Backing Myself
Writing life isn’t about existing in isolation. For example, I recently became a published book author, celebrating my book Where We Set Our Easel with a global audience, basking in the glory of excellent reviews. Side by side, sadly, I am still not immune to decline notices (that keep trickling into my inbox), and still getting hurt by the ‘nearly-there’ personal replies. I guess I will need to grow a thick skin as my fellow authors suggest, but I doubt it will ever be so.
The existence of a writer is perhaps comparable to Schrödinger’s cat, a place of liminality, a bridge between what we do and what we expect out of them — between method and madness, between science and art.
I was a student of Science. Then of Economics. Now, one has trained me to view structure and format in fiction and poetry as I’d see a table or equation, and the other has taught me economy of words, brevity and objectivity! Economics has also helped me to find a balance between the real, physical world and assumption and hypothesis. I love both subjects. I also love to read outside of my ‘comfort zone’ including books on philosophy, geography and history. It is amazing how reading in areas unrelated to my own writing adds to my perspective, and the way I can subjectively view my writing life.
Of course, all art has a bit of science at its core. Think sculptures, think musical octaves. And similarly, all science, especially the higher you go studying it, blends into the unexplained which is where art comes in. For example, the cosmological constants that are simply there to unify equations. I wonder if that as-yet-unknown is what we can call the art of the universe.
Because of my grounding in Science, I care to decipher/dismantle anything and everything at the molecular level, just to understand it better. I look at flash fiction particularly, and all writing in general, like an architect, or better still, a surgeon. I study how one gets into the job of scientifically building the scaffolding. Finally I look at how, why and where they have set up the bricks, the tiles, the stairs, and the painting on the walls. I firmly believe that one needs to learn to build something really well, so one can become confident enough to tinker with it.
The first step towards that learning is to use OBSERVATION because a WRITER IS FIRST AN OBSERVER. One of the secrets of being confident of my setting is to select a place I frequent. The local community building, store, library, park, or metro train station. Recalling the details is both exciting and challenging. Observing and recalling is more than half the job done.
Here’s what helps:
> What is that one thing I absolutely can’t ignore about the place? Is it the strange salesgirl? Is it the quirky wall-art of the coffee house? Is it because the linen smells weird at the motel? Does something look like it is concealing a secret passage to Hell?
> It is important to write elaborately around what comes to mind first when I think of a particular place, instead of immediately getting to the plot. Is it the sound? Crowds, stalls, balloons, yelling, tickets? Then the adjacent paraphernalia that makes the place one-of-its-kind.
This works greatly towards authenticity and originality. Let me point you to one of my published pieces in Usawa literary, titled ‘Budhnu’. I think it is very much a story that has a particular vibe to it, made possible because it is so local.
Now, I sometimes also try and turn the whole setting head over heels. Yes, JUXTAPOSITION!
You’ll all agree that A READER IS ACCUSTOMED TO REGULAR THINGS IN EVERY DAY SETTINGS. What if you juxtapose those settings? Interchange the props? Books on the last seat in a bus, hair brushes in a library. Think what it might lead to? You’d agree art on the streets is cheap, but signed and put up in an art gallery — Oh, it’s expensive. The opening paragraph is like an artist’s signature. Would you try placing a regular thing but not at its regular place, or describe a regular thing not functioning in a regular way? Surely such experiments marvel the reader. Bear in a coffee house anyone? Jellyfish and whales in a restaurant? That’s what I offered in ‘An Account of Vertebrates’. Use short burst sentences. Use heavy-duty imagery. Use rapid movement.
Juxtaposition takes a different meaning in this piece by Jacqueline Doyle. Reading (and taking note of) word-wizardy by other writers is a great learning resource. When in doubt, those wow-moments restore faith in one’s art.
This morning, in a particularly low-spirit phase of writing life, I am reading the glorious reviews of Where We Set Our Easel. I’m thinking if I have been successful in doing enough going for the world that I created in the novella. I have been told by my book’s reviewers that they enjoy the marriage of real and imagined circumstances in my writing; they applauded the blurring of lines between the physical world, and a lyrical, metaphorical place. In your writing life, filled with doubt and riddled with people constantly telling you that your writing is a failure, sometimes you need to back yourself too.
