Poornima Manco

Author

Poornima Manco

Heat Rising

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Smoke curls around the cigarette as you lean over the stone parapet. The boisterous parade thumps below, bodies slick with sweat and paint. Dancers and contortionists, performers and clowns. Afternoon heat rising. You wave, then laugh at some indistinct comment, leaning out even more.

I fixate on the crack in the stonework, imagining it fissuring under you, giving way suddenly. And you falling, your mouth a silent o of surprise, your body trampled under masses of dancing feet. Then you turn around and catch my eye. A low chuckle escapes you. I shiver. The joke, after all, is on me.

Failing forward

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We all know what kind of year it’s been. And I will not use it as an excuse, but I will admit that I have failed rather spectacularly at what I had so ambitiously vowed to do at the start of 2020. For those who’ve come to my blog a little later, here’s the link to my very public proclamation – New Year, New you & all that jazz.

Now, I had said that shopping has always been for fun and for fashion (for me), but this year it became my bit of frivolity too. When, with each passing day, all one read or heard was doom and gloom, I cheered myself up by buying a dress (or two), several lipsticks, some gorgeous shoes, and well… you get the idea!

In my defence, none of this is throwaway fashion. I made all these purchases intending to keep and wear these items for several years. Also, when I dispose of them in the future, it will be to a charity shop and not a landfill. However, even while I write this, I feel a twinge of guilt, because I had absolutely no need for any of these things I purchased over the year. I have a full to bursting wardrobe, outfits that range three sizes (for my fit to fat phases) and enough makeup to do over the entire cast of ‘Phantom of the opera’. Still, a girl with a credit card, an Instagram account and a desire to make herself feel better through any means possible, can end up doing a fair bit of damage to said card. I won’t even go into the psychology of what shopping came to embody in the year that never was. This was the chicken soup for my soul. Shallow, I know, but true.

So, as we near the end of this particularly horrendous year, I stand before you, a bit shame-faced, and quite rueful in not having followed through on my promise. However, with just a few days to go, I don’t see any reason to not want to try again. At some level I recognise that shopping is only papering over the cracks of anxiety, uncertainty and fear. It’s momentary joy in an unpredictable time. It’s comfort consumption, a crutch to handle that which there is no handle on. And each of us is ‘dealing with’ in our own unique ways. But equally, my original intent of doing something for the planet hasn’t disappeared entirely. I am still very cognisant of the fact that pandemics aside, our planet is groaning under the weight of our consumerism. And while I may have stumbled and fallen at the very first hurdle, I can still pick myself up and finish this race. With three days to go to 2021, now may be as good a time as any.

After all, in the immortal words of Scarlett O’Hara, “Tomorrow is another day.”

 

Now

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Curled within, buried beneath, I lie in wait. Uncertain when my time will come, instinctively knowing it will. Under the mounds of dirt that cover me, I remain dormant. But the age-old drumbeat of life throbs within, searching for an opportune moment.

Then – a tiny prickle, a crack, a sliver of light. Suddenly my world is drowned in water. Slowly I unfurl myself – stretching, feeling, climbing – one arm reaching upwards through the soil, a tendril curling towards a golden orb. As I leave my earthen womb, I exhale. The wait is over, the search complete. My life begins now.

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This piece was shortlisted recently in a micro-fiction competition requiring a 100 word article on the theme of ‘Searching’.

 

Nano lessons from the WriMo

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Around five years ago, in a fit of optimism, I’d signed up for NaNoWriMo. For those of you who are unaware of what NaNoWriMo stands for, it’s the National Novel Writing Month which takes place in November every year. There is a website you go to and register your intent to write 50,000 words come hell or high water. Much like most of my ventures at that time, I just blundered into it, hoping that somehow, miraculously, I’d have a 50,000 words manuscript at the end of the month. Well, as you can imagine, that did not go well. I don’t think I even wrote a sentence, procrastinating, until I knew that I’d never really had any intention of writing that novel at all.

What changed in 2020? Well, apart from the obvious, I am no longer that wide-eyed ingenue to the world of writing. I know now that writing a book is hard graft, day after day, draft after draft. I am five books in, and greyer and wiser alongside. This time the intent and the determination were real. The idea was bubbling inside for a while, a rough draft forming itself in anticipation of November 1st. So, I got to work.

This is my first full-length novel. My previous books have all been collections of short stories and one novella. The initial challenge I had to overcome was whether I even had it in me to write a book of that length. This is where the wonderful writing software of Scrivener came to my rescue. Having heard so much about it over the years in writing communities, I took the plunge prior to November and bought and installed Scrivener on my computer. (There is also a free version to try, if you’re leery of investing too much at the start). This enabled me to create parts, chapters and sections. Why would that make it any easier, you ask? Because I could then treat each section as a short story that added to the larger story I was trying to tell. Short stories I have a handle on. That I can do. Breaking down a mammoth task into small, manageable bite-size pieces helped me hugely in overcoming my initial fear.

The second thing that I kept reminding myself of was Terry Pratchett’s famous quote – “The first draft is just you telling yourself the story”. Unwieldy, long-winded, my first draft was anything but the vision of the book I wanted to produce. But it was this quote that kept me going. I was telling myself a story I already knew, but even so, the story kept surprising me by the twists and turns it would take completely organically.

For novices, a book that is recommended almost everywhere is Stephen King’s ‘On Writing’. This isn’t a book about the craft of writing, as much as it is about how to go about it. King is a famous pantser, and he talks about uncovering your story as you would uncover a fossil – delicately, gently, without applying the force of a jackhammer. Similarly, your story will reveal itself bone by bone as long as you are determined to keep working at it.

Now, not everyone is as good at creating something out of nothing. There are three broad categories of writers: Pantsers, Plotters and Plantsers. Pantsers are like King who start off with no plan in mind, but chip away at the dirt to discover the fossil of their novel. Plotters, on the other hand, have a detailed map of where they are headed, with road markings, rest stops and final destination clearly marked out. They may veer off course occasionally, but will always right themselves and proceed the way they’d intended to go from the very start. Then there is me. I am a plantser, and I dare say, a lot of new writers do begin this way. So, we have a rough plot in mind and a vague destination, but what we put between the start and the stop of a novel is a mix of planned and unplanned events, situations and character traits. Nothing wrong with any of these methods. Some might require heavier editing than others, but remember the important thing is to get the words written. As another famous quote says: “You can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.” -Jodi Picoult.

What about that ubiquitous excuse that everyone has? “I don’t have the time!” Well, guess what? Most of us don’t. Most of us have full-time jobs alongside being writers. Not all my readers know what I do for a living, but suffice it to say, it involves a lot of travel, jet lag and fatigue. And I still found time to sit and write my 50,000 words. It really is about commitment, and I should know. During my first abortive attempt, I’d used the same excuses. But here’s the thing, if it’s important to you, you’ll find a way to do it. You’ll create the time, even if it’s stealing 15 minutes here or there. I was listening to this wonderful podcast on which a writer by the name of Honoree Corder was being interviewed about her book ‘The Nifty 15: Write your book in just 15 minutes a day!’ and she talked about how it was entirely possible to do this. Fifteen minutes may not seem like a long time, three hundred words may not seem a lot, but remember everything adds up. You’re working towards your goal, and it may take you longer than say a person writing 2000 words a day, but if you keep plugging at it, you’ll get there too!

Having been a blogger for over seven years now, a habit I had to get rid of while doing NaNoWriMo, is the constant need to self-edit. Blogging has been a wonderful start to my writing career, and it was how I first created a platform where readers discovered my writing, but it’s a completely different medium of work from writing a book. For one thing, a blog is nowhere near as long as a book. Duh! You say. But that was the problem for me. Whenever I wrote a blog post, I would keep going over it multiple times to catch any spelling or grammatical errors. Now imagine doing that with a novel as it progresses. You’d get so caught up in the weeds, you’d never move forward. I kept reminding myself that any and all corrections could be done at the editing stage. This freed me from the fear of having to go over what I’d written previously, and just carry on with the story I was trying to tell.

But what if my muse is lazy, or absent on a particular day, you ask? I cannot tell you the number of times that my muse has taken herself off on a vacation without informing me. On those days, I still show up at my laptop and write. I may not always produce my best work, but write I will. Somewhere in all that drivel will be that fossil I will uncover, slowly and painstakingly. I don’t discount muses and writer’s blocks, but what I have learned is that these can be the hooks we hang our fears on. Get rid of the hooks and the fears might disappear too.

You don’t need a study overlooking a beautiful garden. You don’t need a quiet spot, a particular time, a rainy day. What you need, and what you already possess, is your imagination. Some of my best writing has been accomplished facing a brick wall in an anonymous hotel room. Sometimes, I have focused intensely amid noise and chaos. Not always, but it is possible. Once again, how badly do you want to write your novel?

NaNoWriMo is like a marathon. It is word after word after word, until you are in a state of flow, where suddenly everything is happening at warp speed, all the outside world is blocked out and you can barely feel the effort or the pain, all you feel is the exhilaration of being in the moment and the joy of accomplishment.

I am no authority on writing, but these are the lessons I learned not just in November, but in the years and months prior as well. “Get your butt in that chair and write!” exhorted a fellow writer at a conference I attended last year. That’s what 2020 and November have been about. No opportunity has been too little, no task too large. I’ve written for the joy of it, and I’ve written because ultimately, whether or not my manuscript sees the light of day, I now know what I am capable of.

So, bonne chance, any budding writers out there who have wondered if they can tackle NaNoWriMo. If I can do it, so can you.

“If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” ― Toni Morrison

Work/Life imbalance

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Yesterday I went for my annual physical health check-up. Bearing in mind that I haven’t been to one in the last two years, I was slightly nervous about what may pop up. As one ages it is only natural that our bodies behave in strange ways, in joints that creak or sleep that proves elusive. But these are only physical symptoms of what may lie beneath. I’d heard of people discovering malignant tumours, diabetes, thyroid issues and a host of other health problems that may not have been unearthed if not for this thorough examination.

Feeling quite frazzled after getting caught in traffic, getting lost and turning up fifteen minutes late, I expected my blood pressure to be shooting through the roof. However, to my surprise, almost everything came up normal. Yes, I registered as overweight on the scales, but reassuringly enough, the number on the visceral fat scale was low. (That’s the number that really matters, people. Go read up on it!). After having gone through the various checks, I was finally referred to the doctor, who addressed my concerns and anything that flagged up as unusual on my charts.

It was here that things got interesting. Perhaps it was her empathetic manner, or maybe it was my own desire to unburden, but our chat lasted a good forty minutes. We started with discussing my family history of disease and ailments – diabetes, high cholesterol, heart failure. Then we discussed what I should do about the excess weight I’d gained during lockdown. Finally, we arrived at just how I was feeling. Everything, she assured me, was interlinked.

I am peri-menopausal, so hot flushes are par for the course, as are mood swings and broken sleep. But it was my inability to get a grip on my stress-levels and anger that really needed addressing. For the past few years I had been putting everything down to menopause, but really, somewhere within me I was never quite sure whether that was just an excuse for my sometimes inexcusable behaviour. And the odd thing was that at work I could keep calm even in the most stressful situations. So why was I not able to do the same at home?

As we talked, she made me examine my lifestyle. In the seven months that I hadn’t gone to work, there had been very few occasions where I’d flown off the handle. Routine, rest and regular walking outdoors seemed to have worked wonders for my mental health. But being back at work had brought back fatigue, jetlag and irregular hours leading to stress levels rising once more. Alongside I was trying to complete NaNoWriMo – the national novel writing competition – in which I have to complete a 50,000 words manuscript by the end of November. If that wasn’t enough, I’d pushed myself to write a story in time for Diwali while sending off another one to be edited in time for December. Burning the candle at both ends, it was no wonder that I was feeling burnt out. And who would be at the receiving end of all that pent-up frustration? Not my work colleagues, no. My family. The people that I should love and nurture were instead being subjected to my rages and tantrums.

So often one is aware of things being awry, but it takes someone from the outside to point it out for realisation to take hold. November has been an incredibly stressful month for me. I haven’t given my body the rest it deserves, nor my mind the rest it needs. While there is no letup at present, because there is an internal doggedness that doesn’t allow me to take my foot off the pedal, I have also promised myself that the moment I feel overwhelmed I will take a step back.

If lockdown taught me anything, it was that when all the chips are down, it’s only your near and dear ones that stand by you. Yet, for all the world we present our best selves, and save the worst bits for the ones that deserve so much more.

My work/life balance is seriously askew. That is affecting my mental wellbeing, which is affecting my family life. In addressing this here, I publicly acknowledge that I am no superwoman. I only achieve what I do because of the unstinting support of my husband and my children. And it is for their sake that I need to re center myself. Yes, my job is incredibly important to me, just as writing is. Both fulfil me in different ways. But above everything else is the unconditional love and understanding of my family. For them, I need to be the best version of myself. After all, as Dolly Parton so wisely put it:

“Never get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life.”