A young artist swaps her paintbrush for a keyboard and types her first creative work for an English class assignment.At 13, she publishes a short story on Wattpad, an online writing website that doubles as a digital library for self-published authors and a social media platform. As a high school senior, she takes a creative writing class and writes a poetry book for a final project; by the end of her first year of college, she has written a full-length book. These items stand out on the curriculum vitae of sophomore Layla Noor, who completed the first draft of her debut novel “Eclipsing Binary" last spring.
Like many other members of Gen Z, Noor also grew up on a steady diet of young adult novels and the homogenous protagonists that dominated them. Changing the dominant narrative is one of Noor's aspirations when she writes.
“I was reading 'Percy Jackson' and 'The Hunger Games' and 'Twilight' and all these things, but I never really felt … represented or seen through those stories," Noor said. "They were always kind of about white, heterosexual protagonists saving the world."
Before writing her debut novel, it took Noor a few tries to finish a full draft. Noor cited this uniformity as the reason why she got a slow start on writing longer prose.
"I think part of the reason I never finished any of those books and why my writing is so different than it was before is because I grew up [with those books],” Noor said. “It wasn't until I tried to write this book that I wrote last year at Tufts [that] I finally tried to write a story that was really true to myself, and I really started reading other books where I could see myself in fiction."
Noor’s novel, “Eclipsing Binary,” is the product of a persistent idea and a tightly organized calendar.
“I was just starting college, trying to get all my classes, and I just kept coming back to this vision in my head of a girl watching another girl figure skating and just being entranced by it,” Noor said. “So I just sat down and wrote the first chapter, and it turned into a book.”
As Noor describes it, it’s a bit like “Yuri on Ice” (2016) meets sapphic romance.
“It's a young adult contemporary romance about a girl, Elise, who loves art, but kind of finds herself feeling lost in her first year of college and is overwhelmed by everyone's expectations for her,” Noor said. “And it's there where she meets May, who's a Black figure-skating prodigy, who's kind of trying to outrun the shadows of her past and redeem herself in the sport. It's a book about overcoming past trauma, love as healing and kind of finding yourself.”
When she isn’t writing, Noor is studying toward a degree in engineering psychology and a minor in English. She has found an art to managing the two, even if it means staying up late some nights.
"When I was writing the first draft of my book, writing usually looked like it [would be] 10 p.m. and I [would be] done with all my assignments, [and then I'd say] 'Okay, it's time to write,' and I'd be up until 2 a.m., just working away at this book," Noor said. "But I think writing at night is kind of nice. I haven't minded trying to balance both because I'm passionate about what I'm studying, and I'm also passionate about writing."
Noor is active on Twitter and has amassed over 2,000 followers on her writing account. Social media has played a significant role over the course of her career as a writer: On Wattpad, she won a Watty Award — the site’s only award, given to exceptional works across several genres — at age 13. Since then, she’s found a flourishing community of other young authors, readers and role models forging the path ahead as published writers.
“When I first joined Twitter, I had no idea what to expect because I'd always been on the fandom side of it before; I'd never been on the creative side of it," Noor said. “So I think making a writing account was a pretty big leap for me, but I definitely don't regret it because I've been able to connect with and follow so many people."
The connections Noor has been able to make are gratifying.
“Writing is such a solitary activity, because you're alone in your room with a laptop or with a notebook, and it doesn't really feel like in those moments there's anyone who's really with you," Noor said. "I think being able to go on social media and find a community of other writers and other people who understand … where you're coming from and what you're after, and who appreciate the value in writing, is really amazing."
With a manuscript finished, Noor is on to the next stage of the writing process.
“I've kind of been deep in revisions, trying to make everything all polished, because my next step after that is going to be sending out the book to literary agents,” Noor said.
For Noor, authors like Zoe Hana Mikuta, Raquel Marie and New York Times best-selling author Chloe Gong confirm that her goals are within reach.
“I [find it] really cool just to see other writers who are at the same places, and [to] see other young queer writers and authors of color find success in that way," Noor said. "I really look up to them as people who inspire me and people who've shown me that this is possible."
Noor also finds being able to make room for both STEM and the humanities a triumph of her Tufts experience.
"I've grown up thinking that the only viable thing I should pursue is STEM,” Noor said. “And although I am pursuing STEM, I've also realized through going to Tufts, and also through seeing these writers, that it doesn't have to be the only thing I can pursue ... I can have both.”
Noor’s mission statement as a writer is clear: She is writing the books she didn’t have as a child.
“I'm writing about characters that not only try and represent me, but also represent other people, [and are] more intersectional and diverse [than] the books that I grew up reading,” Noor said. “I've read a lot of queer books, I've read a lot of sapphic books, but a lot of times, I found that as a Black queer person, a Black queer writer, there isn't a lot of overlap between some of those areas. I'm reading books with Black protagonists, they're going to not be queer enough. I'm reading queer books, they're going to be about white characters, not necessarily Black characters.”
Noor prioritizes intersectionality in her own work.
“Writing has been a way for me to bridge all of these aspects of my identity and be able to explore myself in a way that I kind of haven't seen out in the world, or that I haven't found myself,” Noor said. “I try and write the books that don't exist yet."
