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Welcome to the Tuesday Telegrams, a semimonthly newsletter from award-winning author Naseem Jamnia. You're currently reading a writing-related Telegram, where I update you on projects, offer behind-the-scenes looks, delve into craft, and other publishing and writing topics.

This is my last writing Telegram for 2025. I always take December off from doing Telegrams in order to rest and think about my newsletter goals for the upcoming year.

Last year, I used December to work on launching "Reading like a Scientist" in the new year. Due to changes in Kit's creator plan, I've had to drop down to the free newsletter option, which means I've had to discontinue that newsletter course. (I would like to turn it into an ebook, but that won't be something I can work on for at least six months.)

The good news: I'm going to be teaching "Reading like a Scientist" live as part of my revision class for Clarion West, which is in two sessions: Thursday, November 13 (THIS Thursday!!), and next Thursday, November 20, from 4-6:30pm PST.

To entice you to join this class on Thursday, I'm going to briefly share what it means to read like a scientist, and why it will change the way you approach your writing.

This is, in other words, the Telegram About the Importance of Craft Analysis to Level Up Your Writing.

All art is born from a particular moment: a particular moment of the artist's life, the political moment they find themself in, the state of the artist's relationships with their communities, the moment of the artist's state of mind. But art is also born of the larger media moment: what shows are available, what movies are around, what books. All media is tied to its own moment: consider, for example, how poorly maybe movies have aged because of the cultural assumptions embedded in them.

These moments give rise to conventions within that art and media form. The Victorians often wrote third-person omniscient narrators, for example, ones that were zoomed out and could survey the thoughts and feelings of many characters in short periods of time; my instinct (but not studied knowledge!) is that it comes from the societal repression of feelings and the discussions therein that led to this distant focus.

Today, many books of fiction are written in third-person limited, following one character closely without being in their head. So, too, are many movies ultimately revolving around one character, even with an extensive cast.

Depending on the genre and age group, these conventions shift; young adult books, especially romances, are often written in first person. This also makes sense; teenagers are at a time in their lives where they're introspecting and considering who they want to be as they step into the world more autonomously, and books reflect that. (It also makes sense because of the number of adult women readers who engage in YA in the hopes of finding something that isn't in their own lives.)

Yet it's important to emphasize that these choices are just that, conventions. They're what's normalized in a particular time, in a particular place, in a particular culture. These conventions are often more granular, too: how to format and tag dialogue, what grammar rules can be shirked in favor of what kind of style, what story structures are invisible because of their commonality.

If we as writers want to grow our art, we must take a look at what else is being done. Part of this is keeping an eye on the market, yes—not with the purpose of writing toward it, but for being smart about the projects we're working on. (Maybe starting a new romantasy is timely, or maybe the market is oversaturated, so we work on that project in a few years, when there aren't being so many sold all the time. Remember: most projects are sold 18-24 months in advance of publication.)

But the bigger part is looking at art that does and doesn't inspire us and ask ourselves why those things are or aren't working—and, more importantly, how.

You love the voice that's developed within this novel—how was that voice developed?

You love the eerie sense of the setting—how was that setting developed?

The "how" gives you the "why." The voice is "voice-y" because the author used a lot of slang that the narrator is using casually and consistently. That's how, and also why it's voice-y.

Once you've done that type of analysis, you can then figure out how to implement it in your own work. Doing craft analyses allows you to learn from authors you admire (and also those you don't—useful to avoid things you didn't like!) and also keep in touch with various writing conventions that you may or may not want to follow, depending on what you're trying to do in your own work.

But how, exactly, do you go about figuring out the "how"? How, in other words, do you learn to read for craft?

Enter: Reading like a Scientist.

If you were able to take the email course, I'd absolutely love if you could respond to this email letting me know how it went and what you thought. If you weren't or didn't, I hope this entices you to consider what that might mean.

I don't like to bar my writing and industry lessons behind paywalls, so in general, I don't do that. But if you can afford to take my revision course this and next Thursday, I think you'll get a lot out of it. The first session is all about reading for craft; the second is about how to apply those lessons to your own work to plan revision. Even if you did take the email course, I hope you'll join us—I can go into much more depth in person.

If taking the course is not feasible for you, future Telegrams will certainly go through these lessons in varying degrees of depth. But my live courses gives you access to me, and we can talk directly about the project you're working on. Even if you're not at the revision stage yet, these are useful lessons that most writers never get (a side rant for another day).

You can register for "Revising Like a Scientist" here.

This year, I spent a lot of time teaching, and a lot of time refining the ideas I teach. Next year, I'm going to be spending more time on my projects, but I am also hoping to move into teaching my classes without an organization at the helm. I just taught a week at Tin House, and my students raved to me about how class went. Trust me when I say I'm a generous instructor. This comes off as a brag, but it's a statement of fact: I care a lot about teaching, a lot about my students, and a lot about making sure the knowledge I have is openly shared.

If the cost of the class is prohibitive to you, please get in touch anyway. I might not be able to get you a seat (because it's being run through Clarion West), but I can always meet with you.

If you're getting my Personal Telegrams, I'll talk to you again in a couple of weeks. But for all of those on the writing side of things, I just want to thank you for your continued support and enthusiasm. I've deleted Instagram on my phone and only check Bluesky on my computer, so when I say the Telegrams are the best way to keep in touch with me, I mean it: This is where I do my community building and connection. So if you're here and reading, thank you. If you've shared this newsletter with someone else, thank you.

We live in a fraught time, but not unprecedented ones. Reach out around you. Care for each other. And write stories that we need today and tomorrow. Your voice is always needed.

In solidarity,

Naseem

Solidarity Corner

If you have organizations or causes you'd like me to spotlight here, please send those links my way. We get through these things when we do so together.

To help Palestinians facing genocide:

• A list of verified mutual aid links​
• ​Gaza Funds spotlights current crowdfunding campaigns that are not getting as much attention
• The Sameer Project​
• The Al Jawad School in Gaza
• The Palestinian Children's Relief Fund​
• ​Crips for eSIMS for Gaza​
• The BDS Movement calls for specific brands to be boycotted in order to be effective in their targeting, but we can also be discerning individually. Here is another list of companies profiting off genocide. The only ethical consumption under capitalism is when we trace where the money goes.
• A list of Palestinian-owned brands and Palestinian goods​

To help others:

• ​Community-supported initiatives for recent events, courtesy of author Sarah Gailey's Stone Soup newsletter​
• ​CARE provides both ongoing recovery care for those impacted by Hurricane Helene
• A list of crowdfunding campaigns for displaced Black families, displaced Latine families, displaced Filipino families, and displaced disabled people from the LA fires, including affected small businesses
• The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has pages for various international atrocious
• ​A list of charities grouped by recent events around the world
• Some resources to help Lebanese communities affected by Israel's bombings
• ​UNHCR's donation page to help Syrian refugees
• The International Rescue Committee's page on Sudan
• ​Oman Tigray and the IRC's page on Tigray
• ​IRC page on the DR Congo
• The Center for Human Rights in Iran, which is not a mutual aid organization but does good work
• ​Keep Iran Connected to the internet (unfortunately via Starlink)

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