Find Your Narratorial Voice with Olivia Abtahi

Write along with Olivia’s playlist!

Prompt #1

Make a list of what your character likes and dislikes.

Prompt #2

What does your character want? How are they going to get it?

Q&A with Olivia Abtahi

What was the hardest part of writing your book?

There’s this scene in Perfectly Parvin where there is a character in her Farsi class named Amir who Parvin thinks is cute, nice and funny. However, she doesn’t like him and my editor kept being like, “why doesn’t she like Amir? They have great chemistry—they’re obviously perfect for each other!” That was a point in the revisions where I had to confront my own bias and standards. This took me weeks to figure out but, the reason Parvin didn’t feel comfortable liking Amir was because he looks like her; he’s Iranian, has big nose, a lot of hair, thick eyebrows, tanned skin… and society always told Parvin that wasn’t attractive. So, that scene broke me. It was one of those moments where my characters knew a lot more than I did and they were my greatest teachers. I’m really grateful for the book for teaching me that moment and especially so I never pass that on to my own child.

How did you plan Perfectly Parvin out and how did you stay motivated when writing it?

I write down what my chapter or word-count goals are for the day. If I reach those goals, I give myself a cute sticker! Ultimately, the real reward is “I wrote a book!” Sometimes you’re really slogging through, though. The writer Nina LaCour talks about writing a few words on most days. Sometimes it’s easy to reach two-thousand words and you’re like “oh my gosh, this is incredible!” then the next day, the words don’t come and it’s because you put a lot of pressure on yourself. It’s a marathon, not a sprint and I have to remind myself of that all the time. Sometimes I’ll get to my goal and, even though I have an idea of what I want to happen next or I could keep going, I say “Olivia, stop. Keep that energy for tomorrow.” Write a couple of notes to help with momentum the next day and take it from there because you don’t want to burn yourself out.

Did you get a lot of agent rejections before you finally got one? How did you pick your agent?

I got so many rejections. I’ve had over 50 rejections so if you get one rejection, don’t stop. People always say you need to have a thick skin but to be a writer you need to have thin skin since you are empathizing with so many different people. What helped me with rejection was that a lot of the agents would give me great advice for free. I’ve never taken an MFA writing course and I didn’t have the money to go to conferences, pay agents or give money at fundraisers that got you people to read your manuscript and critique it. I didn’t have those kind of resources at the time. Instead, I would send my book out as a proof of concept and a lot of agents were so nice. They gave me rejections with detailed criticism, things to improve and what to focus on. So, even though it was a no, it really helped me hone my craft. By the time I got to Perfectly Parvin, I got super lucky and received 7 offers after querying like 10 people which is a way better ratio than what I had before. I think that’s thanks to all of that feedback and advice from before.

Remember, even if you get rejected you can always reach out saying something like, “thank you so much for reading my work! I’d love any feedback if you have it. Can I revise and resubmit to you? Is there something you suggest I work on?” I really also recommend critique partners within your own circle just to have a friend to bounce your book off of.

What first inspired you to become a writer and why did you choose romance?

I went to film school and loved writing screenplays, but I realized that even if you write a good screenplay, it’s really hard to get it made into a movie. Even if they do want to turn it into one, it costs millions of dollars. You really have to believe in your vision and convince people to give you millions for it. I just don’t think I have the conviction to ask people for that kind of money but then I thought to myself, “well, I don’t have the resources for that but, what if I told stories through books? I love reading, I like writing screenplays… why don’t I give this a shot?” That’s what first inspired me to be come a writer.

I wouldn’t say I’m a romance writer, I’m more of a romcom writer. I chose that because that’s what I love to read! It’s what I enjoy and come home to at the end of a long day. It’s just what makes me feel good. It’s my happy place.

This event was originally recorded on June 4, 2021.