Chitra Chatra

Some writers break your heart.  Some writers bring levity and a smile to your lips with their savvy humor, witty dialogue, and touching portrayals of all-too-human follies we’ve all experienced in our nameless day-to-day lives.  Brigitte Surette firmly belongs in the latter group; I’m just itching for her novel to come out in paperback so I can cuddle with it at the beach.  Do visit her blog at Brigitte’s Banter.

Brigitte tagged me with a list of writerly questions, so here are my responses.

1. How old were you when you realized you had a way with words?

I think I was 15.  I took an English literature class from Mr. Charles Miller in sophomore year of high school.  I still remember the first essay I wrote for him, and the comments he wrote back on it — his illegible scribbles took hours for me to decipher, which made it all the more memorable.  He taught me the beauty of writing succinctly, of cadence, of similes and metaphors, and writing in a stream of consciousness.  I am forever thankful to Mr. Miller.

2. Would you rather write one extraordinary novel that wiped you out and changed the way people think (think Truman Capote after he finished In Cold Blood) or publish several, not-so-noteworthy novels that bring in a nice income but don’t necessarily make you a “famous author?”

The One Novel.  If I could produce The One Novel in my lifetime, that would be a success.

3. How many stories/novels have you “temporarily” abandoned?

Not many.  In fact, only one (the one involving the Merrimac River.)

4. Do you work on more than one short story at a time or do you finish one before beginning another?

My sanity is only so much that I can inhabit one story at a time.   I do daydream about other possibilities, but I don’t have the flexibility of mind to really focus on them and put them into words before the current project comes to a satisfying end.

5. What author has inspired you the most?

James Salter.  Hands down.  No question.  He is godly to me.

6. If you could go anywhere to write and not worry about anything else, where would it be? (besides where you are now?:))

Here’s my daring 30-year plan: after my kids are out of college and leading comfortable lives in their little corners of the world, my husband and I will move into a beautiful apartment in Manhattan — a pre-war co-op along Riverside Drive in the Upper West Side in full view of the Hudson, to be precise — and when winter hits, or when friends beckon, we will fly over to Bali and hole up in a lovely suite at Four Seasons Ubud overlooking the ravine.  Until then, I don’t care where I live, so long as I have time to write!

7. What author would you love to interview and shadow for a week?

James Salter.  Definitely.  Absolutely.  Though I might get so absolutely nervous in front of him that I won’t be any use for that entire week.

8. Do you edit along the way as you write or just pound a story out and then edit?

Cool question!  I often wonder about this myself.  With me, I always edit along the way, sentence by sentence.  That’s why I write at an excruciatingly slow pace.   I envy writers who can just pound a story out and then edit.

9. What time of day is the best time for your muse to visit you — morning, afternoon, wee-hours –when do you do your best writing?

Any time of day when both the kids might be sleeping or otherwise preoccupied with something other than tagging along with me.

10. Name one of your favorite characters you’ve created and tell me who would play him/her in the movie version.

Honestly, I can’t come up with anything here.  Although I’d love to create a character in the likeness of Maggie Gyllenhaal just to have her play that role.

11. Who would you want to play you, (author extraordinaire) in the movie version of your life as a writer?

A GREAT question — you got me  thinking about this for some time, Brigitte!  In the end, I came up with no names.  I guess I’d rather be J. D. Salinger-esque, always eschewing the glitz and glam.  I may write stories, but I’m not much of a story myself, if you know what I mean.

When you have witnessed your child being harmed by another child, however in jest, the question that lingers in your mind long after the untragic incident is whether she had suffered an invisible wound that will one day manifest itself as a mental instability.  Mother should have spared you the hurt, now that you are still so young and full of new hope for the goodness of humanity.  But later, in the forest of adolescence, I won’t be able to be there for you every step of the way — you won’t want me to be there for you — and at least I want to teach you the One Good Fact of Life: what you do unto others, others will do unto you; if you emanate good, only good will come your way – and more darkly the converse.

February.  It seems these ambiguous days will never end.

(An obvious homage to the most respected Mr. James Salter.)

It feels like February just drags on and on.  The ancients probably felt so too, and made it the shortest month on the calendar.  It doesn’t help that we seem to experience a massive, collective physical breakdown around this month, and all kinds of viruses run amok.  A friend who practices psychiatry mentioned that cases of seasonal affective disorder (SAD – a thoroughly appropriate acronym) also crop up around this time.

The Japanese traditional calendar heralded the arrival of spring this year on February 3rd, and the weather in New York certainly seemed to corroborate on that account.  Winter is still here, and it sometimes comes biting back in ferocious ways.  But gone are the days of winter wonderland, and we silently look for signs of spring in the errant daffodils poking through in Central Park — florists full of crocuses — that certain levity of light that March will surely bring.

And yet, even when time seems to slow down, I seem unable to sit down and write.  February is almost over, and not a single productive page have materialized in the past three weeks.

Writing is equal parts talent and discipline.  One needs to actually sit down and WRITE on a regular schedule, despite the viruses running amok, despite two small children, the birthday parties, or the daily temptation that is the New York Times.

In this regard, I greatly admire On Kawara‘s steadfast dedication to his craft, especially his “Today” series.  I wish I had the liberty of visiting his works at the David Zwirner gallery in Chelsea (ended February 11th, sadly enough).  It must have served quite an impact to be in a room surrounded by his immense canvases with the starkness of printed-out posters that simply read the particular date on which it was created, when in truth the paintings were painstakingly made by hand, inch by inch, day after day, a repetition of discipline and hard work.

That makes for a true artist, someone worthy of acclaim, because they inspire us and provoke us to aspire to the same height.

So, no more excuses — I NEED TO WRITE.

My new year resolution for the year 2012 is to write and be published.  In my typical sluggishness, however, I didn’t act on my resolution until a full month had gained steady entry into the not-so-new year.  And now even Chinese New Year is over.  Well, I’m Japanese and we used to stick to the lunar calendar too, so I’m declaring February to be my first month of year 2012.

So — happy new year, everyone!  And welcome to my new year resolution in action.

Actually, I have written blogs before: Hina’s Blog, and Tokyo Detox. They represent previous versions of myself that I would rather not mess with, so I am starting over with this new blog.

2012 happens to be the year of the Dragon, no less.  My father excitedly Skyped me just to tell me that I have phenomenal luck on my side this year.  Who knows?  Maybe the Muses will descend on me and I will write good stories.  It’s always good to believe in astrology when they have good things to say.