Author’s Notes for Forbearance

Personal Journey

This was the very first completed story I wrote where I was genuinely so proud of the final product. I was about 18 or 19 when I wrote it, and I had grown beyond the naive assumption that everything I wrote down was absolutely worth publishing. As becomes the case for most mature writers, I was at the stage of second-guessing all of my work, wondering if any of it was worth reading. But once I finished this little story, I wholeheartedly loved it and had full confidence that others would love it, too. I’m not sure why I was so confident in it, but perhaps it was a culmination of my skills as a writer finally shining properly. Good pacing, solid description, strong theme, consistent execution… It marked a significant milestone in my craft. I had been a writer since I could hold a pencil, but it was here that I began to believe I could really be an author.

Story Theme

Identity. Companionship. Forgiveness.

These things are the answers to the questions that the main character must grapple with. What makes us who we are? How can we face the worst that this world has to offer? How do we overcome the horror of our past lives?

The story is not very long, but I think it takes a simple snapshot of someone’s life, and condenses a journey that we must all take one way or another. At the end of it, will we be somewhere new? Or right back where we started? Choosing to turn a new page and leave behind your pain and suffering is not easy, and this story asks the question…

…is it worth it?

Where Did I Get this Idea?

A dream. Yep, this is one of those stories where the first idea showed up in a dream. We had recently watched a horse movie set in Saudi Arabia back in the 1890s, so I had a dream I was in the Middle East in that time, and my biggest concern was how to get all of my hair to fit into a keffiyah.

So when I got up the next morning, I started working on a story set in that time period that would also include a pretty horse. I never had a full horse girl phase, but I definitely still had that unmistakable girly love for horses and was happy to write my first horse story.

Characters

Jalil is hilarious and the best character in the whole thing, even though he isn’t there for too long. I love a dramatic, frantic, and well meaning head of the household.

Fun Fact

It was the middle of winter when I was writing this. So imagine me sitting at my computer desk, wrapped in a blanket, my feet super cold, having to come up with a way to describe someone nearly dying from the heat in the middle of the desert. It was quite ironic.