Writing at the Turn of the 21st Century

Memoir from 1990-2010

Once upon a time, cell phones had only one function —to make phone calls. I bought my first cell phone around 1998. I remember calling my mom from the end of our driveway.

“I won’t be able to come home for dinner this weekend,” I said.

“Oh, wait, someone’s at the door,” she replied.

It was me.

No one would fall for this trick today.

In her mind, I was calling from Waterloo, Ontario, two hours from home. Her pre-boomer bias anchored my voice to a fixed location, as she had only ever used a landline.

I wrote my first novel in this era.

While majoring in engineering, it was hard to find experts in writing and publishing. I rode the tech waves. I preferred Google search over Yahoo, and I preferred the Netscape browser over Microsoft Explorer. I had an HTML site built from scratch and hosted on my university domain, which Geocities and then Blogger replaced.

Access to the internet went from slow dial-up used only for sending emails to internet accessible from school or my place of work. Snail mail was still a thing. CDs replaced cassette tapes. A curated mix tape will always be appreciated over playlists and AI selections.

I went from hand-written binder-bound high schooler drafts to typing keystrokes on my Pentium I desktop computer, which I lugged around whenever I moved. Later, I converted the files to my pirate versions of Microsoft Word 95 (and up) and continued writing my book on a Dell laptop.

There was no Scrivener or LivingWriter to make managing chapters, plots, and characters easy. Everything was in my stream of consciousness. I saved backups on floppy and hard disks, burned CDs, and eventually started saving the files to the cloud (only it wasn't called the cloud back then.)

How many chapters are 300+ pages?

My protagonist, Lana Elena Llanasolion, came alive on paper. Her story was strange and dark. My post-pubescent obsession with suicide, death, and escape through portals was bleak. This would be a gothic novel. This would also be a world with Sanskrit and demonic possessions. Escapism ruled the visions of Generation X. We were too young to have the advantage of the gregarious boomers. Too old to embody the privilege of millennials. Too few to be taken seriously in a world driven by demographics.

Generation X channels angst and chooses to walk the less travelled path alone. Bound by personal stakes, our apathy defines us.

It never occurred to me to look up a local writer’s group. There was no Reddit or Quora, and nothing told me to 'begin your journey here.'

Literary Agents and Traditional Publishing

I had heard about literary agents, but it was hard enough to print copies of my manuscript.

Word documents crash at a certain length. I printed my work in batches on industrial printers at my co-op jobs.

My father still reminisces about how thick the bricks were.

I naively chose the un-agented path and didn't look back.

This was an era when email was new. With no QueryTracker to connect, visiting a library would have given me insight into book publishing practices.

I was surprised that one agent in New York preferred snail mail submissions in 2025. Most Canadian and UK-based literary agents prefer an email or form. These systems favour the agent over the author. Often, authors will never hear back due to the sheer volume of submissions. We depend on assistants and acquisition editors to pick our piece from the slush pile.

Some agents ask for a query letter without a sample of writing. I give those agents props for keeping my hopes grounded. At least I know they haven't read my work when they reject me.

Please note:

I did not fail this publishing journey out of discrimination based on sexism or colour.

My novel was not well-written, as evidenced by readers who put the book down before they got to the good bits!

Sure, BIPOC authors published zero to no fantasy books in this era. The best female fantasy authors had only begun disclosing their gender. This was when André Norton paved the way for Anne McCaffrey, C.J. Cherryh, Katherine Kurtz, Tanith Lee, Robin Hobb, and Mercedes Lackey at a time when Terry Pratchett and David Eddings were best-sellers. Male authors of the era established a reputation for their vision of their darkest female fantasies, and yet I read Robert Jordan's WHEEL OF TIME series just like everyone else.

I was that goth kid with her head buried in 90s-era Fantasy. My nails were painted black. Some days, I would return home to find my mom watching Geraldo Rivera and convinced I must be taking 'the drugs.'

Little did she know my dream was walking through a mirror portal into another dimension.

Overachiever was a term my guidance counsellor made sure I learned. Perhaps she was trying to warn me; I thought being an overachiever was a good thing.

I took one elective in Children's Literature at university, which turned me off all future literary courses: something about the parallels drawn between Anne of Green Gable's journey and the tumbling brook in the first chapter.

No way. Not a chance. Authors do not write like that. Lucy M. Montgomery described a brook as it appeared near her house in Ontario, or perhaps it was a fond memory from PEI.

As a result, I learned nothing about the hero's journey or character arcs. I was convinced studying English or writing would be stifling to the muse.

Subsequent electives were Philosophy, Anthropology, Ancient Religions/Places, and Archeology.

So, I minored in... the Humanities?

How to fail hard and fail fast

• Only ask for the type of feedback you can handle.
  • Hard to see blind spots.
  • Keeping safe does not prepare you for broader audiences.
• Only share your best chapters.
  • I tested some chapters on Lothlorien, a www 1.0 site for fantasy fan fiction and artwork. I received positive feedback.
  • I hid my cringe-iest chapters. Hint: Even I couldn't read them.
• Avoid experts.
  • Little opportunity to learn from mistakes.
  • I confused experience with mastery.
  • False optimism: Two beta readers, not writers, told me my book lacked description while being too descriptive. They were being nice but not kind.

Niceness is avoiding eye contact when something embarrassing happens. Kindness is telling someone they have their fly down.

In hindsight, what would I have done differently?

• My lifelong passion for the humanities feeds my present-day creativity. I would not change that. I write what I love: folklore, mythology, religion, & emotions set on a global stage.
• I could have believed in myself and chased my strengths sooner.
  • My mentor, Lynne Levy, helped me ask myself: why choose the most challenging path when it makes no practical sense? Balancing what is practical and where your true strengths and passion lie is essential for success without sacrifice.

With my kids, we talk about what they're good at and how they can harness the potential energy of practical motivations. Rohan loves to draw. I needed an illustrator. Like most kids his age, intrigued by the influencer life, he wanted to try being a creator. So far, he's illustrated two of my books for children.

Taking on Too Much

In how many ways was I a fish out of water?

• A BIPOC woman in engineering.
• An engineer turned scientist (drives the microbiologists and chemists crazy when we talk about black boxes).
• The frustration of meeting expectations as a second-generation South Asian woman seeking a husband but not an arranged husband... but not any of the local guys either... and he needs to fit in with my family and friends.
• Am I South Asian, or am I Canadian? How I'm received versus who I am.
• Career pachinko where no direction feels right. I was often blocked in my career by values and ethics that conflicted with my managers.
• Being everywhere and everything all at once: perfectionism.

I exhausted my creative abilities because I was operating behind a facade. I feared that if I stopped, I would be mediocre, having never lived up to my potential.

Career—I needed to prove myself to myself.

At first, I blamed my parents. But in hindsight, they would have been happy if I was an accountant. They were happy as long as bills were paid and I had a roof over my head.

I had these crazy math skills, a vast ability for systems thinking, and an attention span that could run circles around and through problems.

"I'll get into writing later," I thought.

Nevertheless, a common thread in my life has been arming myself with the latest tech to facilitate my writing journey. This included a Palm Pilot (with keyboard) and early-stage laptops that worked so slowly that the muse would have left as soon as she arrived.

My ego kept wanting to rise to the top. There were so many paths. The muse, where was she?

"Diliny fails to reach her potential. If only she would apply herself," said teachers, supervisors, and parents along the way. This would become my internalized mantra, my deepest limiting fear.

"I will show everyone I could live up to my potential!" I screamed into the void.

I wish someone had told me to follow my passion and follow it hard. And I don't mean falling in love with the wrong person and breaking my heart.

The closest was my favourite uncle telling me, "Only buy an investment property you would want to live in." That's the closest I have come to this advice.

Only choose a career that builds on your strengths and passions. Harness your practical motivation to drive it forward.

It sounds obvious now. I chose a career based on my strengths. If you asked my 17-year-old self what my passion was, she'd say, "writing prose."

Thinking...

As an author... there's no direct path to authoring except writing, getting feedback, revising, and putting your work out there.

I should have asked her, 'What kind of writing?' She knew nothing of the world, very little about career paths, and had no authors in her circles to give her advice.

My parents would have said, "Don't waste your potential; be a doctor or engineer." So I did.

I made choices that led to higher wages, better benefits, and a more stable future. It worked. I prioritized having a family, an income, and a home. My partner's support of my writing efforts is a testament to his ability to see me.

While I would have made a kick-ass childless cat lady, I no doubt wanted the life I am living.

The Author's Path

I finished my novel while stationed in Deep River, Ontario. The year was 1999. I wrote by night and worked on Y2K fixes by day. Deep River is located along the Ottawa River in the sparsely inhabited wilds between North Bay and Ottawa.

The problem is that four months in isolation worked too well. I excelled with so much unfettered time spent with my imagination. My favourite authors are often childless. My favourite female mentors were often childless and single. Too many married ones with kids quit their director-level jobs to consult or divorce their spouses. To get experience and mastery requires focus. As a woman from this era, you're conflicted.

When I finished the novel, I was entangled in an unhealthy and doomed co-dependent relationship. The breakup left me recoiling for the better part of a decade. The novel's romantic plot reflects the reality of relationships.

Daw and Torbooks published the books I loved reading. So, I looked up their submission guidelines. I sent my work to the publishing houses. Three for three, I was rejected without comment.

Not wanting the life of a process engineer, I signed up for more punishment: a Master's degree.

For a time, putting off my future was my career. The search for codependency became my addiction.

With the question of identity on my lips, I became addicted to my career, relationships, friends, religion, and travel. I can relate to people who identify themselves as 'they.' Yet, this was not a thing at this time. I identified with no less than five distinct versions of myself.

By the mid-2000s, my life stabilized somewhat. I spent five years in Galway, Ireland, embodying who I was. I bounced between studying, hiking, singing in a choir, attending meditative retreats, and learning from the bearers of lore, the art of storytelling.

I met my future husband when I least expected to.

I tried many times to write, but I could not find the muse. All I could produce were snippets of poetry and false starts. My mind was analytical by day and mystical by night. I learned to read Tarot cards and to practice Reiki. As a tinker, I felt the lure of open-source technologies.

We moved to Boston, USA, in 2009. Having experienced self-publishing on Blurb.com to print my wedding album, I printed a vanity copy of THE TAKING. These were the last years I would take the time to curate and print photo books. The age of social media and information was upon us. Kodak galleries sadly lost out to Google Photos. The age of quality print photo materials sputtered and died.

The muse refused to show herself.

I entered a new era of wanting to be a mother.

Meanwhile, I freelanced as an open-source web developer while working for an Ivy lab. I was swept into the start-up culture of the 2010s, which took me through having three babies, a move back to Canada, and the pandemic.

Still, I had no muse. By having 'it all' had I squandered any opportunity of ever writing again?

Babies eat their mother's brain cells.

I rode the open-source tech wave for ten years. Everything came crashing down as the new AI wave began to take hold.

While I could ride that wave, my mind asked, "Is this practical?" Motivation and passion failed as ethics and values wavered.

I know the tech, and getting on board would be a slight stretch requiring effort.

"I just don't want to anymore," I said.

The muse woke up and called me.

Unemployed, I woke up from my career–to the reality of my life supporting three kids, three pets, a neurodivergent husband, and a household that includes aging parents.

It had been years since anyone had said I was not reaching my potential. Instead, they asked, "How does she do it?"

Today, I ask, "How did I do it?"

I experienced a form of burnout in 2018, but I didn't feel burnt out in 2023—I didn't feel anything.

Maybe feeling numb was much, much worse.

How Going Numb Brought Back the Muse

In 2023, I published THE TAKING on Kindle Direct Publishing. No more revisions. No more beating a dead horse. I couldn't just shelve it. I needed the world to know my truth.

I am an author.

I never expected everyone I knew to reply, "Of course you are."

I was embarrassed and shocked to learn that 6% of my friends and social media followers supported me by buying my book.

I did it to move forward and out of writer's block.

The people who know me are not surprised. To everyone, I have always been a storyteller — a collector of tales.
A consistent truth I did not see in myself.

I received the call, which was accompanied by a knock on my door. My limiting bias had tricked me. The muse stood there at the end of my driveway.

I had only to open the door.

It hasn't been a straight journey. By February 2025, I pulled THE TAKING out of distribution. This novel does not represent my writing anymore.

I took the long way around, but I am an author.

-D.M. De Alwis