tree stump.
“Man!” Enes calls -- is he laughing? He’s laughing as he runs towards her. “You really tripped on that branch! Looked like you were flying for a moment! Robin, you okay?”
Her knee hurts. Her heart hurts. Everything hurts.
“And I had the slingshot ready too…” Enes adds.
One plane. One tries to catch it, the other tries to hit the plane. Their thing. And they’re going to be dragged aboveground by the armed forces, recruited to sort out and collect atomic waste -- whoever says no, whoever follows their every move... they’re going to die, no matter what.
“Robin,” Enes says. “Are you--”
“I’m not!” Robin shouts. She turns on her back and slaps Enes’ helpful hand away. “I’m not okay! We’re going to die!” The world blurs. “You don’t even think about that! You just want to have some fun! There’s no fun! The fun is--”
Enes, with his round face and hooded eyes, covers the sun above her, like he had so many times over the years. The grass is so gentle under her. Their thing is so minor, so small compared to the grand plan, the big game as she hears it. And yet, over becomes a long, hard syllable, a spike that pierces through her chest.
“Now say it without crying,” Enes says.
Robin sits up, wiping her snot with the back of her hand. “Durchgedreht…”
“Say it without crying,” Enes repeats. His gaze is intense. “That there’s no fun.”
She doesn’t get it. Doesn’t get him. Didn’t get how he laughed after his parents died from the drones a year ago. Now he thinks the fun can continue, that it’s not over when they all are.
“The fun will be…” Robin’s mouth won’t finish the sentence.
“See?” Enes is smiling again. “Robin. Robeen. Napon, Robeen! Get up and retrieve the plane."
“You’re insane,” she says again.
Enes nods, eyes sparkling. “Come on. I have an idea. Yallah!”
Robin gets up and wipes her tears away. She can still walk though her right foot hurts quite a bit, so she retrieves the plane, everything intact and perfectly folded. She stretches her arm out towards Enes’ hand, but he shakes his head.
“I’m not tossing the plane,” Robin mutters.
Enes nods. “But up.”
“Up? What are you going to do--up--”
The sirens start to sound, drilling deep inside Robin’s head. The subway speakers are activated, and a lazy voice says: “The drones are coming. Stay inside… you’re probably inside. Wurscht. I repeat: drones. Cover your ears. Don’t go outside.”
Robin is ready to run back to their quarters, but Enes packs her arm. “Napon! No running!”
“You want to die before they kill us?” Robin shouts.
“Do you want to go down like this? Crying?” Enes asks, beaming wide. “When death comes for me, I’m going to laugh! Mama and Baba are with me! Because I’m alive!”
He pats the little munition bag that’s slung on his belt. It seems bulkier than usual, she realizes; and with a loud “Ha!” he pulls a bullet out, larger than his usual ones. He presses a button, and it starts glowing red. In his eyes, it reflects like a flame.
A bomb?
“Throw the plane,” Enes says again.
She looks up: the sky is yellow, clouds ominously ochre-colored.
“Your parents are alive?” she asks.
He’s in her ear as he whispers gently, “They’ll never leave me, Robeen.”
“If I die, I’ll haunt you back.” She glances at his face.
Enes laughs. “Good thing I never will.”
So close to him, she’s willing to believe it.
He lets go of her arm, and she draws her hand back. Sirens sound once more, drowned out by a deafening hum. A blot of grey, robbing every light: a drone. The smooth black surface is interrupted only by four lights blinking green. Robin’s body shivers at the sight.
“Catch!” Robin calls.
She’s not sure Enes hears her, but next to her he readies his feet and aims his slingshot.
Then she throws. The plane trails up high, a tiny yellow rocket launching towards space. The lights turn from green to orange - and then she senses something whirring past her. A tiny black blot takes the plane and presses it towards the drone’s lower surface. A white blot in a sea of black.
All the lights turn red.
Enes takes her hand and she feels her feet drag across the grass. She stumbles, walks, and then they run together under the pillars, and then even further, all the way to the staircases. She presses her fingers to her ears -- not that it helps much: the droning is everywhere, piercing through her ears straight to her body. Will it stop? She thought this would make it stop. Did this even work? It probably didn’t. There’s no way it could’ve. It was just a plane and a minor bomb.
The humming stops.
“Enes, what is--” Robin starts.
She sees it from the corner of her eyes: blinding white. A firework blossoms in front of her eyes, orange and yellow and even shreds of red. Immediately right away, she hears a boom louder than anything she’s heard before, and the force of the heat and explosion pushes her onto the concrete. She thinks some sort of shrapnel hits her at her side. For a moment, all she senses is pain. Enes, besides her, looks at the ceiling in a dazed expression.
Silence.
Then something echoes off the walls: a single, odd ha, followed by others: hahahahaha. The sounds overlap with one another, almost a whisper compared to the droning from earlier. Footsteps, a lot of them, coming from everywhere and nowhere, and then Enes’ hand is on her shoulder. “Robin?” he asks.
They made it explode. Her and him. She thinks there’s going to be a mess that she has to clean up. She thinks she’s shown them, everyone aboveground, what Schottentor is all about.
He pulls her towards him. “Are you okay?” Enes asks. “You liked it that much? You keep laughing...”
Robin takes a deep breath. That was a laugh? She’s been laughing? She was, she realizes. She did like it that much, she recognizes. The pain seems so small compared to the overwhelming relief… joy, almost… that courses in her system.
Enes snickers, and this time, she laughs with him.
I got offered a chance at feedback from the publication I sent this to for why I got rejected. For at least 3 ko-fis. The publication wanted me to pay at least nine euros for a story I didn’t think was that great myself. It’s still hilarious.
So. 90% me. First, the plot is very surface-level, kiddy-pool stuff in execution, I realize that now. I wanted something hopeful with younger characters, but I could’ve gone deeper into things, could’ve drawn the whole thing out: this is what happens when you don’t give yourself time to edit things. More importantly, none of these characters are insane enough for my personal standards. Enes kind of goes there but also doesn’t. Robin is… not a character I’d really write normally either. You can tell it doesn't have a certain intensity to it, no… heart, as it were, that makes a good project great. I knew that when I sent it in. That being said, there’s still enough things that pop up here that still define me as an author in 2021. We’ll talk about that later.
Next week, as I said, we’ll talk about the process of writing. Stay tuned for that!
MÜELLIF: Introduction and Airplane Story
I can't wait to read more about your insights and writing processes! I've only taken up writing since last year, and even then I haven't dipped my toes beyond the fanfiction pool. It started out fun, but like with any other new shiny skill to whet, there are times when I'm just filled with lots of anxieties/uncertainties. This is why I always find people's different approaches to writing both interesting and informative if that makes sense!! Anyways I'm really excited to see where you're going to take us. Also I don't know if you already have the whole series planned or not, but would love to hear you elaborate on the difference between writing OF and FF at one point :o
A great story to read, and am looking forward to your insight on your process as always. Discussing writing with you is always a joy and am excited for this series to see where it goes and read your take on writing. I STILL CANNOT BELIEVE THE MONEY FOR THE REJECTION THING LIKE its been months and I am still flabbergasted by that response from them