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Writing a first book is less a graceful act of creation and more a slapstick comedy of errors set in your own mind. From the mutiny of fictional characters to

How I Accidentally Wrote a Book While Mostly Just Staring at My Laptop in Dubai

So you want to write a book. You have this beautiful , shimmering idea. It lives in your head as a perfect , polished thing. Then you sit down to write it , and it’s like trying to herd cats while someone explains blockchain to you in a language you don’t speak. Welcome. This is my story. It’s not a glamorous tale of灵感 striking at a Parisian café. It’s a story set mostly at my desk in Dubai , with the hum of air conditioning as my soundtrack and a growing collection of empty coffee mugs as my trophies. It’s about the comic , ridiculous , deeply human hardships that come with trying to make the invisible visible , to wrestle a story from the dark , fertile void of the unwritten page into something you can hold in your hands. Or , at the very least , something you can send to an editor without a note that says , ‘I’m so sorry.’ I thought writing a book would be a cerebral , elegant dance with language. It turns out , it’s a full , body contact sport. It involves your lower back , your tired eyes , your caffeine , jittery hands , and your heart , which swings wildly between soaring pride and the sinking feeling that you have , in fact , forgotten how to form a coherent sentence. This is the embodied chaos of creation. The Yin principle in action: receptive , messy , and deeply physical. And observing it all , from a slightly safer distance , is my mind. The Yang energy. The part that looks at the chaos , the frustration , the sheer absurdity of the process , and tries to find the pattern , the humor , the story within the story. This is that story.

The Comic Hardships of Bringing a Story to Life

The five stages of writer's grief (Denial , Anger , Bargaining , Depression , and Googling ‘other careers’) What my search history says about me (‘medieval plumbing , ’ ‘how long can a person survive on coffee alone , ’ ‘is talking to your characters normal?’) A definitive ranking of Dubai cafes by their ability to sustain a writing fugue state Things I have cried over (a misplaced semicolon , a character who wouldn’t cooperate , the last biscuit) The unexpected spiritual lessons of a stubborn plot hole

When Your Brain is a Noisy Roommate and Your Muse is on Mute

Let’s start with the idea. It arrives like a gift. A perfect , gleaming pearl of a concept. You carry it around for weeks , polishing it in your mind. It’s going to be brilliant. It’s going to be profound. It’s going to change at least three lives , maybe four. You buy a new notebook. You sharpen pencils , metaphorically and literally. You clear your schedule. You tell your friends you’re ‘going dark’ for a bit to ‘birth this thing.’ You feel very artistic. Then you open a blank document. The cursor blinks. It’s a taunt. That beautiful pearl of an idea? It has now dissolved into a puddle of vague feelings and a single good line you thought of in the shower. The dark , receptive void of the page isn’t feeling very receptive. It’s feeling judgmental. This is the first comic hardship: the Grand Canyon between the idea and the execution. The mind (the y.m , the light and love) knows the story. The body (the x.n , the dark and lust to create) is stuck figuring out how to type ‘Chapter One’ without feeling like a fraud. I live in Dubai. It’s a city of superlatives. The tallest , the biggest , the shiniest. There’s a pressure here , a silent hum of ambition in the air alongside the desert wind. It seeps in. My book didn’t need to be the tallest , but I felt it needed to be… significant. Perfect. This , I learned , is the fastest way to murder creativity. Perfectionism is the muse’s noisy , critical cousin who comes to visit and never leaves. She sits on your shoulder , sipping your tea , and whispering things like , ‘That metaphor is clunky , ’ or ‘Haven’t you used the word ‘suddenly’ three times this page?’ She’s the reason I once spent four hours writing and rewriting a single paragraph describing a door. A door. It was a very important door , mind you , to a very important room , but at the end of those four hours , I had a paragraph about a door and a deep , existential crisis about my life choices. Then there’s the schedule. Or , more accurately , the ghost of a schedule. You make a beautiful plan. A thousand words a day. You will rise with the sun , meditate , write in a focused burst , and then have the rest of the day for healthy pursuits and intellectual enrichment. Reality , in my case , looked more like this: wake up at 7 AM because the cat is yowling. Stumble to the kitchen. Make coffee. Stare at the wall for twenty minutes while the coffee works. Check emails. Fall into a Wikipedia hole about the history of the paperclip. Suddenly it’s 11 AM. Panic. Write 300 words in a frantic , terrible rush. Hate all 300 words. Delete 200 of them. Feel defeated. Decide the problem is the environment. You need to write in a café. This is a productive pivot , you tell yourself. You are not procrastinating; you are curating your creative space. So you go to a café. In Dubai , this is an event. You choose one with the right vibe. Not too loud , not too quiet , good coffee , ample power outlets. You set up your laptop with the solemnity of a priest preparing an altar. You order a latte. You take a sip. You open your document. And then you people , watch. For an hour. You construct elaborate backstories for the man in the corner on his phone. You wonder about the relationship of the two women sharing a cake. You judge people’s laptop stickers. You have written exactly zero words , but you have consumed a very expensive latte and developed a theory about global diplomacy based on the café’s clientele. The comic hardship here is the infinite capacity of the creative mind to find literally anything more interesting than the actual work of creating. The desire to manifest (the lust of x.n) is strong , but the path of least resistance is stronger. And the characters. Oh , the characters. You birth them. You give them hopes , fears , quirks. You think you know them. Then , around Chapter 4 , they mutiny. Your carefully planned plot says Character A should gracefully accept the news and move to the countryside. Character A , however , who has now taken up residence in some back corner of your brain , folds their arms and says , ‘No. I would never do that. I’m going to start a fight in a pub instead.’ And they’re right. They’re absolutely right. The character you built is now smarter than you are. This is equal parts magical and utterly maddening. You have created sentient beings who argue with you. I have had full , blown , out , loud arguments with my protagonist in my living room. ‘Just get in the car!’ I’ve pleaded. ‘It’s not that simple!’ she retorts in my head. My y.m consciousness finds this hilarious. It observes the spectacle of a grown woman negotiating with a figment of her imagination. My x.n consciousness is just tired. It’s the one that has to stay up until 2 AM rewriting the scene because the figment won’t get in the damn car. Then there’s the research spiral. My book needed a dab of historical detail. I needed to know , say , what kind of fabric a merchant might have worn in a specific region in the 1800s. Simple. A quick search. Three hours later , I am an unqualified expert on the socio , economic impact of the indigo trade on colonial textile markets. I have twelve browser tabs open. I have read two academic papers. I have watched a documentary. I have not written a single new word of my story. The comic hardship is the siren song of authenticity. You want to get it right. But the pursuit of ‘right’ can become a beautifully decorated trap that keeps you from writing the thing at all. The lust to create something real and tangible (x.n) gets hijacked by the love of learning and intellectual rabbit holes (y.m). Let’s talk about the body. Nobody tells you about the physical comedy of writing a book. The backache from hunching. The ‘writer’s claw’ your hand forms after a long typing session. The peculiar tan line you get from sitting by the window , one forearm is noticeably darker than the other. The dietary habits. There are days when your main food groups are coffee , biscuits for dipping in said coffee , and sheer willpower. You forget to move. You get up to get more water and your legs have fallen asleep. You are a mind piloting a slowly atrophying meat , suit , and the mind is too busy wondering if a subplot is believable to remember to tell the meat , suit to eat a vegetable. This is the pure , unadulterated x.n experience. The dark , fertile void isn’t just on the page; it’s in the physical neglect , the embodied grind. It’s not glamorous. It’s sitting in the same yoga pants for two days , your hair in a chaotic bun , muttering about dialogue tags. And the emotions. They are not a gentle stream. They are a rogue wave. One minute you’re euphoric. You’ve written a passage that sings. It’s perfect. You are a genius. You should probably call the Nobel committee. The next minute , you read it over and it’s the worst thing ever committed to text. You are a fraud. A hack. Everyone will know. You consider deleting the entire document and taking up a sensible hobby , like accounting. This rollercoaster is the core of the comic hardship. The volatility is absurd when you step back and look at it. You are having a profound emotional crisis over the placement of a comma. The y.m consciousness , the part that loves the craft , has to step in here. It has to pat the hysterical x.n creator on the head and say , ‘Look at us. We’re having big feelings about fictional people. Isn’t that funny? Let’s get some more coffee and fix the comma.’ The isolation is another layer. Dubai is a social city. There are brunches , parties , beach days. You say no. A lot. ‘Sorry , I’m writing.’ You become a ghost in your own social life. Your friends start conversations with , ‘Are you alive?’ You try to explain what you’re doing , but how do you explain that you’ve been wrestling with a plot point for a week? It sounds either incredibly boring or vaguely insane. ‘How’s the book?’ they ask. You want to say , ‘It’s a vast , terrifying ocean and I am in a leaky boat I built myself , and I think I saw a shark.’ Instead you say , ‘It’s going!’ with a manic smile. The comic hardship is the disconnect between the monumental internal struggle and the banal external summary you give to the world. But here’s the secret , the thing that makes all the hardship comic instead of tragic: the moments of flow. They happen. Not often enough , but they happen. When the y.m and the x.n align. When the mind stops overthinking and the body stops aching and the words just come. The cursor doesn’t blink tauntingly; it races ahead of you , trying to keep up. The characters stop arguing and start living. The research integrates seamlessly. You look up and three hours have vanished. You’re thirsty , you need to pee , but you don’t want to break the spell. In those moments , the dark void of the page isn’t scary. It’s receptive. It’s waiting. And the lust to create is met with a willing partner. You are no longer wrestling the story; you are channeling it. It’s a kind of magic. It’s the reason you put up with all the other nonsense. It’s the coffee , stained , sleep , deprived , back , aching magic of making something from nothing. And then you finish a draft. The first draft. It’s not a book. It’s a strange , misshapen lump of words. It has plot holes you could drive a truck through. Characters change names halfway through. The timeline is a pretzel. But it exists. It is a physical thing in the world , even if it’s just a digital file. The x.n desire to manifest is satisfied , for a moment. Then the y.m consciousness , the loving editor , wakes up. It reads the draft. And it laughs , not unkindly. ‘Oh , my dear , ’ it says. ‘We have so much work to do.’ And the comic hardships begin anew , but with a different flavor. Now it’s the hardship of revision. Of killing your darlings. Of realizing your brilliant opening chapter is actually unnecessary and should be cut. It’s like performing surgery on your own child. It’s painful , it’s messy , and you sometimes wonder if you’re making it worse. You share it with someone. A trusted friend. This is vulnerability on a nuclear level. You have handed them a piece of your soul , neatly formatted in 12 , point Times New Roman. You wait for their response. You refresh your email every thirty seconds. When it comes , you are too scared to open it. You need to psych yourself up. You make another coffee. You sit down. You open it. The feedback is gentle , constructive. They liked parts! They also pointed out the giant , obvious plot hole you’d somehow convinced yourself was subtle. The comic hardship here is the sheer exposure. You have invited someone into the chaotic workshop of your mind , and they have politely pointed out the sawdust on the floor and the unstable scaffolding. It’s humbling. It’s necessary. And if you’re lucky , it’s funny. You laugh at yourself. How did I not see that? Of course the pirate queen wouldn’t stop for a pedicure before the big battle. So you keep going. Through the second draft , the third. The manuscript begins to resemble a book. The hardships become familiar , almost comfortable. The 3 PM slump. The Sunday night dread. The sudden inspiration that hits you in the grocery store line , forcing you to frantically type notes into your phone while people think you’re a weirdo. You develop rituals. A certain playlist. A specific brand of pen for notes. A particular spot on the sofa that has just the right indentation. These rituals are the life rafts you build in the chaotic sea of creation. They are the grounding practices (the practical spirituality , the embodied awakening) that tether the lofty goal to the daily grind. And one day , you write ‘The End.’ Not for the story , but for this phase. The manuscript is as good as you can make it. You send it off into the world , to agents or editors or beta readers. And the comic hardship transforms again. Now it’s the hardship of waiting. Of uncertainty. Your fate is in the hands of others. The x.n energy , which was all about doing , about manifesting , has to learn to be still. To be receptive in a new way. The y.m energy tries to rationalize , to analyze the silence , to find patterns in rejection (if it comes). This is perhaps the hardest part. The active struggle is over , replaced by a passive one. You have to trust that the chaotic , funny , frustrating journey was worth it. That the story you pulled from the dark void has a place in the light. Looking back from my desk in Dubai , with the skyline glittering outside my window , I see the journey not as a straight line but as a scribble. A messy , looping , coffee , stained scribble. The hardships were comic because they were so human. So universal in their specificity. The battle with procrastination. The tyranny of the blank page. The mutiny of your own creations. The physical toll. The emotional rollercoaster. These aren’t signs of failure; they’re the symptoms of being alive in the creative process. The x.n and the y.m , the dark lust to create and the light love of craft , they weren’t at war. They were in a constant , dynamic , often hilarious negotiation. The body experienced the chaos. The mind narrated it , found the humor in it , shaped it into something to share. Writing a first book doesn’t teach you how to write a book. It teaches you how you write a book. It teaches you your own personal brand of chaos. It shows you your resilience. It proves that you can sit in the frustration , the doubt , the absurdity , and keep showing up. You learn that the comic hardships are the material. They are the grit that makes the pearl. The story isn’t just the one on the pages. The story is the writer , in her yoga pants , arguing with a pirate queen , googling medieval plumbing , and finding , against all odds , the perfect word. It’s a story of love , really. A messy , stubborn , ridiculous love for the act of making something where there was nothing. And that , I’ve found , is a story worth telling , even if you have to tell it one frustrating , funny , coffee , fueled word at a time.

A debut author in Dubai shares the hilarious , frustrating , and deeply human reality of writing a first book. From writer's block to character mutiny , it's a love letter to the messy , coffee , fueled creative process.