coconut editing with shivani

 

the curious limited knowledge of a character helps as a POV for the audience to digest the world as well.

I know a coconut seller, talks about the weather and news, I tell him my problems when I buy coconut from him.

I was at a point of my life when I had to rush through my work and my personal life, where all requirements were squeezed through a bottleneck of my dwindling efficiency. I was losing energy.

So he gifted me Magic coconut that rejuvenates me, he had slept with it for a day in exchange for a day of wakefulness. 

I place it on my desk, and take it with me to endless worlds as a reserve potion of sorts. This is when I’m creating or reading into the night, of course.

In the end I do not drink it, I stave off, saving it until it dries up. Or not. I never know because I never opened it.

The weather is fine today. 

He is shaded by that token coconut tree, but its charm does not lie in its shade, but how the patterns of its shadows move in tangent to the wind. His knife, big, fat, chops in the background, muted by occasional cars puttering along the new-village road and the gurgling of longkang water behind him. A mound of coconuts lie on a bamboo mat behind him, protected from the yellowish earth and black ants that crawled below—under a canopy, protected against the sun that pierces through the sparse trees. His son sits in a light-blue chair, playing games on his phone with a broom loosely tucked between his thighs. 

His red plastic tablecloth is wet as always, and the freshness of coconut will be there as always, immersed in a polystyrene tub of ice radiating coldness that soothes the soul into seraphic calm.

There’s nothing on the first floor. Only a door and a staircase and a curious mirror in a cage. I took off my sandals and walked up the narrow steps, following him to the second floor. His living room is dark, shiny blackness that takes a while for the eye to adjust. The piano lies smack in the middle, it glistens, smelling of polished hardwood, or that may be the polished wooden dolls behind it. An array of pictures create windows into scenes unseen here—his family posing within blizzards, a desert, and some ancient ruin. I turn back  As he throws open the curtains, I see a flash of green and a shadow of the squirrel scampering away. 

The memory is unpolished is good less pretentious

Reclaiming the past to make the present more bearable

Chronothesia time travel; the verge of change for two characters 

Write as if you’re writing to something bigger. 

Don’t force yourself on the character, let them reveal themselves to you. And then nature will commence on your relationships.

Comparison of something that feels wrong, falling in love with the wrong person, the subtle wrongness. Watching out for the over-rationalisation. Meanings of the name going through subtlety. 

 

Fiction should not be interviewing people for characters, not such a plagiarised drawing on life.

Never delete drafts? Instincts or structure? When will you stop repeating yourself? Same subject writing the same thing over and over again in different versions.

Liken books to food, tea, drink, some people just like to create similar foods, and some like to create vastly different tastes for different people. Who is the audience?

Don’t want to have a canvas that is already cluttered. Choose one that has nothing much, distance.