following through with my tradition of posting a new writeblr intro every single year, here we go – a brand new reintro where i talk a little bit about myself and my current writing projects. so, here we go, onto all that good stuff!
about me
i'm ann, a twenty-year-old writer from kerala, currently based in kochi
i live with my husband, who is a musician, and lead a very creative life of sorts
i'm an infp, enneagram type 2
i write literary fiction and poetry
i'm a discovery writer and have a thing for sad stories with traumatised characters
i work as a content writer and social media manager for a wedding company
you can find all my published work on my linktree
my aesthetics: wilted flowers, fallen leaves, silhouettes, shadows, gentle friendships, indie music, unplanned trips, birds, fireflies, annotated books, old libraries and buildings, post-colonial literature, voids, romance
my wips
i recently finished a litfic novel called dairy whiskey and am editing it right now, hoping to get it ready for agent submissions in a month or two. i put my heart and soul and blood and bones into it, so if you’d like to dive into the story and read a few excerpts, you can check out the intro here and every other excerpt here!
rock salt is my main wip since finishing dairy whiskey. it is the story of identical twins rain and norah as they move out for college and navigate their lives on their own, which ends up in them growing apart. if you like complicated sibling relationships and the struggles of growing up, you’ll love this book!
i so badly want to start writing it, but i don’t think i’ll be able to until dairy whiskey is in a more secure position. so, there probably won’t be any updates for a few months, but you can read the wip intro here.
this is a gay vignette novel that i started writing back in 2021 as a source of personal joy. this is the story of how a singer-songwriter desperate for normalcy meets a boy with a heart heavy with guilt. this is the story of how they fall in love and it’s honestly quite wholesome <3
i haven’t worked on this book in so long and i’ve been trying to sneak some words in, but it feels like the book needs a fresh start. i don’t know, i just might start it all over again. but until then, here’s an outdated wip intro.
green room is a literary/experimental memoir documenting my teenage years as a writer. it is a deep dive into craft and how it affects life, particularly how it moulds you as a person. i haven’t started drafting this yet, but here’s a wip intro for now.
so, that’s about it!
if you’d like to be pinged when i drop a new publication or a wip update, just send me an ask to be added to my general taglist and i’ll tag you in those posts.
thank you so much for reading. i hope writing has been going well for you. if not, here’s some strength, some kindness, and some caffeine to keep going!
have you ever been overcome by an irresistible urge to write a memoir at the age of twenty, or are you normal? i'm definitely not, so here's a new project (again)
green room is an experimental memoir that delves into my teenage years as a writer. i started writing seriously at the age of thirteen and self-published my first book at fourteen, which is something that haunts me to date. but here's the thing – i feel like i've learned a lot in the last six to seven years and wanted to explore it with another writing project.
i don't really know what this book is going to be yet. i'm going to start drafting during nanowrimo as a side project and hopefully finish it by the end of the year, but i'm not in a rush. i want to enjoy the process of writing this so i might take my sweet time.
now because this is an intro post, let's get to some specifics.
disclaimer: this is my original work. plagiarism of any kind will not be tolerated.
genre: creative/literary non-fiction
pov: first person retrospective
structure: a combination of chapters, vignettes, and poetry maybe
projected word count: 50k
concept: literary memoir on a writer's journey through teenage as they navigate genre, form, tense, character, story, plot, theme, atmosphere, and setting.
aesthetics/vibes: abandoned art galleries, mountaintops, beaches at midnight, falling asleep on the terrace, coffee mugs, word documents, cute stationery that never gets used, rejection e-mails, daydreaming, moon phases, still rivers, birds flying in groups, rain, academic validation, morally gray people, the colour green
THE ORIGIN STORY
i had always wanted to write something in retrospect of my teenage and document my growth, but didn't want to be so didactic in doing so. the memoir seemed like a serious piece of writing so i didn't really know if i was qualified enough to start. but if i've learned anything about writing in the last few years, it is that you can write whatever you feel like writing. so here i am with a new wip.
a little bit about the title – i struggled with this the most. but the novel i wrote during my late teens (dairy whiskey) was an entirely green book and i found myself finding thousands of green things every single day. my life had turned a shade of green. i was very inspired by the books bluets by maggie nelson and the white book by kan hang. i decided to make the colour green an important aspect of the book.
i don't know how this is going to turn out or if i'm going to do updates for this one, but who knows, i just might. until then, i hope you enjoy my other writing and shitposting. until next time, goodbye.
came to announce the very exciting news that my first ever short story/flash piece got published. it’s a little story about queer joy and transformation, and it would mean so much to me if you read it and let me know what you think. here’s the link:
Apart from the plant growing out of the kitchen sink, everything in this house is proper. The tenants are in love, their dog is aged 2, and
please show this piece some love, because she’s just a little baby. thank you so much for reading, and i hope to come here with more short story publications real soon!
[image description: on a background of large, green leaves, a white serif font reads “dairy whiskey – update 05” / end id]
feels so weird to say this, but this is the last update for dairy whiskey – the litfic novel for messed up people (aka me and my pals)
the stats, the facts:
i finished writing this book on 28/06/2023 around 4:00 am
the first draft rests at 76,684 words
this book has ten chapters and ten vignettes
i am deeply sorry to dinah for all the pain i’ve caused her
i miss this book so much already that i cannot sit a minute without thinking about it
i am officially a wreck. a proud one regardless.
i also have a few goodies for y’all!
the dairy whiskey playlist
redeemed by ransom – the dairy whiskey chapbook
unsplash collection
if you think i’m obsessed with my book, yes, i am. i very much am i most likely will be for a long time (if not the rest of my life).
fun fact: i finished writing it a day before my twentieth birthday, so it’s officially the book i wrote through my late teens. gonna be super emo and say, “i grew up with this book!”
so, again, welcome to the final update for dairy whiskey, covering the last three chapters and vignettes.
excerpts and taglist under the cut.
disclaimer: this is an original work of fiction. plagiarism of any kind will not be tolerated.
TWs:
chapter eight – mahalath leannoth
i’ve got two excerpts to share from this chapter. they’re super no-context, you know the drill.
The door to the room had been open, so I stumbled in, rosary in hand. Safety pins were scattered on the bed, some of them bent from pressure. The windowpane and the tiles next to it were covered in talcum powder. On the dressing table were two glasses of black coffee, its dry stain in rings on the bottom of it. It smelled of sweat and American body mist. One of the two pillow covers had been burned with an iron box, leaving an eye-shaped hole in the middle. Curly hair patterned the floor. Among those, like the promised silver lining in a dark cloud, I found it – a white strand of hair, thin, wavy, and membraned in cobwebs.
welcome back, grandma. bye again.
the next excerpt is another one of the thousand melodramatic emotional experiences that dinah goes through.
Nothing made noise. Every lone thing that had been alive and blooming in the village had died. Every land was barren, every river was flooding, every beautiful thing had turned to dust. Every face only a blur and every sound, a cry for help. Everything bleak and bleached, everything lost. Everything was gone and yet, the lives of everyone else remained the same; remained unchanged. Every family untouched but mine. All of them fortunate but mine. Everybody in their nests but me, a raven, flying about the village with a song in its head. It had come from nowhere, cutting through my silence, and it would stay forever as a muffled hum. A somber cry.
it actually runs a bit longer but yeah. that will be it for now.
vignette eight – lover’s vengeance
no excerpts from this chapter. enjoy the silence.
chapter nine – womb stain
teeny tiny excerpt from this one because i can never really shut up.
Mist covered the plantation and the road to the house. It rested in like a chiffon skirt.
vignette nine – vortex of wrath
we’re back with austin vignettes and pretty pretty prose for this pretty pretty boy.
Austin has been both abyss and mirrorball, but today, he is reborn in dirt. He is human more than he is boy. More than an accumulation of lessons and silences forced into place. Today, he is free, his wings unclipped, his fire unleashed. Today, he is lover. His ribs are knives sharpened against the metallic ring of revenge. His hands, mapped with fury, make love with sin. Today, he is man more than he is son. He is tide. He beats against the shore. Today, he takes in a sweep.
this goes on for another half an hour (more or less) because austin is everybody’s favourite and he deserves the world.
chapter ten – wine hearts
only one excerpt from this chapter too.
I woke up in the afternoon with pain piercing through my head. I sat up in bed, clutching chunks of hair in my fists. I buried my head in the pillow and groaned, but the pain remained. I got up and went to the bathroom. I turned the shower on and stood under it, the water, cold despite the sun, falling on my skin. My skin melted under it like a glacier, heat escaping every pore that had trapped it in. I lathered shampoo into my hair and soap onto my skin. I washed myself clean, brushed my teeth, and dried my hair with a towel. I wiped my body with another and changed into a fresh pair of clothes – an olive-green T-shirt and a creme long skirt.
also runs longer and talks about more things dinah does that are… ahem… unfortunately relevant to the (no) plot.
vignette ten – the beginning and the end
so, this is a vignette i might actually take out. i like how the story ends without it and kinda feel like this doesn’t fit that well, but we’ll see about that next month when i sit down for edits.
until then, that’s it! that’s my book! big thanks to everyone who supported me throughout the process of writing it. hope y’all get to hold this in your hand real soon!
this user is obsessed with their book and is dealing with separation anxiety with her characters, so she wrote something else with them – a chapbook!
when @coffeeandcalligraphy did this, i knew it was something i’d love to do, too, so i gave it a go. the plan was to write it before finishing dairy whiskey (as an exercise to help with the book) but when does anything ever go by plan?
i wrote this last night in a span of two hours. there’s five poems in this and i’m so proud of them all!
i loved writing it, so you all get to read it, too! i’ll leave a link at the end of this for ya’ll to download the book for free (and the link to my paypal if you’d like to support a struggling artist, but no pressure ofc).
but before all that, here we go – the five poems in this book, under the cut.
children with expiry dates
this poem reads as an instruction manual to mariam. it’s both empathetic and hateful, it’s a confusing blend of emotions. “chandeliers are for non-believers”, the poem opens, and goes on for two pages.
litany in which certain tomorrows are promised – after richard siken
the longest poem in the book, running a total of fifty lines, talks about the central relationships that dinah maintains with people. talks about religious and childhood trauma, but ends with a sort of hope/consolation.
map of a mother
a poem that lists out the specifics of dinah’s memory of her mother – what she thinks about, what she feels, and what she willingly forgets.
holding rain
talks about another world or life, a sort of euphoria, where dinah has a simple and tender relationship with ephron, totally unlike the dynamics they share in the story.
it is okay to hold hands / it is okay to taste lips
a tribute to the most beautiful couple i’ve written (till date), this poem is all about dinah and austin. it’s beautiful, it’s tender, it’s promising, and it’s intimate.
so, that’s it with the poems. if you’d like to read this book, you can download a free copy here!
if you'd like to support my work, you can donate on paypal. i am super grateful for any and all contributions, but again, there's no pressure. you can always just read the book for free and let me know what you think.
looking forward to hearing from you. hope you enjoy reading my poems!
[image description: on a background of dark green leaves with water droplets, a white serif font reads, “dairy whiskey – update 03”. / end id]
hi again! after what seems to have been ages, your girl is back with yet another dairy whiskey update, the third of its kind.
if you ask me how the project is going, well, it’s been stagnant, but i’d just like to call it a marinating piece of literature. there’s about ten thousand words to go and i know exactly what to do, but it’s just not been working. i’m hoping that i can get back to working on it during camp in july.
but for now, here’s an earlier chapter from the draft which i’m posting for three reasons.
i love sharing my work with y’all
i’m desperate to find some means to get back into the book, so i’m going to rely on a tumblr update to dive into chapters i had finished two months back
any and all hype motivates me to write, so please be kind to me <3
i think that’s all. let’s go to the update!
excerpts and taglist under the cut.
disclaimer: this is an original work of fiction. plagiarism of any kind will not be tolerated.
TWs: this novel deals with themes of childhood and religious trauma, sexual, emotional, and substance abuse, mental health issues, self-harm, abortion, suicidal ideation, etc. so please be kind on yourself and read ahead only if you’re comfortable. while the excerpts i share may or may not touch on these, the themes are very prevalent. please be kind on yourself and read ahead only if you’re comfortable.
a lot of the plot is kept private for now because i intend on publishing this book, so please excuse the lack of context. i hope you can enjoy the prose, though.
chapter five – rose in the plain, lily in the valley
here’s the opening line, where we look into dinah’s childhood with her mother.
When I was a child with neat pigtails and crunchy, sequinned frocks, mother took us to the hills of Vagamon.
in the next excerpt, dinah, along with her mother and ephron, is at a textile shop in town to pick out an outfit for a wedding reception to come. dinah wants a skirt that twirls but she can't find any. this is the scene where she finds it.
When she emerged from the godown carrying a pile of five or six sets, I spotted a squash-orange. It was the only one I wanted to try on.
“The orange one,” I told mother.
She took it from the salesperson and she guided us to the trial room. Mother helped me into the skirt, beaded and jewelled at the edges. The blouse was sleeveless with a square neck and an open back, with a string looped criss-cross down and tied at the bottom. The front of the top was embroidered with orange jewels in the shape of flowers, leaves, and small doughnuts.
“I love this,” I said.
Mother smiled at me and helped me out of it. She handed it over to the salesperson and paid the bill at the counter.
We went back home in another auto.
honestly, congrats girl! i was so happy for little dinah that i almost shed a tear or two writing this scene. but, as we all know by now, she can't have one good thing thanks to her family. the grandmother is displeased with the colour of the set because it, apparently, makes her look darker than she really is, and hence begins her insecurities with skin tone. thanks, grandma.
Grandmother held my chin in her palm and wiped my tears. “Oh, don’t cry, angel. It’s only the colour. You look darker, like a crow. If it had been some other colour, then maybe…”
“Stop it!” mother shouted. “Don’t talk to her like that. My daughter can wear whatever she wants. She looks beautiful in this dress. She always does. Stop telling my daughter she is not pretty. Stop lying to her.”
I had been crying more intensely now, tears wetting my school uniform.
“She would have been so much more beautiful if she was fairer. I told you to give her saffron milk but you never listened to me. Because of your arrogance, your daughter will have to suffer.”
“She’s the prettiest little girl I’ve seen,” mother said. Her voice cracked like a twig in her throat.
She looked at me, and then at Ephron. She told him, “Go inside with your sister.”
and hence, he takes her to their room and they have a really sweet moment there, which i'm depriving you of because plot...
moving on, the next chapter begins with dinah remembering how ephron saved her from dying and how he had taken care of her all that while. and then, she says she's going out the next day (with austin, but she leaves that part out).
and this party is where i'm going to cut it off because, again, too much plot that i can't reveal. but, here's a heartwarming scene where dinah sees her mother as someone beautiful and feels better abut herself.
But it was on that day that I noticed – mother was darker than I was. She always had been. And she wore red and orange sarees through the house, with her oiled black hair and household sweat. And she looked beautiful. She had always looked beautiful.
She had given me something so beaming and radiant – her skin. She had also given me her eyes. And her teeth and bones and eyelashes. She had given me the form I occupied, and when I looked at her, I saw where I came from. I saw where my body was heading and forgot about the squash-orange long skirt making my skin too dark.
I saw mother and saw the house of my blood, the vessel that had carried it for years, and forgot about everything and wanted to dance.
So, when the bride and groom got on the stage and began to dance to their choreographed dance routine, I grabbed Ephron by the arm and we danced at the back of the hall. He ran to the front, holding my hand, and twirled me around until I felt dizzy.
again, i shed a tear writing this. she was too innocent to have been broken like that. i'm sorry, pal. i'm sorry about all the trouble i gave / am giving you.
vignette five – vineyard secrets
in this episode, we discover something that had been too obvious to begin with – dinah is not straight. everybody please welcome veronica to the party.
here's the opening line:
Dinah remembers Veronica by her face – plump and glossy with a berry flush at all times, her skin the colour of almond milk.
if you're wondering who she is and where she's from, here you go.
She was her roommate at the hostel to which she had moved for higher secondary, hoping that she would go unnoticed like she had at boarding school. But Veronica, who had lived in the UK her whole life with a Malayali father and an Italian mother, had found her intriguing.
the day veronica moves into hostel, dinah had already been there for a week. she helps veronica, who insists on being called nic, settle in and shows her around. in the evening when she shows dinah pictures of her family, dinah gets sad and tells her about mariam. it was at this moment that they kiss.
yep, i'm not that cruel. i give her good times too.
Like lightning to the night, they had crashed and collided. The rumbling would come after. There would be no fire, no wounds, no burns. They would leave their secret to ripen between them, like a juicy orange – sweet and tangy. They would see each other until they left school two years later, and after that, their secret would be buried in the ground.
and here's the last line, mirroring the first.
Dinah remembers Veronica by her face, but also by her breath, laden with mint.
so, that's it for this update. hope you enjoyed reading my no-context-whatsoever excerpts. tell me what you've been up to, how writing's even going, what your plans are for camp in july, and how you are in general.
thank you for reading. i'll see you again in another update.
[image description: on a blurry shot of leaves against a dark grey wall, a white serif font reads, “dairy whiskey – update 04”. / end id]
hi, hello, how have you been?
if you’ve been following along on the chaotic journey of me writing this book, you probably already know that i finished this book a few days back. hence proven, i am feeling an unimaginably complex blend of emotions that i can’t comprehend on my own. however, i think it’s safe to say that at the core of it all, deep in my heart, i feel a true sense of joy and accomplishment. to say the very least, i am proud.
this is not a book-ending update, though. that’ll be the one that comes after this, hopefully in a few days. but here we go, a few excerpts from a few chapters from one of my many books. hope you enjoy!
excerpts and taglist under the cut.
disclaimer: this is an original work of fiction. plagiarism of any kind will not be tolerated.
TWs: this novel deals with themes of childhood and religious trauma, sexual, emotional, and substance abuse, mental health issues, self-harm, abortion, suicidal ideation, etc. so please be kind on yourself and read ahead only if you're comfortable. while the excerpts i share may or may not touch on these, the themes are very prevalent. please be kind to yourself and read ahead only if you're comfortable.
a lot of the plot is kept private for now because i intend on publishing this book, so please excuse the lack of context. i hope you can enjoy the prose, though.
chapter six – flock and soil
the first quarter of this chapter is happy, the second is emotional, and the last two are extremely sad. i have three excerpts to share, without any context, of course.
But it had actually started a long time back, when we met for the first time and I heard the lullabies being sung beneath his eyes. The flowers that had bloomed between us today had budded long ago, even before time had been created, and the plants had taken root in my stomach before anything ever was. I had been lured into the melody of his voice; the simple way his bones were placed inside his body. It had all started long back when I looked at him and he looked back at me. It started with the exchange of sight; when my eyes wanted to see him more than they wanted to see anything. It had all started a long time back, but now, we had a body to give it. We had something we could touch and call our own. We had skin and we had bones.
this is dinah talking about austin. believe it or not, i am not that cruel. she gets her share of happy and truly romantic moments, i promise!
the second excerpt is a conversation between dinah and ephron. i wanted to show you a moment of theirs that’s not too intense (which is rare, but not non-existent).
“Where were you?” he asked. “I was worried about you. And why do your eyes look like that? Were you drinking?”
“Ooh, calm down with the questions,” I said. “I went to meet some friends at a house party. Yes, we did drink a little bit. My eyes are fine.”
“They’re the size of golf balls!”
i’ve got nothing to say about the third excerpt. it is what it is.
I looked back in the mirror. My cheekbones and nose had been lifted in a copper glow, a beet blush spreading through my cheeks. There was a cosmic glimmer in my eyes. The sound of conch shells murmured in my ear. My heart had turned into a lighthouse at the base of which a thousand waves beat and crashed against each other. It beat with a swell, milk and honey oozing out. Somewhere in the middle of the ocean, the night would soon crawl into a fisherman’s boat and sing him to sleep, but here, every bone in my body would twist to the sun, bringing forth a morning with flowers, nectar, and birdsong.
proves my theory – i’m not that cruel.
vignette six – salt and light
unfortunately, due to spoiler reasons, i won’t be sharing anything from this chapter. here’s one thing to know, though – it’s terribly sad.
chapter seven – what blooms in the armageddon
no excerpts in this chapter either. all i can say is, things happen. things change.
vignette seven – cradle song
written from mariam’s perspective, this vignette is a conversation in which only one person speaks – the mother.
When the world comes to an end, baby, we will be back together. The skies will be beautiful and I’ll feed you balls of rice. I will hold you close to me. I will not let you go. I will show you butterflies and bring your hand to dog fur. You will put your fingers in my hair and I will stick little leaves in yours. I will buy you a watercolour kit. I will take you to the supermarket. I will buy you all the cookies in the aisle. I will make you payasam when you ask for it. When the day ends and the night falls, I will hold you close and draw a cross on your head. I will sing you a song.
this goes on and on for quite long, but i’ll cut it off right there.
thanks for reading along. tell me what you’ve been feeling, what you’ve been working on, what thoughts are occupying your head, or anything that you’re really excited about.
i hope you enjoy the excerpts. in the meantime, i’ll be curating the last update for this novel. see you all again!
it’s been a while since my poetry has been accepted anywhere, but here’s some good news! three of my poems – my father’s mending nursery, walking out of teenage, and scheherezade (after richard siken) are now out with poems india!
do give it a read, and also please let me know if you have any thoughts.
– ann
my father tells me it’s a beautiful life and i trust him because what else do you do?
my father still holds my wrist when a road’s busy and
