The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work, and that writing didn't require any. ~ Russell Baker (1925 - )
I have been misled so many times in life. Oh no you wouldn’t want to know what things I had once believed so dearly, the things I needed years to find out to be horribly wrong.
I have now come to suspect that the deep-rooted belief I’ve had since childhood, that I could actually write fiction, is also a misleading one.
It all started rather innocently. I started reading when I was five, and finished my first Enid Blyton book in the first grade. (Before that, it was the full version of all-text no-graphics Bambi, which was more than 100 pages, and Helen Keller’s biography. Yes, from my choice of books at 5 years old, you could safely assume that I’d grow up to be a very boring woman). I first read Agatha Christie’s books when I was in fifth grade. I have a soft spot for mystery books until now, but since 1992 I’ve grown very fond of the stories told by Amy Tan, Wally Lamb, Barbara Kingsolver (The Poisonwood Bible!), Jeffrey Eugenides (The Middlesex!).…you know, the books which will most probably sit in the “Literature” sections in Kinokuniya.
Much that I realize I cannot make mystery plots, I long to be able to write stories with more subtle plots, like…*gulp*…those books sitting in the Literature section. Make that not quite “longing to be able”, but “believe to be able”. I have been writing on and off since first grade, but so far can only finish a handful of short stories. In 2005 I participated in “National Novel Writing Month” and found out what I believed was true: I am never meant to write novels. At least, not yet. In my logic, to be able to write a novel one must be able to write a short story first. A friend who majored in English literature said this wasn’t true. “It is more about finding your forte”, he said. “A poet doesn’t write prose, a novelist doesn’t write short stories.”
But, but: how could one write two pages before writing one? How could you muster up 10 characters before coming up with 1 or 2? Therefore, I think short-stories are the foundations of novels. And the strangest thing is, until 2005 I thought I could write short-stories. Until Marianne mentioned that articles and essays were so much easier to write. Until I figured that all these years when I wrote only half-finished stories, I actually finished lot of essays. I have blissfully ignored this fact almost all my life. Am misled to total blindness.
The funny thing is, I just won’t let this belief go away. This year I got a short story published, and although the editor did so many changes in it I couldn’t recognise the story as my own, the fact remains that I could get a short story published.
Something in me still laments every now and then, about the stories I needed to tell. Every time I take a shower I tell myself stories I believe can make it to the paper someday. The strong characters and lucid plots I don’t have, but somehow the belief just won’t budge.
Maybe it’s ignorance, blind enthusiasm, or sheer stupidity. But this one belief is what keeps me afloat most days, and I know by 8 PM tonight, in the shower I shall tell myself yet another short story.
