A Semester in Review: on Red Squiggles, Failing Miserably, and the Magic in Words

I remember the day Lora and Cristina first came by our class. We discussed poetry, leafed through some of SPI’s other published work, and explored what we might want to write about. I’m not quite sure what Lora and I were discussing, but the book Like Water for Chocolate came up in conversation. Intrigued, I looked it up. While I found the plot fascinating, there were two words on screen that riveted me: magical realism. A genre I’d never heard of, yet one I’d read extensively.

Before that class, we were grasping at straws for a genre to write in. We’d thought about space fiction and fantasy, epistolary-style books and those about lunch box notes. While the idea of Singapore-based fantasy was the most fitting, it was only after that class where we finally could put a name to our ideas. Even though we tweaked the genre’s name to fit our idea, finding that first shred of inspiration began our entire writing process.

I loved the name. The word “irreal” is underlined with a harsh red squiggle whenever I type it on Microsoft Word. Though the genre exists, and is indeed real, it felt fitting for Word to mark it as misspelled. To me, it felt as if the word itself was irreal. I was so excited about the prospect of writing an irreal story that I didn’t realize how difficult it would be.

The first draft of my story was written down. It stood, vulnerable and white, on the screen in front of my mini-workshop group. Kamille and Ji Won dutifully read it, wrote comments about what they thought worked and what didn’t. By the end, the draft had been slashed open with the figurative red pen, suggestions and edits blood on the page. (Side note: I like how Google Docs’ suggestions are green instead of red; it’s much less scary).

Unfortunately, I dropped the ball on that one. I failed to give my mini-workshop group feedback on their stories. I gave myself a pass because I wasn’t around, and because February was the weirdest month of my entire year. But later, I would realize that simply not being there wasn’t a good enough excuse to not give them feedback. I could have asynchronously collaborated with them through the Google Docs comment function, or at the very least written them an email. I failed to realize the importance of early-draft feedback. Thank you for pointing it out on my previous blog entry.

Although I ended up scrapping the draft I shared for mini-workshop, Kamille and Ji Won’s comments about focusing on only one character, and also about descriptions I kept that didn’t make sense, were very helpful.

I have learned that in a community of writers, as a team-member, I must give back as much as I am given. True collaboration works only through equal effort.

In fact, it was only because of the early-draft feedback that I learned just how bad my initial irreal element was. I needed to find a new one. Deciding what my irreal element would be was my biggest challenge. I’d cycled through magical metal sand dollars, magical sandcastles, magical turtles, and nothing was working. It took Wanling’s past-midnight, sleep-deprived ramblings to get me out of my slump. (Google comments are a wonder). Even then, my accent-switch was not received well. Not everyone understood what I was trying to do, and I received a lot of helpful feedback about what was unclear in my story and areas I could fix.

When I had finally decided on my irreal element, I learned to write (and think) more clearly. In my first drafts, I had imagined a plastic switch embedded in Kavi’s thigh. I wasn’t thinking of a switch made of flesh, and I most definitely was not making a statement about puberty by putting it on his thigh. I learned to put more thought into every single detail of my story. I had to figure out what kind of switch would be on Kavi’s body, where it would be, and what it would mean.

I think the reason my story was so unclear in its first drafts was because I was too close to it. I had read it so many times that it was clear to me. I had visited my setting. I had seen, firsthand, what was going on, and so I was able to understand what I had written. It was only after workshop that I realized my draft did not make sense, and that I needed to change it.

With the draft that ended up in the book, I was encouraged to explore humor. My writing style before this had mostly been that of an angsty teenager, writing pretty sentences but not quite knowing what they meant. However, for my final draft I tried to play around with humor. As you see in the images below, it became funnier by the draft. I think that it sounded best out loud, though – it still wasn’t as funny as it could be on paper.

First draft of my radical revision:

The draft that ended up being in the book:

After failing to be a true team-player the first time, I made sure to comment on other classmates’ stories.

During our big workshop with Prof Hemley, I made sure not to shy away from the hard questions. I made a sincere effort to keep in touch with the Marketing Team, worked closely with the Events Planning Team. With the advent of the Media Kit, I was the one who took the lead on the Vision Statement, bringing together all the parts of the Marketing process and examining each of them to make sure they fit with what we were aiming for. (With the Media Kit, I also learned about the “Assign” function on Google Docs. This discovery was probably the most interesting part of the entire process! I typed in someone’s name, and could assign them a specific task!) I’m glad that in the end, I was able to become a part of the team again. Without all of us working at our best, we might not have had as successful as an ad campaign as we did.

We did it! We published a book! I’m honestly surprised that we nearly are sold out. Even though our local media campaign is pretty much over, I'm going to send an email to Emily May today about reviewing our book. I’d love to see this go global. I’m glad I took the initiative on that, and even though we did it quite late, I’m glad I’m at least doing it now. I’m not disappointed that we are doing it after everything – as I said in our meeting, when we identified possible audiences/readers for our book, I made the conscious decision to first focus on the people we could reach most easily. Now that we have, I’m going to the next level. I’m so excited for Emily May’s response. It helps that her favorite genre is magical realism.

my email draft - what do you think?

Magical realism. There’s a certain magic in the letters themselves – what the words represent, rather than what they simply say. Words like ‘leaf’, which remind me of the cliché movie shot of a leaf spiraling through the air, green and stark against a baby blue sky, a sunspot wiggling its way down the screen. Or ‘hummingbird’, which brings to mind the rapid flutter of its wings and the salmon pink flower it is flying beside. That magic, I think, is what keeps me writing.