October 22, 2025 • 52 mins
Natasha Rai interviews Nadia Mahjouri, a Moroccan Australian writer, about her debut novel 'Half Truth'. Nadia shares the journey of crafting her novel from mixing memoir and fiction, drawing from her personal experiences to the trials and triumphs of securing a book deal. She discusses her creative process, the challenges of fictionalizing real events, and the importance of emotional truth in storytelling. Nadia also provides valuable advice on how to navigate the writing and publishing process, emphasizing the significance of persistence, seeking feedback, and the willingness to put one's work out there despite the setbacks.
00:00 Welcome to the Book Deal Podcast
00:56 Introducing Nadia Mahjouri
02:00 Nadia's Debut Novel: Half Truth
04:19 The Journey of Writing Half Truth
06:50 From Memoir to Fiction
13:56 The Path to Publication
14:03 Claiming the Writer Identity
25:21 Building a Writing Community
28:01 Post-Assessment Actions
28:32 Navigating Feedback and Courses
30:56 The Road Trip and Penguin Submission
32:12 Facing Rejections and Ghosting
33:36 Literary Speed Dating and Agent Search
37:19 Publishable Program and Mentorship
39:37 Final Offers and Negotiations
45:46 Reflections and Advice for Writers
49:25 Closing Thoughts and Intentions
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Tina Strachan (00:09):
This is the Book Deal podcast
Madeleine Cleary (00:11):
where you will discover the inspiring stories
behind your favorite books.
Natasha Rai (00:15):
We interview seasoned and debut authors, as
well as publishing industryprofessionals to bring you the
best
The Book Deal (00:21):
tips and advice on how to get that elusive book
deal.
Tina Strachan (00:25):
So no matter what's.
Stage of writing your at.
We've got you covered.
I'm Tina Strachan.
Madeleine Cleary (00:30):
I'm Madeline Cleary.
Natasha Rai (00:32):
And I'm Natasha Rai.
Tina Strachan (00:34):
And join us as we pull back the curtain of
published authors
Madeleine Cleary (00:37):
one deal at a time.
Tina Strachan (00:43):
The book Deal podcast acknowledges the
traditional owners, the land andwaters, which it's recorded on.
And pays respect to their elderspast, present, and emerging.
Natasha Rai (00:56):
Nadia Mahjouri is a Moroccan Australian writer,
counselor, and groupfacilitator.
Her professional background isin health policy, governance and
academia, where her researchfocused on ethics and feminist
philosophy.
She's the host of theaward-winning podcast, the Whole
Truth, motherhood and theWriting Life.
(01:16):
In this podcast, Nadiainterviews authors about how
they manage to keep writingwhile living in the messy middle
of family life, work, andcreativity.
Half Truth is her debut novel.
Nadia and her husband live inHobart, Nepal, Luna, with
varying combinations of theirfamily, which includes three
young adults, two school-agedchildren, and a black Labrador
(01:39):
puppy called Russell Sprout.
Good morning, Nadia Mahjouri.
Welcome to the book to podcast.
Thank you so much.
It's great to have you.
It's like long overdue.
I think we talked about thismonths ago.
Yeah.
So, no, thank you.
(02:00):
Yeah.
So, half Truth, your debut novelcame out in February of this
year.
Can we start, and you must be apro at this now with your
elevator pitch.
It's
Nadia Mahjouri (02:10):
funny, I Avery, I still actually don't feel like
I am good at this, which isjust, you know, not okay.
Really.
But, um, I'll give it a go.
Okay.
I hear some people who, whose,whose pictures really are, um.
So Schmick and I, every timekind of have to go, well, what's
the book about again?
So it is the story.
Half Truth, um, is the story oftwo women who are, you know,
(02:35):
from very different worlds, verydifferent lives, but unbeknownst
to each other, are both missingand searching for the same man.
So who we first meet is Zara.
And Zara is a new mom.
She's living in a remote, um,part of Tasmania, and she's
realizing that.
Even though she's grown up inTasmania with her white mom,
(02:58):
she's realizing that she'sactually wanting now to learn a
bit more about the culture ofher father and who her father
was who, because he's fromMorocco and she's never met him.
So having this baby is kind ofthe catalyst for her to start to
do that investigation into kindof where her father is and what
it is like to, you know, be aMoroccan.
(03:18):
So she heads off to Morocco and.
Um, where she discovers herfather's family, but discovers
that her father himself hasn'tbeen seen, um, for over 25
years.
So he's a missing person there.
And at the same time as we meetZara, we meet Hadija who is, um,
Zara's grandmother, and Hadijais an elderly Moroccan woman
(03:40):
who.
Is looking back over her lifeand wondering if she will see
her firstborn son again beforeshe passes away.
So the journey is kind of the,the story is the journey of them
both trying to work out what,what happened to this man.
Natasha Rai (03:55):
Thank you.
That was a great pitch, by theway.
Nadia Mahjouri (03:58):
I don't know, it's, I'm still making it up as
I go.
I should have a, I should haveit just, you know.
Natasha Rai (04:03):
No, was I, I mean, I've read the book and I love, I
love it and I think it's sobeautiful.
Oh, thank you.
I could really feel myselfgetting quite emotional when you
are talking, especially about,you know, will she ever see her
firstborn son?
I was like, oh gosh.
Yeah.
It really, yeah.
Tugs on.
On that, but I'm so curious toask you, because I know that
(04:23):
part of it is based on yourpersonal experience.
Mm-hmm.
Um, how did you make the choiceto explore it through fiction as
opposed to say memoir?
Uh, that is a really goodquestion
Nadia Mahjouri (04:35):
because I didn't, um, I didn't make that
choice, um, until really quiet.
Far down the down the track.
I originally started writingthis novel as half memoir, half
fiction, and it could never be acomplete memoir because I was
really interested to know mygrandmother's story.
And my grandmother is, is, youknow, the character Haddi is
(04:57):
based on my grandmother's story.
I knew a few kind of big.
Um, you know, I knew that she, Iknew the village she grew up in
outside of Marrakesh.
I'd been there.
I knew the, um, that she hadbeen married 11, and I knew that
she'd had my father at 13.
But besides that, and I knewshe'd had had a traditional
facial tattoo.
Yeah.
And so I knew a little bitsabout her life, but I was
(05:17):
fascinated to get to know her.
But she'd actually passed awaybefore.
I first went to Morocco, so itwas always gonna be, it couldn't
be a whole memoir'cause I was,that was actually the catalyst
for me.
I wanted to kind of investigatewhat would life have been like
for her?
What would her, um, you know,what would her kind of daily
life have been like in thevillage?
What would her beliefs havebeen?
(05:39):
What kind of spiritual, youknow, ideas were happening for
her.
Um.
And also I was told by myfamily, Morocco, when I did get
there, that she'd died of abroken heart because her first
born son never came back.
So, you know, I just like, Ijust desperately wanted to kind
of engage with her.
But at the same time, I had thisfeeling that my story of going
(05:59):
to find my family Morocco wassomething that I wanted my kids
to have.
So I actually just startedwriting it as a really personal
kind of family project.
I just have this kind of recordto give to my kids, you know,
one day if they were to kind ofgo, hang on, how does this work
that we live here and yet we'vegot this family in Morocco?
Like, what, how did that all,you know, how did that all come
(06:23):
to be?
So, um, so yeah, I startedwriting it as a, as half memoir
and then fictionalizing the bitsI didn't know, um, as it started
to kind of get a bit of.
You know, positive feedback thatmaybe there was something
publishable as you know, in it.
Um, I started submitting it andI really wasn't sure at that
(06:43):
point whether it there was morevalue in it being a true story
and it being memoir.
Do you know what I mean?
I just didn't know.
I couldn't tell whether it wasbetter for me to, in terms of
getting it published to write itas fiction, um, as completely
fiction or not.
Um, and it wasn't until I, so Igot the book deal in the end
with.
(07:03):
Half memoir, half fiction.
But it was clear from thebeginning that, um, she wanted
me, that my publisher wanted meto rewrite the, the memoir as
fiction.
And it was the fictional, thefictionalization was really
about simplifying the narrativeto make it a little bit easier
to understand for the readers.
So things, you know, in reallife, things happened over seven
(07:26):
years.
The events play out over sevenyears, um, in the novel.
They play out over one year.
You know, in reality, theevents, you know, my
grandmother, for example, shehad eight children, so I had
eight, you know, aunts anduncles who all gave me little
bits of information, you know?
Um.
In the novel, she only has threebecause it was just literally a
(07:48):
matter of kind of, um, becauseit was already dual point of
view, you know, dual timelines,it was already quite a
complicated structure.
So it was just a matter ofsimplifying the narrative that
to make it easier to follow.
So I think the word she said tome, my publisher, which I loved
and really kind of took toheart, were, um, keep the
(08:08):
emotional truth, but we don'tneed to be so attached to the
facts.
Oh, you know, like it wassomething like, we don't need
the, we don't need the factualtruth, but, you know, the
emotional truth is what'simportant.
And that's definitely, you know,it is, it is emotionally true to
my journey also.
It's, you know, actuallyliterally quite true to my
journey.
It's just things are rearrangeda little bit and, you know,
(08:29):
they're kind of, um, connectorsthat are, people are given
multiple, you know, multipleroles where they, in reality,
they didn't have, they were,they were a conglomeration of
people.
Natasha Rai (08:39):
Yeah.
Yeah, so, so making that change,um, were there aspects that you
felt you lost and were thereaspects that you felt you
gained?
Nadia Mahjouri (08:50):
Oh, such a good question.
Um, and no one's asked me thatbefore.
Um, I love that, um, becausethere were things I lost and I
felt a bit sad about some ofthose things, actually.
Um, because not only was it overseven years, the, the events of
the story play out.
So I first went to Morocco.
And I discovered I, you know,after quite some, you know, work
(09:14):
to find my family, when I didfinally found find them, um, I
spent about six weeks there, um,with aunts and uncles and so on,
but I didn't really have anylanguage skills.
And so I came home, went off touni, learned to speak French,
and then went back for sixmonths.
So, you know, the next sixmonths journey was quite, um,
uh, epic.
(09:35):
And in the middle there I hadseparated from my.
Son's father.
So I went back as a single womanand actually had this beautiful
relationship with a Moroccan manwho taught me a lot about, um,
and that was all in the memoir,this kind of romance element.
Mm.
And I just felt so sad to getrid of this character, the, the
(09:55):
character man, because he hadbeen, he himself was a, was an
amazi or, or burber.
Um.
Uh, activist, he was fightingvery hard for the rights of the
indigenous people in Morocco,the, the, um, to keep the
language alive for the rights ofindigenous, um, Moroccan Amazi
(10:16):
people to speak their languageand to have it recognized and
taught in schools and so on.
So he was quite passionate aboutthat and I learned a lot from
him and.
Yeah.
And then in the story, I neededhis character because he
actually teaches Zara to, youknow, a lot about her culture
and about this part of herculture.
(10:37):
Everyone else seems quite afraidto speak about politics, and
that's for a very good reasonbecause, you know, they have,
they have lived for many yearsunder a kind of authoritarian
or, you know, quite, um, uh,what's the word?
Um.
But you know, it, it, it's been,it's a monarchy, but it's, it's
quite a cruel regime.
So they're, they're very, andthey're, there are strong, um,
(10:58):
responses to dissidents, youknow?
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
So people are very afraid.
Were at that point, not so muchnow, but were at that point
very, which was the latenineties, so it's said in the
late nineties for anyone thathasn't read it.
Um, so he was a really importantcharacter, but also.
You know, there was thisglorious kind of park back to my
mother, which who had gone toMorocco, was a white woman and
(11:20):
an Australian woman, and fallenin love with a Moroccan man.
And he was me, you know, 25years later going back to
Morocco as a single mom andfalling in love with a Moroccan
man.
And I just kind of really lovedthat echo, you know?
Yeah.
But obviously when you, when youbring this seven years down to
one year, you know, and down,you know, two long or three long
trips to Morocco, down to onetrip to Morocco, I would ha ha,
(11:42):
she would've had to have been.
You know, having a cheating onher partner.
Yeah.
Had the baby without the partnerand like, it just story was, I,
I, I didn't wanna kind of.
I didn't wanna make it thatcomplicated.
So the whole, so the character'sstill there, but he loses the
kind of, you know, there's onelittle kiss, you know, and it's
funny to me because the friends,my friends are like, but that
guy that, you know, that g thatguy, he's made up, isn't he?
(12:03):
You know?
And I'm like, no, no, no, no,no.
That guy is so real.
In fact, he is way more than thelittle kiss that they had by the
beach
Natasha Rai (12:10):
or by the river.
But I suppose as well, Nadia,the way you've just described
that, if you ha, if you tried tocram that in, you'd be losing
that beautiful emotional truththat you were.
Looking for.
Right, right.
Because it Yeah, that's right.
It goes down to somethingthat's, doesn't even have half
the depth of what you would'veexperienced.
Nadia Mahjouri (12:27):
Exactly.
And the emotion, the, I would'velost the emotional truth of what
actually happened, but also Iwould've shifted it into a
different emotional territorythat it wasn't there.
It would've become like a, youknow, a kind of cheating
storyline or a, you know, likesome other, some other
storyline.
Yeah.
So, so it definitely, um.
Yeah, it, it, it lost somethings, but it, you know, it
(12:49):
also, I can see the story as a,as a novel is much stronger.
You know, I can, I can see that,and I could see immediately the,
the, the wisdom in what, youknow, my publisher was
suggesting.
And actually I'd hit a pointwhere I just, when I got the,
the, you know, contract forpublication, I was so relieved
(13:10):
to have access to someone else'smind.
Mm.
To kind of'cause, you know, tolook at this project and be able
to say, this is what it needs.
Because I was really at a pointwhere I didn't know how to make
it better.
I was like, I can sit here andwork on this manuscript and I'm
making it different.
You know, like I wrote, it wasall in first person and now it's
(13:31):
all in third person.
You know, I've made thisdifferent.
Is it better?
I have no idea.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, I just didn't know thedifference between different and
better.
Yeah.
So to have someone else come inand say, no, this needs
fictionalizing.
And Yes.
Leave that like that and, butchange this bit, you know, and
they don't tell you how tochange it, but they tell you,
you know what, you know, thisneeds to become fiction or these
(13:52):
characters need to be clearer,or, you know,
Natasha Rai (13:55):
yeah.
They give you that guidance.
Um, and I do wanna come back toyour, that was great.
Yeah.
And I do wanna come back to yourpublication journey, but if we
just go back a bit.
Mm-hmm.
When did you start writing andwhen did you call yourself a
writer?
Nadia Mahjouri (14:08):
That is such a, yeah.
Such an interesting question.
And I, I do remember kind of.
Making a conscious decision toclaim that, um, identity, I
suppose because, I mean, I was akid that I grew up, my mother
was a librarian and I'm an onlychild, so, you know, books were
my best friends and my, youknow, siblings and my pastime.
(14:31):
I lived, you know, I was verylucky to live in a house full of
books with a mother that lovedchildren's literature, so I was
so, yeah, so, so kind ofreading.
Primarily before writing, youknow, was, was my, you know, it
was a love of mine forever andjust part of my life, but when
it came to writing, I wrotecreatively in, you know, school
(14:53):
writing in high school.
I enjoyed it, but I never reallythought it was something that
was a viable option for a thingto do.
So I moved, you know, I, Ialways wrote.
Essays and, you know,applications for various things
with kind of glee.
Like, you know, like I, Ienjoyed essays instead of like,
(15:16):
you know, so I have always,everything I've ever done and
ever felt kind of, um, that Ihad some, you know, talent in
was always writing related, butI just hadn't given myself
permission to play creativelywith writing and it wasn't.
But I had this idea brewingabout my grandmother's story
(15:38):
for, since it happened, since I,since the late, late nineties.
And I just kind of, I keptchewing it over and I knew that
it was one of those things thatone day.
I wanna write that story.
It wasn't writing in general, itwas that story.
You know, it was mygrandmother's story.
And then at the same time,people would say to me all the
time, I would tell them aboutgoing to Morocco and trying to
find my father and what hadhappened.
And they would say, oh my God,that's gotta be a book.
(15:59):
So I didn't have that muchinterest in writing my own
story.
I really wanted to write mygrandmother's story, but then
people would always say, oh,that you've gotta tell that
story.
And I was like, oh, well Ireally should for my kids.
And then.
Well, it took me probably 20years to work out how those two
things could Mm, you know, couldwork together.
And it wasn't till I kind ofrealized that, of course, these
(16:19):
two women are linked.
By, you know, the absence ofthis man that I realized, and
that wasn't till 20 20, 20 20,20 19.
It was, it wasn't 2020 hadn'tstarted yet.
So we weren't in the COVID yearsyet, but it was the end of 2019
and my husband and I had, um,gone away camping.
And he was turning 50 and wewere having that conversation.
(16:41):
That's like, what would you, youknow, what would you regret not
doing?
You know, if you get to the endof your life and you haven't, is
there something that you wouldregret if you never did it, that
you've done yet, that youhaven't done yet?
You know, and we were writingthis list of like 50 things to
do, you know, when you're 50,you know, like, you know Yep.
That he had stupid things likehim.
Running a marathon, which, youknow, like I, I never put
(17:01):
running a marathon on my list.
Like, I'm not stupid, but youknow, like, uh, we decided, you
know, I was like, I wanna seegiraffes in the wild in, in
Africa, you know, so we'd bookeda safari for 2020'cause we were
ticking things off our list,which obviously didn't happen.
Still.
I've never seen a giraffe in thewild.
That's too long.
Yeah.
But one of the things on my listobviously was I will really
(17:22):
regret not having written.
This particular story, you know,I, I need to do that before I
die, kind of thing.
To not like end up with deathbedregrets.
Natasha Rai (17:32):
So, and it's so I was just gonna say on that
point, it's so interesting,isn't it?
How many emerging aspiringwriters, we need to have some
specific thing that we do togive ourselves the permission.
Like you, you had, okay, I wannawrite about my grandmother, and
then, oh, okay, let's make thislist.
Now I have permission toactually do it.
Nadia Mahjouri (17:53):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Even more than that, like theliteral permission came because
my daughter was going to, I'dbeen home.
With the kids.
I, I have, we've kind of got a,a blended family and I had a
young child in 99, and then Ididn't have more kids until, you
know, nine, you know, the 20thirteens.
And so my, my, um, youngest twokids, the youngest of those was
(18:16):
heading off to kinder in 2020.
So we'd been living without myincome, you know, or without me
just doing little bits andpieces of, of.
Various freelance stuff here andthere.
So we'd been living without myincome for a while and I, my
daughter was only gonna be atschool three days a week, and
they were only gonna shortschool days.
And so the conversation wasreally, how about I don't go
back to work this year?
(18:37):
How about, you know, if we cansurvive?
How about I give myself thisyear to write this notebook, you
know?
And then, um.
You know, because then I, I cankind of, you know, like, so it
literally was kind of apermission giving, you know, to
to myself to say, okay, thisyear I'm not gonna, I'm gonna
have three days without kids inthe house, you know?
And then of course, 2020happened, so the three days with
(18:58):
the, with the kids, you know,outta the house just didn't
happen at all.
But, you know, it, it got doneanyway,
Natasha Rai (19:04):
so, yeah.
So tell me, then you wrote, whatwas it, like a first draft or a
draft of the whole, of, of halfTruth.
Nadia Mahjouri (19:13):
Uh, yeah, I did eventually, you know, obviously
you've gotta, you know, Istarted, I got stuck at several
points and had to reach out for,um, I think about 20,000 words.
I was like, oh, I don't knowwhat I'm doing, you know, and I
just found someone advertisingin my local area that was a
(19:33):
writing mentor.
So she kind of, and she didn'tdo much except kind of say.
It wasn't like we had an ongoingrelationship or anything, but
she just said, no, there'ssomething here.
And I think that you can do it.
Like, you know, I don't know,the dual point of views are
working or something like that.
Yeah.
I just needed like, you know,someone else just say that
Natasha Rai (19:52):
you are okay and this is gonna work.
Yeah, yeah.
And
Nadia Mahjouri (19:54):
that you, you know, it's, yeah.
And you know, remember her, herexact words were, you know, she
said, and if this getspublished.
No, when this gets published.
And I just remember, like, Ilove that that's the first time
anyone had ever said, when thisget published, you know?
And I was like, oh, I wasn'teven thinking about publication,
but she was the first person tokind of use that phrase with me.
(20:16):
And I just like, yeah, like Isaid, it stuck in my mind, you
know, she, if no, when, when,um, and so then I started just
en entering little bits andpieces into.
You know, I into littlecompetitions, and so all of
those were little kind of, youknow.
Mm-hmm.
So
Natasha Rai (20:34):
competitions where you didn't need a full
manuscript.
Nadia Mahjouri (20:37):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Like little chapters as stories,I suppose, or, you know, um,
yeah, nothing, nothing.
I, I, you know, nothing that hada kind of, um, what do you call
it?
Like a.
A, a requirement or anexpectation that we would have
the whole, you know, that waseven more, you know, just like,
(20:57):
maybe this is, you know, I, Iput a piece into the SBS
emerging writers.
Um, they had a competition.
I remember that.
Yes.
Yeah.
There, there was another thingthat's also gone now called the,
um, Deborah Cas.
Oh, that's right.
And I was short
Natasha Rai (21:14):
that that finished.
Yeah.
Nadia Mahjouri (21:15):
Yeah.
And that was for kind of diversewriters.
And so that was great too, youknow, just to be shortlisted or
long listed, whatever I was, youknow, it just felt like a kind
of, it's a real boost.
It.
Um, yeah.
And it was a validation of theproject, you know, it was a
validation of my capacity toeven.
Salude myself into thinking Icould do this.
You know, because I hadn't kindof come from, I, I hadn't
(21:38):
written 20 novels before.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, I wasn't, I wasn't one ofthose people that had like 20 in
the, in the bottom drawer.
Yeah, exactly.
You know, I, I don't have any inthe bottom drawer.
There's nothing in my bottomdrawer.
Like, well, there is probablylike a whole lot of rubbish in
my bottom drawer, but it's notlike, it's not, it's not, not
as, um, functional as a novel.
So, yeah, I, um, and then I hadapplied to do a.
(22:03):
Uh, what do you call?
And I just did little coursesand stuff, but I applied to do a
mentorship, you know, with KillYour Darlings.
You know how they have that?
Ah, yes, yes I do.
And they, I must have had about60,000 words at that point or
something like that, and shecame back to me and they said,
look, we think you're too farinto your project for, you know,
(22:25):
for what we are aiming thisproject to be.
Mm-hmm.
Why don't you book in amanuscript assessment?
She was like, but I'm not busy.
I'm busy until like, I think atthis point it was like November
or maybe, I don't know, in, in2020.
And she said, why don't you bookit in for April next year?
So then I had a deadline.
(22:45):
So I booked in for a manuscriptassessment of the entire
manuscript in April, and Ibooked it in six months in
advance.
And I was like, okay, well thisis your deadline now.
You know, you've gotta
Natasha Rai (22:56):
get to, yeah.
And, and with the assessor, didyou that to choose or did they
assign somebody to you?
Nadia Mahjouri (23:01):
Oh, that's a really good, I don't remember.
I've got, you don't remember?
Okay.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
I have no idea.
But it was Rebecca Stafford whodid that.
Yeah.
So I don't actually rememberwhether, how that ended up being
her.
Mm.
Um, but, but yeah, that alsojust worked for me to have a
deadline to get up an entiremanuscript.
You know,
Natasha Rai (23:21):
ready?
Yes.
Nadia Mahjouri (23:23):
Yeah.
Ready.
And in a way that I thought wasat least readable and
Natasha Rai (23:26):
presentable to, to someone.
Yeah.
And considering you had 60,000words, six months feels like a
good enough time to Yeah.
Get.
A bit more done and finish it toa standard that you're
comfortable with.
Nadia Mahjouri (23:38):
Yeah, totally.
Yeah, totally.
Totally.
And I, I knew by, at that stage,I knew where I was heading.
Although of course, it, youknow, it got, it, it changed
many times after there, but Iknew where I was heading for the
end of the first draft at least,you know?
Yeah.
So, so what came out of thatassessment?
Also the word publishable,which, you know, was in that
assessment.
(23:58):
You know, there was a whole lotof fantastic kind of advice
about character and structureand, you know, the kind of how
to, how to strengthen themanuscript, you know, pages and
pages of, of, um, feedback thatall of which was really, really
useful.
But by far it was the, it wasthe sense that she said it was
strong and that it had legs.
(24:20):
You know, that was, that wasreally the thing.
That has stayed in my, you know,because at that point you just
don't know.
Mm-hmm.
You know, I hadn't been in thisworld ever before.
I felt like I was, and it wasonly then I started to say,
writer.
You asked me really a long timeago, when did you start to use
the word writer?
But it was only after thatpoint.
(24:40):
But I was like, oh.
Maybe I'm a writer, do you knowwhat I mean?
Like, maybe that's a thing I cansay, because I feel I've got a
whole novel sitting here now.
Like that means I'm an actualwriter.
You know, I'm not an author, butI'm a writer because look at
what I wrote.
And, you know, so yeah, I thinkthat was about the point where
my, I kind of, my confidence,um, in my capacity to write and
(25:03):
in the fact that I was writing,you know, some little things got
published and so on.
No, no, actually that's not eventrue.
But the, um.
The SBS emerging writers turnedinto a, into a anthology, you
know, so there were just littlethings that felt like, yeah,
Natasha Rai (25:18):
yeah.
You know, felt like.
Okay.
And at, at this point, Nadia,had you met any other writers?
Did you know the writers did,did you have community?
Um,
Nadia Mahjouri (25:29):
not in the way I do now.
You know, not, not like, um,since publication and just, you
know, once I had the book deal,then I felt like a whole kind of
beautiful community opened up tome.
But I had a couple of friendsthat had one friend who had
published, um, a couple ofchildren's books, um, or, you
know, not picture books, butchildren Children's, what do you
(25:52):
call?
Middle grade fiction.
Um.
She'd published a series, sothat was good.
She could kind of, you know,tell me not to panic or that
things would be okay.
She read a couple, she read thefirst 20,000 words, you know,
I'd kind of started handing itout to various people.
I had another friend who isdoing, she's now doing a PhD in
creative writing.
(26:12):
She's a beautiful writer.
And you know, I felt a littlebit like, um.
She, we in our friendship group,she was already the writer, like
writer was kind of, you know,the, the job, the job of writer
was, was taken, was her.
Yeah.
There was no, yeah.
So who is this like, upstartthinking?
She can just start to write, youknow, like, you know, and, and
also does it I have not helped,but I mean, she is a very, very
(26:36):
talented, very, very beautifulwriter.
So, you know, I was like, oh,well, you know, she's clearly
got writer covered, but, youknow, so, so I knew people that
were writing.
Um, but no, not nothing like,oh, and I did a course,
actually, that's what I did.
That was my first little writersgroup.
I did a course with Heather Roseduring COVID, and it was an
online course and it was in theearly days of COVID.
(27:00):
And everyone was in that magicallittle bubble where, I don't
know, the whole world seemed tokind of, we, we'd all stepped
into an alternate universe andeverything was kind of magical
and weird.
Um.
And she had this beautiful kindof spiritual approach.
We almost, we did the artist'sway kind of, you know, as a, as
a kind of group every day for,for a couple of weeks at
(27:24):
lunchtime, a couple of hours inthe middle of the day.
And it was just this beautifulthing.
And so that group became, youknow, became a writer.
Yeah.
Kind of online writingcommunity.
Um, and we are still, you know,in touch that, that group now.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And, um, and then, so yeah, soas I started to do more writing,
um.
Courses and activities, most ofthose would turn into writing
(27:47):
friends, you know?
Yeah.
Connections.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's right.
But it, it was a, when I startedit, not really, like, there
were, like I said, a couple ofother people that I knew
tangentially, you know, had, hadwritten, but we weren't, our
friendship
Natasha Rai (28:01):
wasn't based on that.
But, so then coming back toafter you had your assessment
with Rebecca Stafford, what didyou do then after that with your
manuscript?
What happened next?
Excellent question.
Nadia Mahjouri (28:13):
I, I, I, you know, I spent some time taking
on board that feedback that was,there was quite a bit of
feedback, so I, I needed to doquite a lot of editing.
So, I mean, by that stage it waskind of, once I'd done what I
might have called, like a seconddraft or, you know what I mean,
like, I, I, yeah.
Structured it all or whatever.
I, I might have called it atthat point.
So I took on her feedback and.
(28:35):
I actually did another course.
Yeah.
That was the second course thatI did was with, with was with
Fiona Macintosh, her, and atthis point I was just kind of
scatter, gunning, applying foreverything I could see.
So I did a Fiona Macintoshcourse, I applied for
publishable, um, at QueenslandWriter Center that year.
(28:56):
They, I didn't, I wasn't longlisted or shortlisted for, um.
For publishable that year, butthey gave you feedback, you
could pay$50 and get feedback.
Oh, amazing.
Yeah, yeah.
You know, on the, I think yousent in 10,000 words or
something like that.
Yeah.
So I paid for that feedback andI had this great feedback
session with him.
(29:17):
Um, and then I did this, um,Fiona Macintosh course, and she
also gave feedback.
And this was all kind of on thefirst few chapters.
Like they were giving feedbackon the first 10,000 words, first
three chapters, that kind ofthing.
And I remember having like.
Night and day.
You know, they were like, theywere like, one was, I really
like the older woman, but notthe younger woman.
(29:37):
And the other one was, I reallylike the young woman and not the
old woman.
And I was like, oh.
I realized at that point like,you've, I'm gonna have to, um,
make some calls here.
You know?
Yeah.
Like your
Natasha Rai (29:49):
own, what feels right for you and your work like
this.
Yeah.
Nadia Mahjouri (29:52):
Yeah.
Because I was starting to kindof just, I'm a real people
pleaser.
In a lot of ways.
And I just wanted to, it waslike they were my teachers and I
wanted to like exactly.
And make them happy and get likethe nice mark.
And I was like, exactly the bebe the good student.
Yes.
Yeah.
But I couldn't do both.
Like, I couldn't make them bothhappy'cause they wanted
different, like they wantedopposite things from me.
(30:14):
So it was quite a, I mean, itwas actually quite good that it
was so stark.
'cause I did have to recognizethat it was impossible.
Like I couldn't actually, andthat I would have to chart my
own course through this and thatat some point, you know, this is
my story and I have to be happywith it.
So that was really good.
Um, at the same time, Fiona wasreally wonderful and she really
(30:35):
liked what I'd sent.
Um, and she sent it off to, toPenguin, to her publisher who,
um, passed it on to one of hercolleagues.
Um, I heard back from thatcolleague eventually, and she
was interested.
Wow, what a moment.
(30:55):
It was such a moment.
I remember we were on a fourmonth road trip at that point
through, it was 2021, and we'dgiven up on the, um.
Drafts and just, and decidedthat, um, we needed a holiday
and it was gonna have to be anAustralian holiday, and that we
needed to tick something offour, always wanted to do list,
but it had to be something inAustralia.
(31:16):
And so the, the, the thing forme that I'd always wanted you in
Australia was see the Kimberley.
Ah, oh God.
And so, yeah, I was like, I'venever been to the Kimberleys.
I really wanna see that part of,and the western Australian loo
coast, I was like, this is my,these are my bucket list items
for Australia.
So we took four months and weflew to Darwin and bought a
carvan and a camper van, and wewent.
(31:39):
Caravan in a car.
And then we did a four monthtrip to Perth and we sold
everything in Perth.
We bought it all in Darwin, soldit again four months later in
Perth for the same money.
'cause it was at the time whencaravans were kind of selling
like, you know, oh yeah.
A caravan.
Like you couldn't leaveAustralia.
So yeah, we bought a brand newcaravan and sold it four months
later, still as a brand newcaravan, which was weird.
Like amazing.
(32:00):
Yeah.
Anyway, the point being that Iwas on a road trip, so I do
remember that.
I remember the moment very much.
But of course.
Life isn't as simple as that.
So I never heard back from her.
I, I heard back from her saying,I really like it.
Um, I'm going to, I'll, I'll getback in touch with you.
(32:21):
I think it was like a, you know,anyway, I didn't hear anything
for months.
I was like, okay, okay, okay.
Eventually I messaged, Iemailed.
Fiona.
'cause it had been a really longtime, maybe six months then, and
I emailed Fiona back and justsaid, look, I don't know what to
do.
I haven't heard back.
You know?
(32:42):
She said, oh, okay.
Yeah, she probably should havegot back to you because she said
like, you know, it had beenlike, I'll get back to you in a
couple of weeks.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You know, it wasn't like a, itwasn't like a, you know, a
submission thing.
Like she, anyway, I, I find, soFiona followed up for me, which
was lovely.
And what I heard back was.
(33:03):
I am so sorry, but I've left.
I'm leaving my job next week.
I should, I should have got backto you, but I'm not allowed to
take anything on because I'mleaving, you know?
And so that was that.
So then I was back in thetrenches, you know?
Um.
You know, which was fine.
Like, you know, that that it,that was my first approach to
(33:25):
publishers.
If it, you know, it would'vebeen too good to be true for it
to just kind of magicallyhappen.
But there was validation then,you know.
Exactly, yes.
Yeah.
A publisher's seen it now and apublisher thought it was okay.
So I just started kind of takingevery opportunity I could see,
and I, you know, when they, theEmerging Writers Festival
(33:45):
happened that you could do apractice pitch?
Um, I did the practice pitch andto hase, they requested a Manus,
the manuscript.
I did a pitch to, oh no, I did afavor course about just a short
course about how to work with apublisher or an editor.
Um, and there was a publisherthere from Alan and Aman that
(34:08):
was running that course.
She heard, you know, about mywork or, you know, looked, read
the first chapter and one of therest she requested it.
So people, I just startedputting my mm, bring it up
there.
Hat, hat in every ring I couldfind.
Basically I reapplied for thenext year's publishable.
I, you know, if I could, therewas a little festival, writer's
(34:29):
festival out at Tasmanian, like,you know.
I would go along and try andfind the publisher and try and
like, do you know what I mean?
Like I just would take everyopportunity that, you know, came
around and, um, and it, and, andthen someone had told me about
literary speed dating.
So I did speed dating.
Um, I was trying agents at thatpoint.
(34:53):
That's the other thing I'd beendoing at that point, trying
agents and not really gettinganywhere with agents.
Like I had had quite a few kindof rejections from agents after.
Mm-hmm.
Usually after a request, butmore likely it was a ghosting.
I didn't, I, I had more ghostingthan I had rejections.
Lots of ghosting, like all ofthose people that I said.
(35:16):
Had requested it, like the Faberperson that requested it, the,
oh, Alan and Aman, the ettepublisher that requested it.
And they had requested it fromface-to-face conversations.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I didn't hear back from anyof those like, yeah, it was so
interesting.
And I think what happens,someone said to me, nos are
easy.
Like hell, yeses are easy, butthere's a whole lot in the
(35:38):
middle where you are not quitesure.
And I think the reality is now Irealize I wasn't ready.
To be putting it out there.
I was putting it out there tooearly.
It wasn't yet.
Okay.
Um, you know, like it wasn't yetshiny enough, you know, or, you
know, there was still more workto be done on it.
Mm.
And I think that, yeah, I thinkthat that's probably what was
(35:59):
happening.
They could see the potential init, which is why it wasn't an
absolute no, no.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Um, but.
It wasn't quite there yet, andthey had to think quite a lot
about how to make it there, youknow, and they, you know, just
weren't invested enough to kindof do that thinking work.
Um, so, so I think that's whatwas going on there.
(36:19):
So I didn't, so yeah, in theend, I, uh, I, so I did literary
speed dating and I pitched totext and I pitched to Ultimo,
and they both requested.
Um, one text came back very,very quickly saying, um, I don't
(36:42):
think I'm the right person forthis.
He's like, you know, and Icompletely understood that.
Mm-hmm.
Like, um, he, yeah, it just was,it wouldn't have been a good
fit, I don't think, um, for thebook, but just for the
individual.
Um, Ultimo said, didn't sayanything for ages, and then when
I kind of checked back in, saidthat.
(37:04):
That wasn't, I'm not the rightperson, but it's, but there's
someone else at my team thatI've passed it on to at Ultimo
anyway, didn't hear anythingback in the same time I was
shortlist long-listed andshortlisted for publishable the
second year.
Kind of unapplied for it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So that was great.
I was set up with a, a mentor,um, Michael Ahmed through
(37:25):
publishable, which was greatbecause I hadn't really had
anything to do with the WesternSydney.
I, you know, I'd read his work.
I loved his work, but I, Ihadn't, um.
My, you know, my work set in theArab world, you know, like it's
about being kind of, you know,north African, um, Australian
Rock and Australian.
And so there are a lot ofcrossovers between the work that
(37:46):
a lot of people are doing.
You know, he Lebanese Australiankind of work.
But, um, so it was really, itwas great to be able to connect
in with those guys.
'cause I just think what they dois amazing.
Um.
And then I was shortlisted forpublishable.
And then they said to me, okay,we are gonna arrange a pitch,
um, to, do you want a pitch toan agent or to a publisher?
(38:11):
And I, I looked at the agents onthe list and the agents on the
list.
One of them was Gabby Nayer, andGabby was.
Heather Rose, who I'd done acourse with, who also happens to
be my cousin, because it'sTasmania second cousin.
Mm-hmm.
Um, she, her, that was heragent.
And so I thought, I'm gonnacontact Heather and just see if
(38:33):
she thinks it's worth mepitching to Gabby, because I was
like, I'll see if she, you know,um.
If she's taking on new people.
Yeah.
If there's, you know, like ifit's, even, like, if she's not
even interested in the kind ofstuff I do, I won't even bother
to, you know, I won't say Iwanna pitch to her, you know?
So, so I said, oh, Heather, canwe have a coffee?
Heather was in the middle ofpromoting her memoir, and she,
she's like, oh, yes, but notyet.
Blah, blah, blah.
(38:54):
Anyway, so I didn't hear backfrom Heather Publishable,
Queensland Writer Center.
Went ahead and booked a pitchanyway with Penguin.
I was like, okay, look, that'sdone.
You know, that's done.
I'll pitch to Penguin.
You know, anyway, so I pitchedto Penguin, to Meredith Kerno.
Um, it, it must have been likeNovember, December.
(39:16):
Uh, and I, and then I fi then Iheard back from Heather saying,
I'm so sorry.
I'm done now.
Can we have a coffee?
And I was like.
Oh, you know, I just wanted toknow, blah, blah, blah.
Just explained what thesituation was and she's like,
oh, I'll just put you in touchwith Gabby.
You know, like, so, so that was,so that way I kind of, you know,
anyway, so I sent myself off toGabby.
(39:36):
That was great.
So, you know, now Penguin wasconsidering it and Gabby now was
considering it, and I stillhadn't heard back from Ultimo.
Oh, yes.
Okay.
Yeah, so, so the, these ballsare all in the air at once and
it's kind of Christmas time, youknow, and I got a call back
from, from Meredith Kerno atPenguin, and she was like, look,
(39:57):
you know, there are, you know, Ireally like it.
I really like, you know, butthere's, there are these things
that need to be worked on, blah,blah, blah.
Um, why don't you go away and dosome work on it?
Um.
And then bring it back to me.
I was like, okay, I'll go awayand I'll do, I'll do those
things, um, and I'll bring itback to you by this stage.
(40:18):
So kind of January went by, itmust have been February.
I still hadn't heard back fromUltimo, so I sent that email to
Ultimo going, you know, what'sgoing on?
She said, oh, you know, that waswhen she told me, I'm sorry,
I've sent it to someone else.
You know?
Yeah.
Check up with her.
Anyway, I checked up with her,sent her an email.
She sends me back an emailpretty much immediately saying.
Oh yes.
(40:39):
Can you, can we have a Zoom?
And I was like, yeah, sure.
Wow.
So I had a Zoom call with herand she's like, I wanna take it
to acquisitions.
My little brain explodes becauseI'm chasing up a ghosting, like,
you know, so I'm really notexpecting a Yeah, exactly.
Yes.
I'm like, what?
(40:59):
Like, you know, because I wasjust waiting for the, it was
more for me just to check it offmy list because a SA, when you
do literary speed daddy and theyactually have a three month, um,
rule that you have to, youcan't.
Take longer than three months toget back to someone, which is
brilliant because it often doestake, you know.
Yeah.
But a SA kind of promises that,that if you do literary speed
(41:21):
dating, you get a request.
The publisher has agreed thatto, they'll give you to you
Yeah.
Give a response within threemonths.
So, you know, so it had beenwell over three months, so I
was, you know, so I felt, Ifelt,'cause often it's hard to
know if you should follow up inthose situations.
Sometimes you just let it go.
But I thought I was a little bitemboldened by knowing that rule.
(41:41):
You know?
Exactly that, that as SA said,if you, if they don't get back
to you, you know, and you chaseit up, you know, then we'll
follow it up for you.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, because that's the kind ofarrangement that they make and
the publishers commit to thatwhen they come into the program.
Mm-hmm.
So I, um.
Yeah.
So anyway, turns out, yes, shewanted to take it to
acquisitions.
(42:01):
I knew that Penguin hadn't saidno, they hadn't said yess,
right?
But they hadn't said no.
They were like, you know, fixthis up and come back.
So I rang Gabby, who was stillconsidering my thing, who I also
hadn't heard back from.
But I sent her a message saying,look.
(42:22):
You know, ultimately wanna takeit to acquisitions.
I haven't had no from Penguinyet.
You know, what shall I do?
What shall I do?
Um, and she went, leave it.
You know, like, yes, all right,I'll take you on.
She's like, read your thing, Ilike it, you know, I'll take you
on.
Um, and kind of leave it to me.
And I was like, I've got anoffer from a publisher.
(42:45):
Just let me sign the damn deal.
Like, just lemme sign it.
Like I was just, it was torture,not being able to sign the first
deal that came across my desk.
You know?
She's like, so, so Ultimo didmake an offer.
They did make an offer, yeah.
They did make an offer?
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So yes, she made an offer.
Um.
(43:06):
And I was just, you know, ready.
Uh, she was lovely.
You know, Meredith was lovely.
Like they'd all been lovely.
Like, you know, I, I, and theyboth actually had similar
visions.
They were like, you know, theyboth kind of knew, you know, it
was obvious to them what neededto be done.
It wasn't obvious to me, obviousto the professionals.
Turns out I had no idea.
(43:26):
But, um.
Anyway, so, no, actually, andthen, you know, penguin came
back with an offer too, and thenthere was negotiations, which
just, you know, kind of blew my,blew my mind and obviously ended
up with Penguin and have beenvery, very happy.
Although, I'm sure I would'vealso been happy, you know, with
automotive.
Yeah.
You know, it wasn't, it wasn't,again, you know, I just, I, I
(43:47):
would've been happy with becausethey were both lovely, lovely
editors and both greatcompanies.
So, but yeah, turned out.
So at this point, Nadia, we, we,you are into 2023, right?
Yes.
At this point I'm into 2023.
Yes.
Yeah.
So that, so I, in terms of thepublishable, I didn't, it was
(44:08):
2021.
I didn't make it through to the,that's final.
Yeah.
And then 2022, I did get to the,to the short list.
And then the, that pitchhappened at the end of 2022.
So it was middle of 20, well,not middle, like March.
Yeah, 20 April, 2023.
Yeah.
What all happened and then thebook didn't come out till 2025.
(44:28):
Yes.
So I mean this, the speed isjust
Natasha Rai (44:31):
mind blowing.
Listen, I know.
And I think, like, I alwaysthink it's valuable to really,
um.
Pay a lot of attention to thatbecause yes, of course there are
writers who are like, oh yeah, Iwas picked up and I signed this
deal and it's coming out, youknow, next year.
But I don't know.
I think your experience, myexperience, a lot of the debut
crew from this year's experienceis that like it takes time and
(44:54):
you have to persevere.
Absolutely.
Nadia Mahjouri (44:56):
If that's what
Natasha Rai (44:57):
you want, right?
Mm.
Nadia Mahjouri (44:58):
Yeah.
And I needed all of that time.
Mm.
We were still making edits rightup until kind of, I mean, it
came out in February.
I was still making edits inNovember.
Like at the proof stage.
Natasha Rai (45:14):
Yeah.
Yeah.
It, yeah.
You gotta, yeah.
It takes the time.
It takes, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it's hard to say it'll bethis or this or this.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's right.
And maybe other people writeNita a work What a, what a
journey.
And I'm so, yeah.
I'm so happy that.
It has been published'cause it'sa gorgeous book.
It's an gorgeous Oh, thank you.
(45:34):
Yeah.
And I really, it was even, youknow, even earlier when you said
emotional truth, that's reallylanded for me because it
definitely has that so muchemotional truth.
So amazing.
Um, so before we wrap up Nadia,are there any tips that you
would give an emerging oraspiring writer?
Nadia Mahjouri (45:55):
Yeah, I.
My, my advice really is putyourself out there.
You know, I think that's what Ilearned from my, you know, throw
your hat into every ring.
Keep an eye open foropportunities and, you know,
what's the worst that canhappen?
You know, like you don't hearback.
(46:16):
Exactly.
You know, there's, yeah.
So I would really, you know, Ijust think if you've got
something that you think is.
You know, got some legs then,then put it out there, you know,
and also you have to be willingto, you know, to take the
feedback that you get, you know,because if I had of kept trying
(46:36):
to shop around the first draftthat I'd put out there, well
that wouldn't have goneanywhere.
Do you know what I mean?
But every time, if you're takingon the advice, then you are, you
know, you're moving closer andcloser to having a product that
people are gonna wanna, or, youknow, a, a publishable.
Um, manuscript.
So yeah, take on the advice.
Be, um, but be brave, you know?
Natasha Rai (46:56):
Yeah.
And also your experience withthe publishable program shows
that you don't just have oneshot you can resubmit and look
what happened.
You were shortlisted.
Yeah.
Nadia Mahjouri (47:08):
Yeah.
That's absolutely right.
Yeah, that's right.
And I mean.
I'm so grateful that I took that50 like that, you know, the$50
$49 or something for feedback.
You know, whenever they'reoffering feedback, take it, you
know?
Yeah.
Another way too.
It's just so useful.
Yeah.
So useful if people are, even ifyou don't take it on board, and
like I said, I had kind ofdiffering feedback.
(47:29):
It was really interesting initself, just to know that it's
hitting different peopledifferently, you know?
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Natasha Rai (47:37):
And yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, well thank you so much for,uh, coming on the podcast and
sharing your journey with me.
It's been amazing to hearbecause I didn't actually know
all of that.
I know we've talked to loadsabout lead up to publication,
but I actually didn't know therewas, there was so much and, and
it's such a typical journey asin the highs and lows, like when
(47:59):
you think you've got somewhereand then bam, it's not Oh, yeah.
And it can
Nadia Mahjouri (48:02):
be, I mean, that's probably the other thing
I'd say is.
You know, you do have to lookafter your emotional kind of
mental health because it is arollercoaster and you know, you,
there are moments where you canfeel quite disheartened by the
whole thing.
And there are moments when youknow, you're very hopeful and
then that doesn't turn intosomething.
(48:24):
So I guess keeping someperspective around it is, you
know, is really important.
Um, you know.
One No is not, no forever.
You know, like it's not exactly,you know, there, there are,
there are always moreopportunities and there's, you
know, there's always next year'scompetition for me right now.
I'm like, well there's always,you know, I'm gonna write
(48:45):
another book and another bookand another book, and I hope
that every book that I write is,you know, gonna be.
Kind of better than the last.
I don't know, my current secondnovel draft is looking pretty
ugly, so like, it doesn't feellike that at the moment, but I'm
like, I'll
Natasha Rai (48:59):
get there.
Exactly.
And you, and you know you, youcan do it because you've done it
already.
So definitely.
Yes, that's the plan.
Well, thank you so much and forlisteners that their half truth
is out and makes a greatChristmas present.
Oh, thank you.
Thanks, bye.
(49:20):
Take care.
Bye-bye.
Having reflected on myconversation with Nadia, the
intention that I'm setting forthe next few weeks is about
permission, and I really likethe word Nadia used around being
emboldened, so I'm thinkingabout giving myself permission
(49:43):
to write.
Or not to write, to call myselfvarious things like a writer, a
counselor, maybe a podcaster, ateacher, things that I haven't,
especially around teaching andpodcasting, things that I
haven't really given myself fullpermission to call myself or to
(50:04):
attach that title to myself.
Thinking about what you giveyourself permission to do.
And if you write, and we've saidthis before many, many times,
and it's worth repeating if youwrite your rev writer.
So just check for yourself whatgets in the way of giving
yourself permission to name thator even to create time.
(50:24):
What a carve out time to writefor yourself, whether you want
to pursue publication or whetherit's something that you are
doing for yourself.
And lastly, the intention aroundgetting or being emboldened.
So I really liked what Nadiasaid was to chase every
opportunity, put your hat in thering for everything.
(50:44):
And I actually had thisconversation with Madeline, my
co-host, just last night aroundwriters writing.
Yes.
But also the skillset of makingconnections of putting yourself
out there because it is scary,because it's not so simple as.
I'll just have a go and see whathappens because you're putting
(51:05):
something very personal on theline, which I totally
understand.
And as Nadia said in theepisode, the worst that's going
to happen is somebody says no,or they ghost you.
And after a while.
I dunno, it doesn't hurt orsting as much.
Maybe the first few times itmight.
So see if you can, even withthat fear or sting, keep going.
(51:25):
Keep putting your hat in thering, especially if you are
pursuing a publication deal orif you want feedback.
I think the feedback componentis so important and as Nadia
said.
Every time she got feedback andshe incorporated it into her
manuscript, it made it betterand shinier.
So that's my intention for thenext few weeks, giving yourself
permission and being emboldenedenough to try something, putting
(51:49):
yourself out there.
Good luck.
Tina Strachan (51:55):
Thank you for listening to the book Deal
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Madeleine Cleary (00:11):
where you will discover the inspiring stories
behind your favorite books.
Natasha Rai (00:15):
We interview seasoned and debut authors, as
well as publishing industryprofessionals to bring you the
best
The Book Deal (00:21):
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deal.
Tina Strachan (00:25):
So no matter what's.
Stage of writing your at.
We've got you covered.
I'm Tina Strachan.
Madeleine Cleary (00:30):
I'm Madeline Cleary.
Natasha Rai (00:32):
And I'm Natasha Rai.
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And join us as we pull back the curtain of
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Madeleine Cleary (00:37):
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The book Deal podcast acknowledges the
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And pays respect to their elderspast, present, and emerging.
Natasha Rai (00:56):
Nadia Mahjouri is a Moroccan Australian writer,
counselor, and groupfacilitator.
Her professional background isin health policy, governance and
academia, where her researchfocused on ethics and feminist
philosophy.
She's the host of theaward-winning podcast, the Whole
Truth, motherhood and theWriting Life.
(01:16):
In this podcast, Nadiainterviews authors about how
they manage to keep writingwhile living in the messy middle
of family life, work, andcreativity.
Half Truth is her debut novel.
Nadia and her husband live inHobart, Nepal, Luna, with
varying combinations of theirfamily, which includes three
young adults, two school-agedchildren, and a black Labrador
(01:39):
puppy called Russell Sprout.
Good morning, Nadia Mahjouri.
Welcome to the book to podcast.
Thank you so much.
It's great to have you.
It's like long overdue.
I think we talked about thismonths ago.
Yeah.
So, no, thank you.
(02:00):
Yeah.
So, half Truth, your debut novelcame out in February of this
year.
Can we start, and you must be apro at this now with your
elevator pitch.
It's
Nadia Mahjouri (02:10):
funny, I Avery, I still actually don't feel like
I am good at this, which isjust, you know, not okay.
Really.
But, um, I'll give it a go.
Okay.
I hear some people who, whose,whose pictures really are, um.
So Schmick and I, every timekind of have to go, well, what's
the book about again?
So it is the story.
Half Truth, um, is the story oftwo women who are, you know,
(02:35):
from very different worlds, verydifferent lives, but unbeknownst
to each other, are both missingand searching for the same man.
So who we first meet is Zara.
And Zara is a new mom.
She's living in a remote, um,part of Tasmania, and she's
realizing that.
Even though she's grown up inTasmania with her white mom,
(02:58):
she's realizing that she'sactually wanting now to learn a
bit more about the culture ofher father and who her father
was who, because he's fromMorocco and she's never met him.
So having this baby is kind ofthe catalyst for her to start to
do that investigation into kindof where her father is and what
it is like to, you know, be aMoroccan.
(03:18):
So she heads off to Morocco and.
Um, where she discovers herfather's family, but discovers
that her father himself hasn'tbeen seen, um, for over 25
years.
So he's a missing person there.
And at the same time as we meetZara, we meet Hadija who is, um,
Zara's grandmother, and Hadijais an elderly Moroccan woman
(03:40):
who.
Is looking back over her lifeand wondering if she will see
her firstborn son again beforeshe passes away.
So the journey is kind of the,the story is the journey of them
both trying to work out what,what happened to this man.
Natasha Rai (03:55):
Thank you.
That was a great pitch, by theway.
Nadia Mahjouri (03:58):
I don't know, it's, I'm still making it up as
I go.
I should have a, I should haveit just, you know.
Natasha Rai (04:03):
No, was I, I mean, I've read the book and I love, I
love it and I think it's sobeautiful.
Oh, thank you.
I could really feel myselfgetting quite emotional when you
are talking, especially about,you know, will she ever see her
firstborn son?
I was like, oh gosh.
Yeah.
It really, yeah.
Tugs on.
On that, but I'm so curious toask you, because I know that
(04:23):
part of it is based on yourpersonal experience.
Mm-hmm.
Um, how did you make the choiceto explore it through fiction as
opposed to say memoir?
Uh, that is a really goodquestion
Nadia Mahjouri (04:35):
because I didn't, um, I didn't make that
choice, um, until really quiet.
Far down the down the track.
I originally started writingthis novel as half memoir, half
fiction, and it could never be acomplete memoir because I was
really interested to know mygrandmother's story.
And my grandmother is, is, youknow, the character Haddi is
(04:57):
based on my grandmother's story.
I knew a few kind of big.
Um, you know, I knew that she, Iknew the village she grew up in
outside of Marrakesh.
I'd been there.
I knew the, um, that she hadbeen married 11, and I knew that
she'd had my father at 13.
But besides that, and I knewshe'd had had a traditional
facial tattoo.
Yeah.
And so I knew a little bitsabout her life, but I was
(05:17):
fascinated to get to know her.
But she'd actually passed awaybefore.
I first went to Morocco, so itwas always gonna be, it couldn't
be a whole memoir'cause I was,that was actually the catalyst
for me.
I wanted to kind of investigatewhat would life have been like
for her?
What would her, um, you know,what would her kind of daily
life have been like in thevillage?
What would her beliefs havebeen?
(05:39):
What kind of spiritual, youknow, ideas were happening for
her.
Um.
And also I was told by myfamily, Morocco, when I did get
there, that she'd died of abroken heart because her first
born son never came back.
So, you know, I just like, Ijust desperately wanted to kind
of engage with her.
But at the same time, I had thisfeeling that my story of going
(05:59):
to find my family Morocco wassomething that I wanted my kids
to have.
So I actually just startedwriting it as a really personal
kind of family project.
I just have this kind of recordto give to my kids, you know,
one day if they were to kind ofgo, hang on, how does this work
that we live here and yet we'vegot this family in Morocco?
Like, what, how did that all,you know, how did that all come
(06:23):
to be?
So, um, so yeah, I startedwriting it as a, as half memoir
and then fictionalizing the bitsI didn't know, um, as it started
to kind of get a bit of.
You know, positive feedback thatmaybe there was something
publishable as you know, in it.
Um, I started submitting it andI really wasn't sure at that
(06:43):
point whether it there was morevalue in it being a true story
and it being memoir.
Do you know what I mean?
I just didn't know.
I couldn't tell whether it wasbetter for me to, in terms of
getting it published to write itas fiction, um, as completely
fiction or not.
Um, and it wasn't until I, so Igot the book deal in the end
with.
(07:03):
Half memoir, half fiction.
But it was clear from thebeginning that, um, she wanted
me, that my publisher wanted meto rewrite the, the memoir as
fiction.
And it was the fictional, thefictionalization was really
about simplifying the narrativeto make it a little bit easier
to understand for the readers.
So things, you know, in reallife, things happened over seven
(07:26):
years.
The events play out over sevenyears, um, in the novel.
They play out over one year.
You know, in reality, theevents, you know, my
grandmother, for example, shehad eight children, so I had
eight, you know, aunts anduncles who all gave me little
bits of information, you know?
Um.
In the novel, she only has threebecause it was just literally a
(07:48):
matter of kind of, um, becauseit was already dual point of
view, you know, dual timelines,it was already quite a
complicated structure.
So it was just a matter ofsimplifying the narrative that
to make it easier to follow.
So I think the word she said tome, my publisher, which I loved
and really kind of took toheart, were, um, keep the
(08:08):
emotional truth, but we don'tneed to be so attached to the
facts.
Oh, you know, like it wassomething like, we don't need
the, we don't need the factualtruth, but, you know, the
emotional truth is what'simportant.
And that's definitely, you know,it is, it is emotionally true to
my journey also.
It's, you know, actuallyliterally quite true to my
journey.
It's just things are rearrangeda little bit and, you know,
(08:29):
they're kind of, um, connectorsthat are, people are given
multiple, you know, multipleroles where they, in reality,
they didn't have, they were,they were a conglomeration of
people.
Natasha Rai (08:39):
Yeah.
Yeah, so, so making that change,um, were there aspects that you
felt you lost and were thereaspects that you felt you
gained?
Nadia Mahjouri (08:50):
Oh, such a good question.
Um, and no one's asked me thatbefore.
Um, I love that, um, becausethere were things I lost and I
felt a bit sad about some ofthose things, actually.
Um, because not only was it overseven years, the, the events of
the story play out.
So I first went to Morocco.
And I discovered I, you know,after quite some, you know, work
(09:14):
to find my family, when I didfinally found find them, um, I
spent about six weeks there, um,with aunts and uncles and so on,
but I didn't really have anylanguage skills.
And so I came home, went off touni, learned to speak French,
and then went back for sixmonths.
So, you know, the next sixmonths journey was quite, um,
uh, epic.
(09:35):
And in the middle there I hadseparated from my.
Son's father.
So I went back as a single womanand actually had this beautiful
relationship with a Moroccan manwho taught me a lot about, um,
and that was all in the memoir,this kind of romance element.
Mm.
And I just felt so sad to getrid of this character, the, the
(09:55):
character man, because he hadbeen, he himself was a, was an
amazi or, or burber.
Um.
Uh, activist, he was fightingvery hard for the rights of the
indigenous people in Morocco,the, the, um, to keep the
language alive for the rights ofindigenous, um, Moroccan Amazi
(10:16):
people to speak their languageand to have it recognized and
taught in schools and so on.
So he was quite passionate aboutthat and I learned a lot from
him and.
Yeah.
And then in the story, I neededhis character because he
actually teaches Zara to, youknow, a lot about her culture
and about this part of herculture.
(10:37):
Everyone else seems quite afraidto speak about politics, and
that's for a very good reasonbecause, you know, they have,
they have lived for many yearsunder a kind of authoritarian
or, you know, quite, um, uh,what's the word?
Um.
But you know, it, it, it's been,it's a monarchy, but it's, it's
quite a cruel regime.
So they're, they're very, andthey're, there are strong, um,
(10:58):
responses to dissidents, youknow?
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
So people are very afraid.
Were at that point, not so muchnow, but were at that point
very, which was the latenineties, so it's said in the
late nineties for anyone thathasn't read it.
Um, so he was a really importantcharacter, but also.
You know, there was thisglorious kind of park back to my
mother, which who had gone toMorocco, was a white woman and
(11:20):
an Australian woman, and fallenin love with a Moroccan man.
And he was me, you know, 25years later going back to
Morocco as a single mom andfalling in love with a Moroccan
man.
And I just kind of really lovedthat echo, you know?
Yeah.
But obviously when you, when youbring this seven years down to
one year, you know, and down,you know, two long or three long
trips to Morocco, down to onetrip to Morocco, I would ha ha,
(11:42):
she would've had to have been.
You know, having a cheating onher partner.
Yeah.
Had the baby without the partnerand like, it just story was, I,
I, I didn't wanna kind of.
I didn't wanna make it thatcomplicated.
So the whole, so the character'sstill there, but he loses the
kind of, you know, there's onelittle kiss, you know, and it's
funny to me because the friends,my friends are like, but that
guy that, you know, that g thatguy, he's made up, isn't he?
(12:03):
You know?
And I'm like, no, no, no, no,no.
That guy is so real.
In fact, he is way more than thelittle kiss that they had by the
beach
Natasha Rai (12:10):
or by the river.
But I suppose as well, Nadia,the way you've just described
that, if you ha, if you tried tocram that in, you'd be losing
that beautiful emotional truththat you were.
Looking for.
Right, right.
Because it Yeah, that's right.
It goes down to somethingthat's, doesn't even have half
the depth of what you would'veexperienced.
Nadia Mahjouri (12:27):
Exactly.
And the emotion, the, I would'velost the emotional truth of what
actually happened, but also Iwould've shifted it into a
different emotional territorythat it wasn't there.
It would've become like a, youknow, a kind of cheating
storyline or a, you know, likesome other, some other
storyline.
Yeah.
So, so it definitely, um.
Yeah, it, it, it lost somethings, but it, you know, it
(12:49):
also, I can see the story as a,as a novel is much stronger.
You know, I can, I can see that,and I could see immediately the,
the, the wisdom in what, youknow, my publisher was
suggesting.
And actually I'd hit a pointwhere I just, when I got the,
the, you know, contract forpublication, I was so relieved
(13:10):
to have access to someone else'smind.
Mm.
To kind of'cause, you know, tolook at this project and be able
to say, this is what it needs.
Because I was really at a pointwhere I didn't know how to make
it better.
I was like, I can sit here andwork on this manuscript and I'm
making it different.
You know, like I wrote, it wasall in first person and now it's
(13:31):
all in third person.
You know, I've made thisdifferent.
Is it better?
I have no idea.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, I just didn't know thedifference between different and
better.
Yeah.
So to have someone else come inand say, no, this needs
fictionalizing.
And Yes.
Leave that like that and, butchange this bit, you know, and
they don't tell you how tochange it, but they tell you,
you know what, you know, thisneeds to become fiction or these
(13:52):
characters need to be clearer,or, you know,
Natasha Rai (13:55):
yeah.
They give you that guidance.
Um, and I do wanna come back toyour, that was great.
Yeah.
And I do wanna come back to yourpublication journey, but if we
just go back a bit.
Mm-hmm.
When did you start writing andwhen did you call yourself a
writer?
Nadia Mahjouri (14:08):
That is such a, yeah.
Such an interesting question.
And I, I do remember kind of.
Making a conscious decision toclaim that, um, identity, I
suppose because, I mean, I was akid that I grew up, my mother
was a librarian and I'm an onlychild, so, you know, books were
my best friends and my, youknow, siblings and my pastime.
(14:31):
I lived, you know, I was verylucky to live in a house full of
books with a mother that lovedchildren's literature, so I was
so, yeah, so, so kind ofreading.
Primarily before writing, youknow, was, was my, you know, it
was a love of mine forever andjust part of my life, but when
it came to writing, I wrotecreatively in, you know, school
(14:53):
writing in high school.
I enjoyed it, but I never reallythought it was something that
was a viable option for a thingto do.
So I moved, you know, I, Ialways wrote.
Essays and, you know,applications for various things
with kind of glee.
Like, you know, like I, Ienjoyed essays instead of like,
(15:16):
you know, so I have always,everything I've ever done and
ever felt kind of, um, that Ihad some, you know, talent in
was always writing related, butI just hadn't given myself
permission to play creativelywith writing and it wasn't.
But I had this idea brewingabout my grandmother's story
(15:38):
for, since it happened, since I,since the late, late nineties.
And I just kind of, I keptchewing it over and I knew that
it was one of those things thatone day.
I wanna write that story.
It wasn't writing in general, itwas that story.
You know, it was mygrandmother's story.
And then at the same time,people would say to me all the
time, I would tell them aboutgoing to Morocco and trying to
find my father and what hadhappened.
And they would say, oh my God,that's gotta be a book.
(15:59):
So I didn't have that muchinterest in writing my own
story.
I really wanted to write mygrandmother's story, but then
people would always say, oh,that you've gotta tell that
story.
And I was like, oh, well Ireally should for my kids.
And then.
Well, it took me probably 20years to work out how those two
things could Mm, you know, couldwork together.
And it wasn't till I kind ofrealized that, of course, these
(16:19):
two women are linked.
By, you know, the absence ofthis man that I realized, and
that wasn't till 20 20, 20 20,20 19.
It was, it wasn't 2020 hadn'tstarted yet.
So we weren't in the COVID yearsyet, but it was the end of 2019
and my husband and I had, um,gone away camping.
And he was turning 50 and wewere having that conversation.
(16:41):
That's like, what would you, youknow, what would you regret not
doing?
You know, if you get to the endof your life and you haven't, is
there something that you wouldregret if you never did it, that
you've done yet, that youhaven't done yet?
You know, and we were writingthis list of like 50 things to
do, you know, when you're 50,you know, like, you know Yep.
That he had stupid things likehim.
Running a marathon, which, youknow, like I, I never put
(17:01):
running a marathon on my list.
Like, I'm not stupid, but youknow, like, uh, we decided, you
know, I was like, I wanna seegiraffes in the wild in, in
Africa, you know, so we'd bookeda safari for 2020'cause we were
ticking things off our list,which obviously didn't happen.
Still.
I've never seen a giraffe in thewild.
That's too long.
Yeah.
But one of the things on my listobviously was I will really
(17:22):
regret not having written.
This particular story, you know,I, I need to do that before I
die, kind of thing.
To not like end up with deathbedregrets.
Natasha Rai (17:32):
So, and it's so I was just gonna say on that
point, it's so interesting,isn't it?
How many emerging aspiringwriters, we need to have some
specific thing that we do togive ourselves the permission.
Like you, you had, okay, I wannawrite about my grandmother, and
then, oh, okay, let's make thislist.
Now I have permission toactually do it.
Nadia Mahjouri (17:53):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Even more than that, like theliteral permission came because
my daughter was going to, I'dbeen home.
With the kids.
I, I have, we've kind of got a,a blended family and I had a
young child in 99, and then Ididn't have more kids until, you
know, nine, you know, the 20thirteens.
And so my, my, um, youngest twokids, the youngest of those was
(18:16):
heading off to kinder in 2020.
So we'd been living without myincome, you know, or without me
just doing little bits andpieces of, of.
Various freelance stuff here andthere.
So we'd been living without myincome for a while and I, my
daughter was only gonna be atschool three days a week, and
they were only gonna shortschool days.
And so the conversation wasreally, how about I don't go
back to work this year?
(18:37):
How about, you know, if we cansurvive?
How about I give myself thisyear to write this notebook, you
know?
And then, um.
You know, because then I, I cankind of, you know, like, so it
literally was kind of apermission giving, you know, to
to myself to say, okay, thisyear I'm not gonna, I'm gonna
have three days without kids inthe house, you know?
And then of course, 2020happened, so the three days with
(18:58):
the, with the kids, you know,outta the house just didn't
happen at all.
But, you know, it, it got doneanyway,
Natasha Rai (19:04):
so, yeah.
So tell me, then you wrote, whatwas it, like a first draft or a
draft of the whole, of, of halfTruth.
Nadia Mahjouri (19:13):
Uh, yeah, I did eventually, you know, obviously
you've gotta, you know, Istarted, I got stuck at several
points and had to reach out for,um, I think about 20,000 words.
I was like, oh, I don't knowwhat I'm doing, you know, and I
just found someone advertisingin my local area that was a
(19:33):
writing mentor.
So she kind of, and she didn'tdo much except kind of say.
It wasn't like we had an ongoingrelationship or anything, but
she just said, no, there'ssomething here.
And I think that you can do it.
Like, you know, I don't know,the dual point of views are
working or something like that.
Yeah.
I just needed like, you know,someone else just say that
Natasha Rai (19:52):
you are okay and this is gonna work.
Yeah, yeah.
And
Nadia Mahjouri (19:54):
that you, you know, it's, yeah.
And you know, remember her, herexact words were, you know, she
said, and if this getspublished.
No, when this gets published.
And I just remember, like, Ilove that that's the first time
anyone had ever said, when thisget published, you know?
And I was like, oh, I wasn'teven thinking about publication,
but she was the first person tokind of use that phrase with me.
(20:16):
And I just like, yeah, like Isaid, it stuck in my mind, you
know, she, if no, when, when,um, and so then I started just
en entering little bits andpieces into.
You know, I into littlecompetitions, and so all of
those were little kind of, youknow.
Mm-hmm.
So
Natasha Rai (20:34):
competitions where you didn't need a full
manuscript.
Nadia Mahjouri (20:37):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Like little chapters as stories,I suppose, or, you know, um,
yeah, nothing, nothing.
I, I, you know, nothing that hada kind of, um, what do you call
it?
Like a.
A, a requirement or anexpectation that we would have
the whole, you know, that waseven more, you know, just like,
(20:57):
maybe this is, you know, I, Iput a piece into the SBS
emerging writers.
Um, they had a competition.
I remember that.
Yes.
Yeah.
There, there was another thingthat's also gone now called the,
um, Deborah Cas.
Oh, that's right.
And I was short
Natasha Rai (21:14):
that that finished.
Yeah.
Nadia Mahjouri (21:15):
Yeah.
And that was for kind of diversewriters.
And so that was great too, youknow, just to be shortlisted or
long listed, whatever I was, youknow, it just felt like a kind
of, it's a real boost.
It.
Um, yeah.
And it was a validation of theproject, you know, it was a
validation of my capacity toeven.
Salude myself into thinking Icould do this.
You know, because I hadn't kindof come from, I, I hadn't
(21:38):
written 20 novels before.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, I wasn't, I wasn't one ofthose people that had like 20 in
the, in the bottom drawer.
Yeah, exactly.
You know, I, I don't have any inthe bottom drawer.
There's nothing in my bottomdrawer.
Like, well, there is probablylike a whole lot of rubbish in
my bottom drawer, but it's notlike, it's not, it's not, not
as, um, functional as a novel.
So, yeah, I, um, and then I hadapplied to do a.
(22:03):
Uh, what do you call?
And I just did little coursesand stuff, but I applied to do a
mentorship, you know, with KillYour Darlings.
You know how they have that?
Ah, yes, yes I do.
And they, I must have had about60,000 words at that point or
something like that, and shecame back to me and they said,
look, we think you're too farinto your project for, you know,
(22:25):
for what we are aiming thisproject to be.
Mm-hmm.
Why don't you book in amanuscript assessment?
She was like, but I'm not busy.
I'm busy until like, I think atthis point it was like November
or maybe, I don't know, in, in2020.
And she said, why don't you bookit in for April next year?
So then I had a deadline.
(22:45):
So I booked in for a manuscriptassessment of the entire
manuscript in April, and Ibooked it in six months in
advance.
And I was like, okay, well thisis your deadline now.
You know, you've gotta
Natasha Rai (22:56):
get to, yeah.
And, and with the assessor, didyou that to choose or did they
assign somebody to you?
Nadia Mahjouri (23:01):
Oh, that's a really good, I don't remember.
I've got, you don't remember?
Okay.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
I have no idea.
But it was Rebecca Stafford whodid that.
Yeah.
So I don't actually rememberwhether, how that ended up being
her.
Mm.
Um, but, but yeah, that alsojust worked for me to have a
deadline to get up an entiremanuscript.
You know,
Natasha Rai (23:21):
ready?
Yes.
Nadia Mahjouri (23:23):
Yeah.
Ready.
And in a way that I thought wasat least readable and
Natasha Rai (23:26):
presentable to, to someone.
Yeah.
And considering you had 60,000words, six months feels like a
good enough time to Yeah.
Get.
A bit more done and finish it toa standard that you're
comfortable with.
Nadia Mahjouri (23:38):
Yeah, totally.
Yeah, totally.
Totally.
And I, I knew by, at that stage,I knew where I was heading.
Although of course, it, youknow, it got, it, it changed
many times after there, but Iknew where I was heading for the
end of the first draft at least,you know?
Yeah.
So, so what came out of thatassessment?
Also the word publishable,which, you know, was in that
assessment.
(23:58):
You know, there was a whole lotof fantastic kind of advice
about character and structureand, you know, the kind of how
to, how to strengthen themanuscript, you know, pages and
pages of, of, um, feedback thatall of which was really, really
useful.
But by far it was the, it wasthe sense that she said it was
strong and that it had legs.
(24:20):
You know, that was, that wasreally the thing.
That has stayed in my, you know,because at that point you just
don't know.
Mm-hmm.
You know, I hadn't been in thisworld ever before.
I felt like I was, and it wasonly then I started to say,
writer.
You asked me really a long timeago, when did you start to use
the word writer?
But it was only after thatpoint.
(24:40):
But I was like, oh.
Maybe I'm a writer, do you knowwhat I mean?
Like, maybe that's a thing I cansay, because I feel I've got a
whole novel sitting here now.
Like that means I'm an actualwriter.
You know, I'm not an author, butI'm a writer because look at
what I wrote.
And, you know, so yeah, I thinkthat was about the point where
my, I kind of, my confidence,um, in my capacity to write and
(25:03):
in the fact that I was writing,you know, some little things got
published and so on.
No, no, actually that's not eventrue.
But the, um.
The SBS emerging writers turnedinto a, into a anthology, you
know, so there were just littlethings that felt like, yeah,
Natasha Rai (25:18):
yeah.
You know, felt like.
Okay.
And at, at this point, Nadia,had you met any other writers?
Did you know the writers did,did you have community?
Um,
Nadia Mahjouri (25:29):
not in the way I do now.
You know, not, not like, um,since publication and just, you
know, once I had the book deal,then I felt like a whole kind of
beautiful community opened up tome.
But I had a couple of friendsthat had one friend who had
published, um, a couple ofchildren's books, um, or, you
know, not picture books, butchildren Children's, what do you
(25:52):
call?
Middle grade fiction.
Um.
She'd published a series, sothat was good.
She could kind of, you know,tell me not to panic or that
things would be okay.
She read a couple, she read thefirst 20,000 words, you know,
I'd kind of started handing itout to various people.
I had another friend who isdoing, she's now doing a PhD in
creative writing.
(26:12):
She's a beautiful writer.
And you know, I felt a littlebit like, um.
She, we in our friendship group,she was already the writer, like
writer was kind of, you know,the, the job, the job of writer
was, was taken, was her.
Yeah.
There was no, yeah.
So who is this like, upstartthinking?
She can just start to write, youknow, like, you know, and, and
also does it I have not helped,but I mean, she is a very, very
(26:36):
talented, very, very beautifulwriter.
So, you know, I was like, oh,well, you know, she's clearly
got writer covered, but, youknow, so, so I knew people that
were writing.
Um, but no, not nothing like,oh, and I did a course,
actually, that's what I did.
That was my first little writersgroup.
I did a course with Heather Roseduring COVID, and it was an
online course and it was in theearly days of COVID.
(27:00):
And everyone was in that magicallittle bubble where, I don't
know, the whole world seemed tokind of, we, we'd all stepped
into an alternate universe andeverything was kind of magical
and weird.
Um.
And she had this beautiful kindof spiritual approach.
We almost, we did the artist'sway kind of, you know, as a, as
a kind of group every day for,for a couple of weeks at
(27:24):
lunchtime, a couple of hours inthe middle of the day.
And it was just this beautifulthing.
And so that group became, youknow, became a writer.
Yeah.
Kind of online writingcommunity.
Um, and we are still, you know,in touch that, that group now.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And, um, and then, so yeah, soas I started to do more writing,
um.
Courses and activities, most ofthose would turn into writing
(27:47):
friends, you know?
Yeah.
Connections.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's right.
But it, it was a, when I startedit, not really, like, there
were, like I said, a couple ofother people that I knew
tangentially, you know, had, hadwritten, but we weren't, our
friendship
Natasha Rai (28:01):
wasn't based on that.
But, so then coming back toafter you had your assessment
with Rebecca Stafford, what didyou do then after that with your
manuscript?
What happened next?
Excellent question.
Nadia Mahjouri (28:13):
I, I, I, you know, I spent some time taking
on board that feedback that was,there was quite a bit of
feedback, so I, I needed to doquite a lot of editing.
So, I mean, by that stage it waskind of, once I'd done what I
might have called, like a seconddraft or, you know what I mean,
like, I, I, yeah.
Structured it all or whatever.
I, I might have called it atthat point.
So I took on her feedback and.
(28:35):
I actually did another course.
Yeah.
That was the second course thatI did was with, with was with
Fiona Macintosh, her, and atthis point I was just kind of
scatter, gunning, applying foreverything I could see.
So I did a Fiona Macintoshcourse, I applied for
publishable, um, at QueenslandWriter Center that year.
(28:56):
They, I didn't, I wasn't longlisted or shortlisted for, um.
For publishable that year, butthey gave you feedback, you
could pay$50 and get feedback.
Oh, amazing.
Yeah, yeah.
You know, on the, I think yousent in 10,000 words or
something like that.
Yeah.
So I paid for that feedback andI had this great feedback
session with him.
(29:17):
Um, and then I did this, um,Fiona Macintosh course, and she
also gave feedback.
And this was all kind of on thefirst few chapters.
Like they were giving feedbackon the first 10,000 words, first
three chapters, that kind ofthing.
And I remember having like.
Night and day.
You know, they were like, theywere like, one was, I really
like the older woman, but notthe younger woman.
(29:37):
And the other one was, I reallylike the young woman and not the
old woman.
And I was like, oh.
I realized at that point like,you've, I'm gonna have to, um,
make some calls here.
You know?
Yeah.
Like your
Natasha Rai (29:49):
own, what feels right for you and your work like
this.
Yeah.
Nadia Mahjouri (29:52):
Yeah.
Because I was starting to kindof just, I'm a real people
pleaser.
In a lot of ways.
And I just wanted to, it waslike they were my teachers and I
wanted to like exactly.
And make them happy and get likethe nice mark.
And I was like, exactly the bebe the good student.
Yes.
Yeah.
But I couldn't do both.
Like, I couldn't make them bothhappy'cause they wanted
different, like they wantedopposite things from me.
(30:14):
So it was quite a, I mean, itwas actually quite good that it
was so stark.
'cause I did have to recognizethat it was impossible.
Like I couldn't actually, andthat I would have to chart my
own course through this and thatat some point, you know, this is
my story and I have to be happywith it.
So that was really good.
Um, at the same time, Fiona wasreally wonderful and she really
(30:35):
liked what I'd sent.
Um, and she sent it off to, toPenguin, to her publisher who,
um, passed it on to one of hercolleagues.
Um, I heard back from thatcolleague eventually, and she
was interested.
Wow, what a moment.
(30:55):
It was such a moment.
I remember we were on a fourmonth road trip at that point
through, it was 2021, and we'dgiven up on the, um.
Drafts and just, and decidedthat, um, we needed a holiday
and it was gonna have to be anAustralian holiday, and that we
needed to tick something offour, always wanted to do list,
but it had to be something inAustralia.
(31:16):
And so the, the, the thing forme that I'd always wanted you in
Australia was see the Kimberley.
Ah, oh God.
And so, yeah, I was like, I'venever been to the Kimberleys.
I really wanna see that part of,and the western Australian loo
coast, I was like, this is my,these are my bucket list items
for Australia.
So we took four months and weflew to Darwin and bought a
carvan and a camper van, and wewent.
(31:39):
Caravan in a car.
And then we did a four monthtrip to Perth and we sold
everything in Perth.
We bought it all in Darwin, soldit again four months later in
Perth for the same money.
'cause it was at the time whencaravans were kind of selling
like, you know, oh yeah.
A caravan.
Like you couldn't leaveAustralia.
So yeah, we bought a brand newcaravan and sold it four months
later, still as a brand newcaravan, which was weird.
Like amazing.
(32:00):
Yeah.
Anyway, the point being that Iwas on a road trip, so I do
remember that.
I remember the moment very much.
But of course.
Life isn't as simple as that.
So I never heard back from her.
I, I heard back from her saying,I really like it.
Um, I'm going to, I'll, I'll getback in touch with you.
(32:21):
I think it was like a, you know,anyway, I didn't hear anything
for months.
I was like, okay, okay, okay.
Eventually I messaged, Iemailed.
Fiona.
'cause it had been a really longtime, maybe six months then, and
I emailed Fiona back and justsaid, look, I don't know what to
do.
I haven't heard back.
You know?
(32:42):
She said, oh, okay.
Yeah, she probably should havegot back to you because she said
like, you know, it had beenlike, I'll get back to you in a
couple of weeks.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You know, it wasn't like a, itwasn't like a, you know, a
submission thing.
Like she, anyway, I, I find, soFiona followed up for me, which
was lovely.
And what I heard back was.
(33:03):
I am so sorry, but I've left.
I'm leaving my job next week.
I should, I should have got backto you, but I'm not allowed to
take anything on because I'mleaving, you know?
And so that was that.
So then I was back in thetrenches, you know?
Um.
You know, which was fine.
Like, you know, that that it,that was my first approach to
(33:25):
publishers.
If it, you know, it would'vebeen too good to be true for it
to just kind of magicallyhappen.
But there was validation then,you know.
Exactly, yes.
Yeah.
A publisher's seen it now and apublisher thought it was okay.
So I just started kind of takingevery opportunity I could see,
and I, you know, when they, theEmerging Writers Festival
(33:45):
happened that you could do apractice pitch?
Um, I did the practice pitch andto hase, they requested a Manus,
the manuscript.
I did a pitch to, oh no, I did afavor course about just a short
course about how to work with apublisher or an editor.
Um, and there was a publisherthere from Alan and Aman that
(34:08):
was running that course.
She heard, you know, about mywork or, you know, looked, read
the first chapter and one of therest she requested it.
So people, I just startedputting my mm, bring it up
there.
Hat, hat in every ring I couldfind.
Basically I reapplied for thenext year's publishable.
I, you know, if I could, therewas a little festival, writer's
(34:29):
festival out at Tasmanian, like,you know.
I would go along and try andfind the publisher and try and
like, do you know what I mean?
Like I just would take everyopportunity that, you know, came
around and, um, and it, and, andthen someone had told me about
literary speed dating.
So I did speed dating.
Um, I was trying agents at thatpoint.
(34:53):
That's the other thing I'd beendoing at that point, trying
agents and not really gettinganywhere with agents.
Like I had had quite a few kindof rejections from agents after.
Mm-hmm.
Usually after a request, butmore likely it was a ghosting.
I didn't, I, I had more ghostingthan I had rejections.
Lots of ghosting, like all ofthose people that I said.
(35:16):
Had requested it, like the Faberperson that requested it, the,
oh, Alan and Aman, the ettepublisher that requested it.
And they had requested it fromface-to-face conversations.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I didn't hear back from anyof those like, yeah, it was so
interesting.
And I think what happens,someone said to me, nos are
easy.
Like hell, yeses are easy, butthere's a whole lot in the
(35:38):
middle where you are not quitesure.
And I think the reality is now Irealize I wasn't ready.
To be putting it out there.
I was putting it out there tooearly.
It wasn't yet.
Okay.
Um, you know, like it wasn't yetshiny enough, you know, or, you
know, there was still more workto be done on it.
Mm.
And I think that, yeah, I thinkthat that's probably what was
(35:59):
happening.
They could see the potential init, which is why it wasn't an
absolute no, no.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Um, but.
It wasn't quite there yet, andthey had to think quite a lot
about how to make it there, youknow, and they, you know, just
weren't invested enough to kindof do that thinking work.
Um, so, so I think that's whatwas going on there.
(36:19):
So I didn't, so yeah, in theend, I, uh, I, so I did literary
speed dating and I pitched totext and I pitched to Ultimo,
and they both requested.
Um, one text came back very,very quickly saying, um, I don't
(36:42):
think I'm the right person forthis.
He's like, you know, and Icompletely understood that.
Mm-hmm.
Like, um, he, yeah, it just was,it wouldn't have been a good
fit, I don't think, um, for thebook, but just for the
individual.
Um, Ultimo said, didn't sayanything for ages, and then when
I kind of checked back in, saidthat.
(37:04):
That wasn't, I'm not the rightperson, but it's, but there's
someone else at my team thatI've passed it on to at Ultimo
anyway, didn't hear anythingback in the same time I was
shortlist long-listed andshortlisted for publishable the
second year.
Kind of unapplied for it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So that was great.
I was set up with a, a mentor,um, Michael Ahmed through
(37:25):
publishable, which was greatbecause I hadn't really had
anything to do with the WesternSydney.
I, you know, I'd read his work.
I loved his work, but I, Ihadn't, um.
My, you know, my work set in theArab world, you know, like it's
about being kind of, you know,north African, um, Australian
Rock and Australian.
And so there are a lot ofcrossovers between the work that
(37:46):
a lot of people are doing.
You know, he Lebanese Australiankind of work.
But, um, so it was really, itwas great to be able to connect
in with those guys.
'cause I just think what they dois amazing.
Um.
And then I was shortlisted forpublishable.
And then they said to me, okay,we are gonna arrange a pitch,
um, to, do you want a pitch toan agent or to a publisher?
(38:11):
And I, I looked at the agents onthe list and the agents on the
list.
One of them was Gabby Nayer, andGabby was.
Heather Rose, who I'd done acourse with, who also happens to
be my cousin, because it'sTasmania second cousin.
Mm-hmm.
Um, she, her, that was heragent.
And so I thought, I'm gonnacontact Heather and just see if
(38:33):
she thinks it's worth mepitching to Gabby, because I was
like, I'll see if she, you know,um.
If she's taking on new people.
Yeah.
If there's, you know, like ifit's, even, like, if she's not
even interested in the kind ofstuff I do, I won't even bother
to, you know, I won't say Iwanna pitch to her, you know?
So, so I said, oh, Heather, canwe have a coffee?
Heather was in the middle ofpromoting her memoir, and she,
she's like, oh, yes, but notyet.
Blah, blah, blah.
(38:54):
Anyway, so I didn't hear backfrom Heather Publishable,
Queensland Writer Center.
Went ahead and booked a pitchanyway with Penguin.
I was like, okay, look, that'sdone.
You know, that's done.
I'll pitch to Penguin.
You know, anyway, so I pitchedto Penguin, to Meredith Kerno.
Um, it, it must have been likeNovember, December.
(39:16):
Uh, and I, and then I fi then Iheard back from Heather saying,
I'm so sorry.
I'm done now.
Can we have a coffee?
And I was like.
Oh, you know, I just wanted toknow, blah, blah, blah.
Just explained what thesituation was and she's like,
oh, I'll just put you in touchwith Gabby.
You know, like, so, so that was,so that way I kind of, you know,
anyway, so I sent myself off toGabby.
(39:36):
That was great.
So, you know, now Penguin wasconsidering it and Gabby now was
considering it, and I stillhadn't heard back from Ultimo.
Oh, yes.
Okay.
Yeah, so, so the, these ballsare all in the air at once and
it's kind of Christmas time, youknow, and I got a call back
from, from Meredith Kerno atPenguin, and she was like, look,
(39:57):
you know, there are, you know, Ireally like it.
I really like, you know, butthere's, there are these things
that need to be worked on, blah,blah, blah.
Um, why don't you go away and dosome work on it?
Um.
And then bring it back to me.
I was like, okay, I'll go awayand I'll do, I'll do those
things, um, and I'll bring itback to you by this stage.
(40:18):
So kind of January went by, itmust have been February.
I still hadn't heard back fromUltimo, so I sent that email to
Ultimo going, you know, what'sgoing on?
She said, oh, you know, that waswhen she told me, I'm sorry,
I've sent it to someone else.
You know?
Yeah.
Check up with her.
Anyway, I checked up with her,sent her an email.
She sends me back an emailpretty much immediately saying.
Oh yes.
(40:39):
Can you, can we have a Zoom?
And I was like, yeah, sure.
Wow.
So I had a Zoom call with herand she's like, I wanna take it
to acquisitions.
My little brain explodes becauseI'm chasing up a ghosting, like,
you know, so I'm really notexpecting a Yeah, exactly.
Yes.
I'm like, what?
(40:59):
Like, you know, because I wasjust waiting for the, it was
more for me just to check it offmy list because a SA, when you
do literary speed daddy and theyactually have a three month, um,
rule that you have to, youcan't.
Take longer than three months toget back to someone, which is
brilliant because it often doestake, you know.
Yeah.
But a SA kind of promises that,that if you do literary speed
(41:21):
dating, you get a request.
The publisher has agreed thatto, they'll give you to you
Yeah.
Give a response within threemonths.
So, you know, so it had beenwell over three months, so I
was, you know, so I felt, Ifelt,'cause often it's hard to
know if you should follow up inthose situations.
Sometimes you just let it go.
But I thought I was a little bitemboldened by knowing that rule.
(41:41):
You know?
Exactly that, that as SA said,if you, if they don't get back
to you, you know, and you chaseit up, you know, then we'll
follow it up for you.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, because that's the kind ofarrangement that they make and
the publishers commit to thatwhen they come into the program.
Mm-hmm.
So I, um.
Yeah.
So anyway, turns out, yes, shewanted to take it to
acquisitions.
(42:01):
I knew that Penguin hadn't saidno, they hadn't said yess,
right?
But they hadn't said no.
They were like, you know, fixthis up and come back.
So I rang Gabby, who was stillconsidering my thing, who I also
hadn't heard back from.
But I sent her a message saying,look.
(42:22):
You know, ultimately wanna takeit to acquisitions.
I haven't had no from Penguinyet.
You know, what shall I do?
What shall I do?
Um, and she went, leave it.
You know, like, yes, all right,I'll take you on.
She's like, read your thing, Ilike it, you know, I'll take you
on.
Um, and kind of leave it to me.
And I was like, I've got anoffer from a publisher.
(42:45):
Just let me sign the damn deal.
Like, just lemme sign it.
Like I was just, it was torture,not being able to sign the first
deal that came across my desk.
You know?
She's like, so, so Ultimo didmake an offer.
They did make an offer, yeah.
They did make an offer?
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So yes, she made an offer.
Um.
(43:06):
And I was just, you know, ready.
Uh, she was lovely.
You know, Meredith was lovely.
Like they'd all been lovely.
Like, you know, I, I, and theyboth actually had similar
visions.
They were like, you know, theyboth kind of knew, you know, it
was obvious to them what neededto be done.
It wasn't obvious to me, obviousto the professionals.
Turns out I had no idea.
(43:26):
But, um.
Anyway, so, no, actually, andthen, you know, penguin came
back with an offer too, and thenthere was negotiations, which
just, you know, kind of blew my,blew my mind and obviously ended
up with Penguin and have beenvery, very happy.
Although, I'm sure I would'vealso been happy, you know, with
automotive.
Yeah.
You know, it wasn't, it wasn't,again, you know, I just, I, I
(43:47):
would've been happy with becausethey were both lovely, lovely
editors and both greatcompanies.
So, but yeah, turned out.
So at this point, Nadia, we, we,you are into 2023, right?
Yes.
At this point I'm into 2023.
Yes.
Yeah.
So that, so I, in terms of thepublishable, I didn't, it was
(44:08):
2021.
I didn't make it through to the,that's final.
Yeah.
And then 2022, I did get to the,to the short list.
And then the, that pitchhappened at the end of 2022.
So it was middle of 20, well,not middle, like March.
Yeah, 20 April, 2023.
Yeah.
What all happened and then thebook didn't come out till 2025.
(44:28):
Yes.
So I mean this, the speed isjust
Natasha Rai (44:31):
mind blowing.
Listen, I know.
And I think, like, I alwaysthink it's valuable to really,
um.
Pay a lot of attention to thatbecause yes, of course there are
writers who are like, oh yeah, Iwas picked up and I signed this
deal and it's coming out, youknow, next year.
But I don't know.
I think your experience, myexperience, a lot of the debut
crew from this year's experienceis that like it takes time and
(44:54):
you have to persevere.
Absolutely.
Nadia Mahjouri (44:56):
If that's what
Natasha Rai (44:57):
you want, right?
Mm.
Nadia Mahjouri (44:58):
Yeah.
And I needed all of that time.
Mm.
We were still making edits rightup until kind of, I mean, it
came out in February.
I was still making edits inNovember.
Like at the proof stage.
Natasha Rai (45:14):
Yeah.
Yeah.
It, yeah.
You gotta, yeah.
It takes the time.
It takes, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it's hard to say it'll bethis or this or this.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's right.
And maybe other people writeNita a work What a, what a
journey.
And I'm so, yeah.
I'm so happy that.
It has been published'cause it'sa gorgeous book.
It's an gorgeous Oh, thank you.
(45:34):
Yeah.
And I really, it was even, youknow, even earlier when you said
emotional truth, that's reallylanded for me because it
definitely has that so muchemotional truth.
So amazing.
Um, so before we wrap up Nadia,are there any tips that you
would give an emerging oraspiring writer?
Nadia Mahjouri (45:55):
Yeah, I.
My, my advice really is putyourself out there.
You know, I think that's what Ilearned from my, you know, throw
your hat into every ring.
Keep an eye open foropportunities and, you know,
what's the worst that canhappen?
You know, like you don't hearback.
(46:16):
Exactly.
You know, there's, yeah.
So I would really, you know, Ijust think if you've got
something that you think is.
You know, got some legs then,then put it out there, you know,
and also you have to be willingto, you know, to take the
feedback that you get, you know,because if I had of kept trying
(46:36):
to shop around the first draftthat I'd put out there, well
that wouldn't have goneanywhere.
Do you know what I mean?
But every time, if you're takingon the advice, then you are, you
know, you're moving closer andcloser to having a product that
people are gonna wanna, or, youknow, a, a publishable.
Um, manuscript.
So yeah, take on the advice.
Be, um, but be brave, you know?
Natasha Rai (46:56):
Yeah.
And also your experience withthe publishable program shows
that you don't just have oneshot you can resubmit and look
what happened.
You were shortlisted.
Yeah.
Nadia Mahjouri (47:08):
Yeah.
That's absolutely right.
Yeah, that's right.
And I mean.
I'm so grateful that I took that50 like that, you know, the$50
$49 or something for feedback.
You know, whenever they'reoffering feedback, take it, you
know?
Yeah.
Another way too.
It's just so useful.
Yeah.
So useful if people are, even ifyou don't take it on board, and
like I said, I had kind ofdiffering feedback.
(47:29):
It was really interesting initself, just to know that it's
hitting different peopledifferently, you know?
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Natasha Rai (47:37):
And yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, well thank you so much for,uh, coming on the podcast and
sharing your journey with me.
It's been amazing to hearbecause I didn't actually know
all of that.
I know we've talked to loadsabout lead up to publication,
but I actually didn't know therewas, there was so much and, and
it's such a typical journey asin the highs and lows, like when
(47:59):
you think you've got somewhereand then bam, it's not Oh, yeah.
And it can
Nadia Mahjouri (48:02):
be, I mean, that's probably the other thing
I'd say is.
You know, you do have to lookafter your emotional kind of
mental health because it is arollercoaster and you know, you,
there are moments where you canfeel quite disheartened by the
whole thing.
And there are moments when youknow, you're very hopeful and
then that doesn't turn intosomething.
(48:24):
So I guess keeping someperspective around it is, you
know, is really important.
Um, you know.
One No is not, no forever.
You know, like it's not exactly,you know, there, there are,
there are always moreopportunities and there's, you
know, there's always next year'scompetition for me right now.
I'm like, well there's always,you know, I'm gonna write
(48:45):
another book and another bookand another book, and I hope
that every book that I write is,you know, gonna be.
Kind of better than the last.
I don't know, my current secondnovel draft is looking pretty
ugly, so like, it doesn't feellike that at the moment, but I'm
like, I'll
Natasha Rai (48:59):
get there.
Exactly.
And you, and you know you, youcan do it because you've done it
already.
So definitely.
Yes, that's the plan.
Well, thank you so much and forlisteners that their half truth
is out and makes a greatChristmas present.
Oh, thank you.
Thanks, bye.
(49:20):
Take care.
Bye-bye.
Having reflected on myconversation with Nadia, the
intention that I'm setting forthe next few weeks is about
permission, and I really likethe word Nadia used around being
emboldened, so I'm thinkingabout giving myself permission
(49:43):
to write.
Or not to write, to call myselfvarious things like a writer, a
counselor, maybe a podcaster, ateacher, things that I haven't,
especially around teaching andpodcasting, things that I
haven't really given myself fullpermission to call myself or to
(50:04):
attach that title to myself.
Thinking about what you giveyourself permission to do.
And if you write, and we've saidthis before many, many times,
and it's worth repeating if youwrite your rev writer.
So just check for yourself whatgets in the way of giving
yourself permission to name thator even to create time.
(50:24):
What a carve out time to writefor yourself, whether you want
to pursue publication or whetherit's something that you are
doing for yourself.
And lastly, the intention aroundgetting or being emboldened.
So I really liked what Nadiasaid was to chase every
opportunity, put your hat in thering for everything.
(50:44):
And I actually had thisconversation with Madeline, my
co-host, just last night aroundwriters writing.
Yes.
But also the skillset of makingconnections of putting yourself
out there because it is scary,because it's not so simple as.
I'll just have a go and see whathappens because you're putting
(51:05):
something very personal on theline, which I totally
understand.
And as Nadia said in theepisode, the worst that's going
to happen is somebody says no,or they ghost you.
And after a while.
I dunno, it doesn't hurt orsting as much.
Maybe the first few times itmight.
So see if you can, even withthat fear or sting, keep going.
(51:25):
Keep putting your hat in thering, especially if you are
pursuing a publication deal orif you want feedback.
I think the feedback componentis so important and as Nadia
said.
Every time she got feedback andshe incorporated it into her
manuscript, it made it betterand shinier.
So that's my intention for thenext few weeks, giving yourself
permission and being emboldenedenough to try something, putting
(51:49):
yourself out there.
Good luck.
Tina Strachan (51:55):
Thank you for listening to the book Deal
podcast.
We're able to bring you theseweekly writerly chats because of
our amazing patrons.
Join the TBD family by becominga member of our Patreon
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