Hiding Indoors, Rewriting Everything, and Forgetting the Book Launch — Writer Diary
Premee Mohamed is a Nebula, World Fantasy, and Aurora award-winning Indo-Caribbean scientist and speculative fiction author based in Edmonton, Alberta. She has also been a finalist numerous other awards, including the Hugo, Ignyte, Locus, British Fantasy, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Crawford. In 2024 she was the Edmonton Public Library official writer-in-residence. She is the author of the Beneath the Rising series of novels, as well as several novellas. Her short fiction has appeared in many venues and she can be found on her website at www.premeemohamed.com.
This diary represents an extremely cold week in a writer’s life who is on deadline, emotionally exhausted, and quietly navigating the strange dissonance between a major professional milestone, launching One Message Remains (!), and the private, often chaotic reality of writing life.
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 10
5 AM: SOMETHING IS TOUCHING MY FACE. It is another face. The cat usually sleeps down by my knees, but has decided that he wants to cuddle; I free my mouth and nose enough to breathe, and fall back asleep.
8:15 AM: Up, breakfast. It's so cold the house is making horror-movie noises. My wallet is also making those noises, with the (justified) fear that something will break and it will be something expensive.
9 AM: Working on novel edits. I call them edits because 'rewrite' is kind of intimidating, no? The fixed book is due February 22 and it is taking up something like 90% of my brain space.
2 PM: I forgot to eat lunch. My stomach informs me that it does not want lunch, because it has anxiety. I muffle its protests with crackers and cheese, which is only sort of food but I figure I'll eat properly next week, when I hand this thing in.
9 PM: I'm calling it a day. My eyes hurt. Why did I decide on all these edits for this novel? Can't I just hand in something half-assed (again) and then fix it after my editor sends his edits back? I don't know. I don't want him to edit something half-assed. Is this authorial standards, professional pride, or being raised by people who told me that even my hardest work was half-assed? I should ask my therapist. I haven't actually talked to her since my last appointment in 2021, but I should ask her anyway.
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 11
8 AM: I have a book out! I lie in bed and scroll through social media, responding to excited friends and listening to the furnace kick in while I wonder how many dollars an hour it costs to heat the house when it's -40C outside. Maybe I'll set the thermostat super low today and just... bundle up while I hunch over my desk. The cat has a heating pad under his bed. He lives a good life.
10 AM: A kind stranger has given me Book Day Money! I waffle over getting myself a celebratory treat. Eventually I decide to risk being reported to the Royal Society For the Protection Of Food Courier People, and order delivery from a nice local bakery.
12 PM: I find I can't work on the novel while I'm waiting for my delivery, so I work on less brain-intensive stuff. Emails, scheduling, promotion (there are graphics to put up, provided by my publisher, and interviews and podcasts from the past few weeks scheduled to drop today). This is my twelfth book. I want to be more excited than I am, but... novel. Novel due. Novel is due. Novel. Novel.
1 PM: I eat an enormous lunch of nice local bakery stuff and a gallon of tea.
10 PM: Done work for the day, hiding in the basement with the cat and the heated blanket. My eyes are burning. I want to do something that doesn't involve a screen, but I also feel like I can't.
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 12
10 AM: I've been working for a few hours when a friend I haven't seen for a long time texts me. Back in January, we agreed to meet this weekend to catch up; how about (he suggests) instead of going out, he comes over so we can chat at our leisure and I can meet his baby for the first time? I'm delighted and immediately text back to agree. Then I look around at my house.
10:01 AM: Panic-clean house. Threaten to duct-tape cat to the wall. The Christmas tree is still up! Incredible. It's almost as if I've had other things on my mind. Or that I usually live like a goblin anyway, and it's just worse as deadlines get closer.
2 PM: Still panicking; stop to gobble down bagel. I have entered a kind of mindless, tranced state of cleaning. I am wiping surfaces that cannot be seen. I am hiding things in the basement. Friend will not ask to go into basement. Friend will have small child with him. Basement is dangerous. This is a good strategy.
3 PM: There's still daylight; I go outside briefly to throw some peanuts into the backyard for the magpies. Touching the thumb-latch of the screen door burns with a cold so intense that when I come back in, I find I cannot use my right hand for several minutes.
10 PM: Fall into bed. Everything hurts.
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 13
9 AM: Working on novel. Working on novel. It's not coming together. I'm counting down the hours now, not the days, till I have to hand it in. Because as I get more frazzled, the hours are becoming less usable. I have to work for most of a day now to get the same amount done as I did in half the time in January. Maybe I need an exorcism.
1 PM: I have cleaned myself up! Somewhat! And combed my hair. I am a guest on my friend Mur Lafferty's podcast I Should Be Writing which yes, is a podcast, but she offers video to her patrons, I think, or something like that. Anyway I can't just show up in my pajamas is the main thing. We don't really talk about the book, but we do talk about burnout and mental health, and how you can literally freak out until your brain stops working.
10 PM: The novel edits aren't done. I've worked on them from 2:30 to about 9:30 today. There's a noise in my ears that I pause to recognize—something from the past—is my brain giving me a busy signal? I think it might be. Fortunately, one cannot die of novels. I think
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 14
9 AM: I tell the cat he is my Valentine; he informs me that he has only one true love and it is his shrimp toy. I stagger off, rejected.
2 PM: I realize that I haven't eaten breakfast or lunch. The novel is becoming increasingly incoherent. I can't remember why I said I'd write it. I suppose it must have been the money. It's a terrible premise. The characters are terrible. The plot doesn't make sense. I should delete it and start over. I still have a week before I have to hand something in
3 PM: Having eaten lunch, I decide not to delete the novel. I get back to work.
7 PM: All the debris from my mostly-Wednesday cleaning session is piled up in the kitchen. Trash collection isn't till next week but I can't have all this crap in here. I creep outside with it in the dark, bent double under a heap of bags like Shame Garbage Santa so I can take fewer trips. Snow fills my boots. I think of Jack London's To Build A Fire. Can I survive the trip between the back alley and the side door? Why do I live here?
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 15
8 AM: Vacuuming and mopping the floors one last time, lighting a scented candle so everything smells less like dollar-store disinfectant wipes, dusting, vacuuming again. I haven't childproofed the place, but I figure if I needed to, my friend would have told me to.
11 AM: I am a guest on the Get To Work Hurley podcast with author Kameron Hurley! I am intimidated as well as distracted, and trying not to fanboi too much as well as say one or two useful things. Kameron is friendly and knowledgeable. I am incoherent. Once again, I forget to talk about the book that came out on Tuesday, even though that's what I'm supposed to be there to discuss.
1 PM: My friend comes over! We catch up on our lives and lament not hanging out even though we live in the same city. The cat mugs my friend's baby for his Timbit while I apologize profusely. We throw out the Timbit and offer a new, ungnawed one of the same type, thereby saving the day.
4 PM: I can't concentrate and I can't seem to make myself work on the novel; and there's nothing to clean. I decide a nap would be a delightfully bourgeois luxury but once in bed I can't sleep; I'm too wound up over not working.
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 16
I work on the novel for 13 HOURS. It gets worse as I go along. In my planner I write, "Next week will be better."
