In Conversation With: Mariam Ansar - author of YA novel 'Good for Nothing'
Be almost delusional in your self-belief, train yourself to see beyond your doubts.
Hello and Salam alaykum friends 👋🏾,
I hope you’ve had a good week so far, and if not, I hope your weekend is restorative and rejuvenating.
This week’s letter features an interview with Mariam Ansar whose YA novel, Good For Nothing, follows three teenagers landed with a community service order after an incident involving a spray can and an inconveniently timed patrol car. I’m currently reading this and loving it so far – Mariam’s writing is top-notch and her sense of humour is just what I need in my intense life right now.
About Mariam:
Mariam Ansar is a Bradford-born writer and secondary English teacher. Her feature writing has been featured in NME, gal-dem, VICE, Dazed, Catapult, Rookie Magazine, Teen Vogue, Elite Daily and many others.
Name: Mariam Ansar
Literary agent: Claire Wilson, Rogers, Coleridge and White Agency
Book title: Good for Nothing
Publisher: Penguin Random House
Release date: March 2023
Genre/Category: Young Adult, coming-of-age
Where do you get inspiration from?
I get inspiration from the world around me: new and old voices and personalities, memories of my youth, anecdotal stories from others, quirks and the what if’s that end up burrowing their way into my mind. I remember someone saying that the most important quality in becoming a writer is having a very strong memory. I don’t forget much, thankfully!
Have you always known you were going to be a writer? When did it become a dream for you?
Absolutely. In Year 3, we were tasked to write a poem about the moon. I still remember the lines I wrote:
‘moon pearl white a ball of light an opal stone that drifts in the sky with a porcelain face.’
Mostly because my teacher found my vocabulary really exciting and looking back now, it does sound ridiculously ambitious.
I loved writing exercises in school. I took ‘complex sentence practice’ as a challenge and would try to write with as much detail and description as I could. This was because my parents really encouraged my reading, and I relished sitting down on my own and getting lost in a book. I thought of authors and writers in the same way that some people think of musicians or rockstars. The idea of truly becoming a writer crystallised when my secondary English teacher suggested it to me, but truthfully, I think it was always clear from the very beginning.
How did the idea for Good For Nothing come about?
I wrote Good For Nothing because I was frustrated with the limitations of both the publishing world – and the general perspective – on the north of England and misunderstood communities.
I wanted space for nuance, not stereotypes. Characters that felt real, and so were difficult to hate.
I think when you understand someone, it’s very difficult to hate them. This was the overarching goal in the writing of Good For Nothing.
What’s your favourite part about the writing process?
My favourite part of the writing process is reading back all of what you’ve done before you’re back to typing again. I like reminding myself of the world I’ve created, and doubly enjoy this when I’m satisfied with the rhythm and visuals. I also really enjoy the wild moments – when the characters feel unignorable, and their voices begin to triumph over your writerly judgement of a certain scene or chapter.
What was the most difficult part of the writing process for you?
The most difficult part was knowing when I was finished. I think I wrote well over 30 versions of this narrative, which meant that I knew the characters unbelievably well, but I just couldn’t figure out the right version of it. I definitely wanted it to be ‘perfect’ but this is an unrealistic expectation which truthfully, I had no real barometer for. In the end, being finished with it and convinced that I’d shown all the perspectives, all the details, all the subplots with as much ‘show-not-telling’ as I could muster was good enough.
What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received?
Keep your plot simple. It’s a washing line. You can hang lots of subplots on your washing line if it’s a very simple one.
Can you tell us a bit about your path to publication? How long did it take to get from idea to publication?
It took a while! I signed with the generous and thoughtful Claire Wilson years ago, after I worked as an Editorial Fellow at BuzzFeed UK in 2018. She took on my over-written draft and worked tirelessly to help me fix structural issues and my ambitious ideas before we put it out on submission. Once this was done, I balanced training as a teacher with Teach First and studying for the qualification with editing the book with my Penguin Random House editors, Sara Jafari and Nathalie Doherty.
What was your biggest learning during the publishing process?
My biggest lesson during the publishing process is that there is nothing wrong with trusting your authorial instincts. You know what’s important to you, you know what you’d like to communicate – whether this be in code-switching and dialects, to sense of place and personality. Let the editors fine-tune this without losing the heart of what you’d like to say. And then keep saying it well, better than before.
If you could share one piece of advice with an aspiring writer, what would it be
Be your own biggest fan. You will write that book. You will see it on shelves someday. Be almost delusional in your self-belief, train yourself to see beyond your doubts. And then write, and re-write, re-write, re-write.
What do you hope readers would get out of your book?
I’m hopeful that they’re able to recognise the full humanity of those that are not always given a fair judgement – whether this be subconscious or intentional. I also hope they laugh and cry.
If there were no publishing barriers, what would your next book be on?
I am working on something new, which I will keep secret for now! But one day I’d like to write a fantasy series – full of boys-turned-dogs, rug weavers, tea shops, magical chickens. Also, a moving and highly developed potential modern classic with a single female South Asian name as a title, a la Charlotte Bronte’s ‘Jane Eyre.’ I would love to jump around genres and age groups in my writing career.
As someone juggling several responsibilities, what does your writing routine look like?
It looks like waking up at 5am, with the sunrise, and really savouring those hours. I write mostly on the weekends and in the holidays, as a full-time secondary English teacher. But I genuinely enjoy that early start. I stole this routine from Ernest Hemingway. It works.
Where can readers find your work?
Readers can find my work in all good bookshops - Waterstones, WHSmith, etc. It’s also on NetGalley, and easily accessible on Amazon.
How can readers connect with you?
My Twitter is m___ansar, my TikTok is themariamansar, and my Instagram is themariamansar.
What’s on your bookshelf?
Many things! I love the literary classics and am a huge fan of William Shakespeare’s works - much to the amusement of my students, I keep his collection close by to annotate for fun. I also really enjoy the classics - Homer’s ‘The Iliad’ especially. Oscar Wilde, Donna Tartt, Toni Morrison, Markus Zusak, Leigh Bardugo… Sarah Dessen is my favourite YA author, but I really do bounce around and read a lot of different genres. I don’t discriminate between old or new releases. At the moment I’m reading Small Island by Andrea Levy. But I also started The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden. And I would love to read Ghost Girl, Banana by Wiz Wharton, too!
If you found this beneficial at all, please shout about it to your family, friends, colleagues and acquaintances!
Till next Friday,
Suad