I’m applying to the Rooted and Written workshop at the SF Writers’ Grotto, and that involves a writing sample. I’m submitting the opening sequence of India House, which describes the assassination of Commissioner Rand by the Chapekar brothers. Let’s hope they are suitably impressed. So I spent this day trying to edit this piece, which TBH has been frustrating.
I really find it hard to write three days in a row productively. My mind seems to think it’s too much to be that productive for so many days in a row and craves something different. I’m wondering how to tame it to be okay with that.
Also I end up having an avalanche of feelings like “This is stupid, I’m making it all up, no one cares, I’m the worst person to write this into a novel, a novel is the most idiotic format for this story, I lack an imagination….”, you know the drill. Each time, I reorient my mind back thinking of the people who sacrificed their lives and how I need to tell their story, because no one else will tell it the way I think is ideal just yet. Or they will, and I’ll cheer them on because there’s at least fifteen depictions of Gandhi in film and many more in books, and they aren’t cutting into each others’ profits just yet; VVS Aiyar, who I think of as a distant uncle, deserves at least one.