My Story
… I failed English… I’m very grateful that happened, because it pushed me to teach myself the language…
“… At that time, in my country [Lebanon], and in my school in particular, Arabic and French were languages taught more than English. So when we moved to Dubai, I failed English. I was in fourth grade and I still remember the big ‘F’ in red on my assignment. But I’m very grateful that happened because it pushed me to teach myself the language. I didn’t simply rely on English Class. Even at such a young age, I somehow knew that wouldn’t be enough. So I turned to books.”
“The very first book I read was The Merry Adventures Of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle. It wasn’t easy to get through it, naturally. But I was so encouraged when I read it all that I got my parents to buy me a second one: Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.
Both books have stayed with me, and I somehow managed not to lose them. They first sat on the shelf in my bedroom when I was a young girl in Dubai and today they still sit on my shelf, except now I’m a grown woman and the shelf is one of many in the library at my home in Canada. I treasure them… In more ways than one, they’re a beautiful reminder of how far I’ve come.”
… My early interest in writing stemmed from boredom…
“I remember some nights when my family would gather to watch TV, I would sit at our eating table with my notebook and pencil. While they watched their shows, I wrote fictitious short stories to entertain myself. If I wasn’t reading the latest historical romance, I was writing random tales.
By age ten, as much as I loved reading, writing quickly became a great source of entertainment for me. I grew tired of watching cartoons and playing with my toys. It all started getting repetitive. So in all honesty, my early interest in writing stemmed from boredom and the yearning for something more entertaining. After all, what could be more entertaining than our limitless imagination?”
… I simply wrote it off as nothing more than a pastime. In fact, it was overshadowed by my excitement to grow up and become an adult…
“Towards the end of my high school career, there were many nights when I would stay until the early hours of the morning typing away at my keyboard, lost in the events of one of the stories I was writing. At one point, I had three different stories going at the same time. All of which I saved religiously onto my little floppy disk. Losing that disk with all those stories still bothers me to this day.
That aside, I didn’t really make a big deal of my writing. I simply wrote it off as nothing more than a pastime. In fact, it was overshadowed by my excitement to grow up and have a real job. And at sixteen years old, a real job meant driving to a cool office building, sitting at a cool desk and working away at important things like adults do. Writing books was nowhere on my radar. I was far more preoccupied with going to university, graduating and landing that ‘cool’ job.”
… The only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself…
“My obsession with books grew stronger the older I got. Aside from fiction, I became an avid reader of self-improvement books. Especially ones by Napoleon Hill, Claude Bristol, Jim Rohn, Tosha Silver, Tony Robbins, Dr. Joe Dispenza and Wayne Dyer, to name a few. But I would always be drawn back to fiction. Fiction allows my imagination to run wild. And the drama at the heart of relationships, especially romantic ones, intrigues me.
So it’s only natural that a romance novel would mark the beginning of my journey as a novelist. Ever since I finally set out to finish my first novel and take my writing seriously, William Faulkner’s words have been echoing in my mind… ‘The only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself.’ To me, this is the essence of literature and something I strive to apply in my storytelling.”
… And this is exactly how…. One day, the girl with the books became the woman writing them.
Author Bio
For over a decade, Joelle Habbaki has been the powerhouse behind a successful event design company. Yet all along there was a nagging urge that never left her. The urge to write captivating stories about the complexities of love and relationships. Walking away from a business she built from the ground up was a difficult decision, but she took that leap of faith and left the comfort of the familiar in pursuit of her lifelong dream of becoming a novelist. Today, Joelle is a self-published author whose stories are a reflection of the human experience, with characters who are flawed, vulnerable, and relatable. Also in addition to her novels, Joelle has founded the brand 'Visionary Venus', where she combines her art and words to craft visually captivating self-empowerment, transformative journals.
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