Magic or coincidence?
on how we edit stories (even when we're telling them to ourselves)
I started listening to The Trip to Echo Spring today, mostly because it’s included in Kobo Plus (Kobo is a Kindle substitute—instant ebooks and no money goes to Amazon!) and I’ve loved Olivia Laing’s other books. It starts with a lengthy analysis of John Cheever’s story, The Swimmer. The funny thing is I read this Cheever story last night: I’d been reading his collection over the last few days, and I had no idea it was going to be mentioned in Echo Spring, that the latter would tell me how to understand the former.
The kind of coincidence that happens sometimes if you read a lot, and that seems magical when it does.
Another recent coincidence, a bigger one, that happened to me: I sent out a novel to two Indian publishers over a few weeks, and then one day I got an email from one that they want to talk about it, and from the other with an offer. The two emails came in within 33 minutes of each other. It felt almost like a benevolent omnipotent presence was directing my life.
Such things have been happening to me recently, making me feel lucky. I have been making new friends, seeing new places; things I’d dreamed about for years have suddenly become possible. That all this while the world seems to get more and more unsafe and difficult just makes this more surreal.
A fiction tip: add a lucky coincidence or two, or even an unlucky one (like two villains turning up to confront your main character on the same evening) to make your story seem more fantastical or whimsical. Remove coincidences to make it more gritty or realistic.
Which is not to say my life’s become perfect. i had a pain flare lately, reminding me that my chronic pain never disappears, is only managed. I have been unwell from other chronic issues. I’ve been stressed about work and frustrated at not being able to work nearly as much as i would like.
And hey, one of those publishers ultimately rejected my novel. But i didn’t tell you that upfront because that would make a less cool story.
Which brings me to my point: editing is a big part of writing.
There are several stories i can tell about writing Chikkamma. One is that i wrote and revised and submitted for six years, working over and over again between and during pain flares and bouts of illness and extreme depression and jobs. Another: i found a mentor in a writing class who encouraged me to write and finish and submit the novel, and i had tons of support from my husband and other friends. Another: i submitted the manuscript to Westland and they said within a month that they wanted it. If i tell the first story it becomes a tale of pain and perseverance, the second of kindness and community, the third of brilliance and luck.
Each of these stories (and a few others) are true. Each is incomplete, but all stories are incomplete.
This is of course how we edit our lives, too, presenting ourselves as victims or heroes (usually), often switching between them depending on how we’re feeling and who we’re talking to.
Every piece of art or entertainment is meant to elicit emotion. How do you want the reader to feel after reading your story?
I woke up last night—past three a.m.—and heard a car honk, loudly. I hear such honking most nights around midnight or later. I guess it’s the same car, honking to be let into the building gate. Every night I hear the honks, I visualise the same driver breaking the peace of the night. Which is a very different story from a random different car honking every night (which is extremely possible, given the busy neighbourhood I live in). But the first story is more compelling, gives me an invisible but specific target for my rage.
Writing the first draft is fun: you’re exploring a new idea. editing and revising is the real work.
Editing and then honing in on certain aspects of a story is what good fan fiction and retellings do too, making you see familiar stories in new ways. Here’s a book recommendation: The Butcher of the Forest is a gripping novella by Premee Mohamed. Fairy tale turned horror. Two children lost in the woods, like Hansel and Gretel, and our nearly 40-year old heroine, who’s always been single, who loves her family and goes to fetch the children under threat of them being killed, and who is harbouring a terrible secret of her own. It’s not cosy, it doesn’t have an unequivocal happy ending, but it’s not nightmare-inducing and is deliciously dark.