In 2024 SmokeLong hosted our second SmokeLong Workshop Prize competition. Our workshop participants reported almost 300 publications to us before November 1, 2024. In 2025, we’ll be featuring one writer each week from The SmokeLong Workshop Prize long list. It’s an excellent series of interviews, each grappling with questions about workshopping, giving and receiving feedback, and the publication process. If you are a previous or current SmokeLong workshop participant and you have ultimately published something you began in a SmokeLong workshop, remember to enter The SmokeLong Workshop Prize competition. This free-to-enter competition is on our Submittable page.
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An Interview with Farriz Mashudi — “Lost & Found” published in Porch Litmag
What do you remember about the workshop where you wrote this story? What was the prompt or writing task that led to this story?
It was the March Micro Marathon 2024. I had just withdrawn a submission to SmokeLong at the end of January, giving the reason: What was I thinking? Suffice to say, a certain editor-in-chief’s offer of a $10 workshop discount proved persuasive. The Task prompt was: Objects, which some writers I knew from the other groups felt strongly should be something tangible. While my own group was not only open to, but openly supportive of the inclusion of both concrete and abstract nouns, to appease those hung up “objectors” I also wrote a piece about mismatched clothing: When I Grow Up It Won’t Be Like This featured in 50-Word Stories, 15 March 2024. And to appease myself, Lost & Found was written about a national anthem, symbolizing patriotism, identity and other such things capable of filling one’s breasts with a range of emotions from passion and yearning, to indifference or more complicatedly, ambivalence. Even guilt.
Peer-review feedback is always full of surprises. In general, what kind of feedback do you find helpful? What kind of feedback do you find less helpful?
On feedback, waiting—worse, not receiving any—can feel like rejection. So, I really appreciate comments, and to receive these earlier rather than later, and always do my best to reciprocate and not leave anyone out. It’s good to hear what’s working, more so what isn’t, even ‘I liked that’ which ideally comes with elaboration. Despite the workshop’s blink-and-you’re behind pace (and being mostly awed by others’ outputs) I’ve found reading and providing considered feedback in itself helpful for the learnings this also brings me.
To how many places did you send this story? Can you tell us a little about its journey to publication?
Only two; being literary journals focused on South-East Asia, of which I wish there were more.
What is your advice to someone considering taking part in a peer-review workshop?
Approach with purpose and intent to produce writing for every task and to provide feedback, in equal measure. Consider embarking on it together with writing buddies you can additionally meet up with in person, as I was fortunate to do. And believe in the power of paying things forward: trust me, it works.
Read “Lost & Found” by Farriz Mashudi in Porch Litmag.
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Farriz Mashudi writes mostly fiction in both short and long forms. Born in Malaysia, she’s lived in Canada, the UK, Dubai and Qatar, and continues to pursue stories as an unsettled nomad. Her work first appeared in FlashFlood and can also be found in The Typescript as well as Altered Reality Journal amongst others, including Porch Litmag where this piece found a home in June 2024.
