Nicole Sune Sbitani (she/her) is a diplomat by day and speculative fiction author by night. The views expressed in her newsletter or on her website are her own and do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Department of State or the United States.
Our Personal Stories Matter, Too
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Let me start by saying I highly recommend subscribing to Process by Wil Dalton, a Substack by another member of the Foreign Service community, writer, and friend of mine. Wil recently wrote a post called “Songs I Cried To Flying Away From War” that resonated with me. For those who don’t know, Wil and I were both evacuated from the Middle East months ago – an experience I mentioned in my final post on my Foreign Service blog, nandm.sbitani.com. A dear friend and colleague recently tagged me in a call for submissions to a self-published anthology of stories from diplomat moms. (Don’t worry; I checked and all the appropriate approvals will be completed with our employer.) I went back and forth on whether to submit – after all, shouldn’t my writing energies be going to my (painful but necessary) revisions on my latest novel? But Wil’s post reminded me that our personal stories also matter for our fiction. This is one of the things that will always separate human art from AI. We are whole people with life experiences and stories and loves and fears, and how could that not affect how we write, how we read, and how we understand the world and each other? This is one of the reasons why, when I finish a book or a short story (especially one that I loved), I want to learn more about the author if they’ve chosen to make that information available. I love reading and listening to and watching author interviews, discovering their other work, hearing from them directly how they’ve grown or changed or how they hope people read their work or what they didn’t expect when they were creating it. So I’ve decided to make some time to do some personal storytelling in addition to hacking away at my second novel draft. I’ll be sure to share more here once I have it. For now, thank you for reading! Nicole Disclaimer: The views expressed in my newsletter or on my website are my own and do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Department of State or the United States. |
Nicole Sune Sbitani
Nicole Sune Sbitani (she/her) is a diplomat by day and speculative fiction author by night. The views expressed in her newsletter or on her website are her own and do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Department of State or the United States.
Hello! I finished my second draft of my novel manuscript, and it feels amazing! For Fics & Dip readers who are not writers: most books go through many, many drafts. This is not the first novel manuscript I've ever written, but it is the first I've seriously revised. I learned so much about myself and my editing process along the way, and I'm so proud of how much better the second draft is compared to the first draft. When I mention to people I'm writing a novel, they often immediately asked,...
Hello! If you're a mom like me, you've probably heard a million variations on the parenting advice: "let them be bored!" I see this sentiment all the time as a reaction to today's over scheduled, high-pressure environment where parents feel they need to fill every bit of their children's lives with sports, social activities, clubs, family obligations, seasonal traditions, etc. It seems especially relevant during summer breaks in the United States, at least, where some feel guilty if they...
Hello! Some days, I really wish there was a shortcut for learning writing craft. I finished listening to Brandon Sanderson's 2025 lecture series that I mentioned before, and he talks about writing 12 (!) books over about 10 years (!!) before he got his first offer of publication... for a measly $5,000 advance (that was negotiated up to a whopping $10,000). There are few careers that pay worse than writing for the majority of authors, which is one of the reasons why most novelists have day...