We’re a quarter through the year 2026, and I honestly feel like I’ve been dragged through an entire decade’s worth of sociopolitical upheavals.
Of course, I know the constant crisis after crisis is quite intentional — “the flooding of the zone”, many call it. (And… I think there’s a book circulating which outlines the whole strategy.)
But it pains me to say that the craziness has been working.
The cycle of bad news has honestly kept me in a sort of writing drought for some time now. I get the occasional burst of inspiration from time to time, but it’s quickly snuffed out by the next gust of terrible news.
Last year’s plans to do MyNoWriMo didn’t quite go as I hoped. I didn’t finish my novel draft, which was the whole point of my doing the challenge in the first place. I ended the year feeling like an utter failure. But, at the same time, I didn’t feel terrible enough to where I had the desire just to scrap my WIP completely.
That alone is a victory. Small as it is. I can recall all the works I’ve abandoned solely because I lost that “spark”. And this has been a habit going back to primary school.
I refuse to add this WIP to that collection. And this largely has to do with how this piece makes me feel. I still get excited over it, no matter how exhausting the plot has been. There is always something I feel could be added or changed about the characters. (Yes. The dreaded worldbuilding syndrome.) And my feeling for this story is as strong as it was in 2021.
Even when I’m not writing, I still end up jotting down a note about a character, adding a small detail to the world, expanding on the culture of my heroine’s kingdom. These little additions—the collection of notes that I find myself making throughout the tedium of my day—always bring me back to this WIP.
And it’s why I can’t see myself abandoning it.
Writer’s block be damned
So while I ultimately didn’t complete the rough draft, I did walk away with adding 10,000 more words by the end of 2025. A small accomplishment, but it’s something!
That being said, I’m painfully close to hitting 50,000 words. And I’m thinking of ways to celebrate when I hit that milestone. Maybe I’ll go out for lunch and actually dine in. (Which would be a luxury considering I’m always working when I eat.)
But I’ll decide when the time comes.
The Illusion of Paradise
So, back when I was a Creative Fellow for INKspire—which was literally 2023-2024—I had set out to make my final piece about an author who really made me reflect on the effects of colonialism in the Caribbean.
That being Jamaica Kincaid.
She was the first Caribbean author I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading back in high school. In the early to mid-2010s, it was honestly hard for me to find black authors, let alone Caribbean authors, writing about their experiences. So her essay, A Small Place, stood out to me in ways other works didn’t.
I wanted my last piece to pay homage to her essay and how it served as a launching point for my pursuit of Afro-Caribbean history during my undergrad.
The platform editor even helped me develop my piece, suggesting I include another well-known Caribbean author, Aimé Césaire, for comparison.
Overall, I was excited to pull this all together. But as 2024 came to an end and most of the fellows had already submitted and published their pieces, my goal in making this homage the culmination of my fellowship grew distant.
I only have myself to blame. I was in a storm of poor time management between my 9-to-5 and studying for an infernal entrance exam.
2025 soon breezed by as well, and my dream to write this piece eventually went with it.
Yet, I couldn’t shake this negging in the back of my mind. The constant “what if I just put some time aside and did it?” It was often countered with a well, it’s too late.
But as the holidays came, and brought with it a lull and a modicum of free time, I picked up Kincaid’s essay, and gave it another read through. Then, I read through Césaire’s play, Une Tempête.
And I found myself drafting “The Illusion of Paradise”.
I didn’t think INKspire would pick it up after so much time had passed. And even as I was drafting it, I always had this worry that I’d be placing effort in an article that would just be trunked.
But Vivian and her team are gems, and they were wonderful to collaborate with throughout the editing process. I couldn’t have asked for a more supportive group. (Though… I do need to brush up on my sourcing skills when it comes to selecting images for my articles.)
It’s out now, and I’m awashed in relief. And, frankly, ready to take on other projects. Specifically, my novel :D.
So, without much further ado, I present to you one of my many dreams come true. An homage not only to the groundbreaking work of Kincaid, but also to one of my recent favourite authors, Aimé Césaire!
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