Antidote to Akrasia

by Mandira Pattnaik

Birmingham Museums Trust

Did you notice how #WritingCommunity (or #LitTwitter) resembled a High School farewell party for days last month? People tweeting what they loved about their ‘class’, how friends met and connected. Writers made twitter threads that closely resembled spiral-bound slam books — if you were there surely you wouldn’t have missed it. Nothing changed for me. I received no more nor less attention than previously — thirteen likes to the news of an acceptance, and three when the piece actually appeared. Guess I’m the girl on the last bench — quietly observing proceedings while the smart ones discuss coffee dates and cool movies! Well, it ended abruptly. Thankfully, we’re back to our saner selves.

Last month in the midst of this, I took an active interest in a ‘literary’ event beamed live in India. Guess what? In a 3-day event, a major share of slots was reserved for musicians, comedians, and movie stars, and this was a bit unnerving. Are we really encouraging books and readers? I’d have loved to listen to Geetanjali Shree, who was a notable absentee. I’d have loved to hear discussions on flash fiction. Celebration of contemporary writers is something I’ve always felt needs more effort and support here. This may also be seen in conjunction with the dearth of popular local literature, accessible and relatable to all. That is essentially the space occupied by online literary magazines elsewhere. Similarly, school and college curricula has no space for literature from more recent years, essentially keeping us locked in a period.

Reading widely has landed me in a sort of conclusion: Flash-length contemporary stories are like folklores. They are a reminder of the reach and power of what was earlier oral literature, in the way these pieces study and reflect current society, events and culture.

This week I went to a local bookstore. We here must buy to read — alas there are very few public libraries around. I don’t find time to visit bookshops often, but when I do, it’s like the atmosphere of the place casts a spell on me, and I hope to melt into a shelf there and just stay. Overcoming the urge with great difficulty, I pulled myself away after making some purchases. Again, as though stuck in time, it is baffling how many books on Partition still get written and published when 75 years have passed. Written on the theme of climate change, exploitation of man and nature, colonialism, and effects of greed, Amitav Ghosh’s The Living Mountain was one that was missing from the shelves. But I found and purchased The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, 2022 Booker Prize winner. It is a novel by Sri Lankan author Shehan Karunatilaka. An earlier, unrevised version of the novel was originally published in the Indian subcontinent as Chats with the Dead in 2020. Amusing how revisions work exceedingly well than the originals! I read somewhere good writers ‘train’ themselves in the forms of tradition, only to expand into experiment later. James Joyce and Virginia Woolf are easy examples. I’m sure most of us are slightly embarrased of the work we created 2–3 years back. But we can take heart that if the adage is true, we’re all ‘training’ ourselves. That’s excellent news for us untrained, new and emerging writers!

How do writers continuously evolve? “When I first started writing flash, I found 500 words to be my favorite length. The constraint forced me to make strategic choices in both the theme and specific words. After a few years of practice, I’m now flirting with 200–250 words.” says contemporary flash fiction writer Myna Chang. Sudha Balagopal has a similar journey to share in an interview, starting with short stories and moving on to flash fiction. So does Patricia Q. Bidar, who says in a chat that she “returned to (my own) writing — 23 years after graduation from my program.”

I firmly believe that while we’re going around doing something else, and simply observing (or perhaps only noting things subconsciously), we’re actually in the ‘process of writing.’ Also part of that ‘training.’ Let’s just say we’re doing what we do best —absorbing what we see —when we are not actually sitting down to write. That’s a perfect antidote for days and months of low creativity, isn’t it?