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.
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| 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.
