Frostwriting

Three Dots and a Full Stop

by Mira Desai

Three dots and a full stop

I skim over a form rejection letter, click it shut, move it to a folder named “Subs.” One down, on to the next, and Duotrope awaits your writing pleasure.  This “let’s get on with it” indifference, now a second skin, did not come easy.

And I return to my set of critiques for the writing group. An apostrophe here, closed quotes there. The metaphorical red pencil slashes and moves on, looking for the next errant word, for tense and continuity. Pounces, all senses alert, on a repeated phase. Learning to look for tautness, for pacing and flow, which is surely a step up from marking the off-tangent tense or odd-errant word, either too glamorous or plain for its environs.  I’ve been mentored by “The School of Miss Alice,” a participant on the IWW writing list with a sharp eye, excellent grammar and an endless store of patience. When I began, I was quite taken aback by her thoroughness—why should a stranger care? But this is the way it is, or so I’ve learned.

All for one sub, a short 400-word labor of love which may or may not fetch the same return of critiques. “Not up to your usual standard,” a virtual friend scoffs, thanks to the anonymity of the web, and the comfort that one feels with someone one is certain to never encounter in real life. A sub, this once, to be put away in a folder until further attention may be brought to it someday, when it may be pruned, whittled and realigned, years down the line perhaps.

Quite a merry-go-round, this flurry of subs and critiques. It took six marks out of twenty-five for a story that I had submitted for an anthology a few years ago, for my world built on the flimsy ground of blogposts, gushing comments and the like, to come crashing down. Miss Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. First, the shock, and mandatory sulk, then generous brow beating—“I know nothing. I cannot, I can never write….” You get kicked, and then you get up. To learn how, no matter what it takes.

I was still smarting, edgy and wary of any well-meaning advice, when a friend guided, nay pushed me towards a writing workshop. Gratis and online, with generous participation requirements, one of each, sub and critique a month. Not too much to ask for, surely.

And I was hooked. Starting with submissions that required much work and learning—beginning with the grammar and punctuation. Beginning with dialogue tags (don’t use them, stick to “said”) and quote marks (the period, which is what the US calls our full stop, goes inside the quotes), and watch that “-ly.”  And an ellipsis is three dots and a period, only we call it a full stop.

This is where I learned about commitment which has no expectation, about the kindness of strangers. What else would I say after watching a stranger patiently plough through the chaff, not once but week after week, politely marking blunders that have left me red in the face at the mauling of the language. Blunders that still make me squirm, gulp and look away, two years down the line.

But this is where I finally grew up, at 40-something, well into my middle years. When you’re putting in 400 words week after week, for several years, the back stories that get woven into the tales never cease to surprise. My life as a woman in literate, middle class India is cushy, cocooned in comparison even if my stories rub in the grime of mean streets and criminals with a bent mind.

Abandonment, grieving, breakups, shared joys, achievements, the great wars—all these life experiences find their way to the stories that are hammered out with unflinching regularity. My subs, meager as they often are, try to portray my world, the glitter and grime-dust of mega city Mumbai,  the social swirl of an Indian society in transition. Maybe through my words, in a writer’s karmic cycle, I’m giving just a little bit back.

Why do I meekly submit to the discipline of the writing group, driven by a compulsion too strong? This act of crafting a quick short on the keyboard, week after week, is a pact, a sacred ritual, non-negotiable. Possibly, the act of punching out 400 words, week after week, has taught me backbone of a different kind. No longer am I timorous about submitting material to editors, using my safety net of “English as a possibly third language.” No longer does an exercise—any exercise—make me flail and reach for the smelling salts. You hit the keyboard, remember the ellipses, and get on with it.