June 28, 2021
Freeing myself of morning pages opened up time for other stuff, but I missed waking to the creamy blank pages on which I write with a different ink—on Monday it’s magenta in my oldest fountain pen—each day, while sipping a strong Assam black tea blend called Irish breakfast. But habits are made to be broken when they become bootless.
This blog was a hope, that through the constancy of daily blogging I would shrink the gap between what I feel and think and want to say, and what I manage to say. Then in the first week of writing I realised that this writing was revealing the eddies and snarls my mind and emotional states got into during the pandemic.
Life is lived unidirectionally from past to present to future. Time flows linearly and in equal intervals, or so measuring devices tell us. Sometimes though we experience it differently, slow, quick, circular, entangled, incremental, sharp etc. And storytellers use time in various ways to tell their stories. They move between times and places and peoples to create the most impact. I love stories with unique structures and so when I began the second of my novel attempts I chose a structure of a book I had just read to experiment with.
I began the story on April 17th 2017, sitting at the Cedele—which no longer exists—at I12 Katong. The experience of writing it was completely different from the fantasy books. It was constantly interrupted—by death, forced travel back and forth from India, illness, a newly rescued feral cat, and finally my daughters marriage. It was only in 2018 after the wedding celebrations were done, and a short trip to Naha made to train in Higaonna Sensei’s dojo, that I finally began writing the book. About two-thirds through the first draft I realised the structure I had chosen would not work. I had loved the structure so much that for a bit I tried to hammer my story into it, but to no avail. After a workshop during the writers festival that year it became clear that I would have to rewrite from scratch. I wrote in a frenzy and managed to finish the first draft by December 28th 2018.
I revised this draft through 2019, which also began with a death and two SOS trips to India, followed by the Koh Samui gasshuku, gall bladder surgery, the Gishiki in Naha, a holiday in Sapporo, another hectic trip to India. Not many months of continuity but I finished the second draft before the year ended.
Today’s blogging was like the writing of this book – interrupted constantly. I wrote the first words at 11 am. Urgent calls from Bombay relating to the covid situation in my sister’s home dispersed my day. I cancelled plans to be available as things unfolded there and put off writing until now, 8:38 pm. Two wispy clouds blend into the night sky. This is all I have today.
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