I am spring cleaning my computer instead of writing.
Shifting files to folders, copying and deleting documents, being a librarian. I’ve spruced up Newsletter, dusted down Tonsé Storytellers and now I’m clearing Appeasing the Ancestors; it’s the name I’ve tacked to the series of short stories I’ve been writing, and I could get lost browsing in that section for hours, flicking through completed projects and marvelling at how far they had to come to become the finished product. I always leave the “In Progress” editions till last because reading them means beginning to write.
As I flip through Appeasing the Ancestors I stumble upon a file called A Love Story that had started out as a sort of fairytale; an old man sitting in front of a fire on a wooden stool, surrounded by a circle of youngsters as reflected flames flicker on his iris. He was hunched over and wheezing, telling of the great love of his life. Back then the story was called Infatuation, and I was discovering it, parsing out the location and main players, feeling for the mood.
I began writing Infatuation in December of 2022. It started with an image of a young man smoking a musano filled pipe. The old man was in my mind, not on the page. The musano was a love potion and I remember giggling at the thought that I was subverting expectations. Below the scene with the smoking man is a paragraph highlighted in green, I highlighted it because I knew it would change, green was my thinking colour.
The next document along is dated 27th May 2023, I’d presumably spent a mind boggling 5 months avoiding this story, daydreaming about the plot, writing other stuff, conducting research - reading a bunch of romance novels that I’d bought at a container shop along Great East Road after a knowing bookseller discretely pointed them out to me.
By now the story had formed into a distinct shape, a shape I’d never used before that must have oozed into my subconscious through bouts of perusing other shorts.
From 27th May to the end of June I was frantically saving new copies, the last of which was complete on the 30th. When I’m in that mode, that frantic writing mode, I wake up as early as possible, make coffee, speak to no one and get to the page as quickly as I can.
I knew that I wanted the story to feel like a fairytale, so though I had abandoned the form of a fairytale, I’d decided the language should have that languid beauty to it, a poeticism that was beyond my fingertips. In that month as I was writing I picked up one of my absolute favourite books, remembering how the prose had seared through me. I read Arundhati Roy’s ‘The God of Small Things’ again. This time she taught me how toshow not tell.
I finished the story on the 30th of June, it was now called 5 Acts of Love, and it needed 1st readers.
I always have people read my stories after I think I’m done. It’s excruciating but necessary, and if you’d like to participate in this unique form of torture, leave a comment and I’ll add you to the list of people who are happy to read, give feedback and have me reciprocate when necessary.
My first readers made me remove the swear words I’d so giddily written into the text. Far too jarring, they said, and I resolved to pepper some other more deserving text with expletives.
In August of 2023 I submitted the story to Shendandoah. Mubanga Kalimamukwento who I will, from now on, refer to as the Fairy Godmother of Zambian literature was undergoing an Editorial Fellowship at the literary magazine and when the story crossed her desk, the real work began.
I’ve written before about how integral the editing process is. What I hinted at then but didn’t spell out was that having an editor who really understands the worldview in which your story is seeped is supreme. Mubanga helped me ground my story. I didn’t have to explain the nuances, she made me expound them. More diversity in publishing! That is all.
Portrait of Love in 5 Acts is out now in the current issue of Shenandoah and you can read it for free here.
For those of you keenly following the timeline, I received an acceptance in December of 2023 and the story was published this month. That’s almost a year and a half from when I tapped that first sentence.
Mubanga is the founder and Editor in Chief at Ubwali Magazine. Zambia’s first and only literary magazine is hosting workshops, they have announced a fellowship programme and are currently open for submissions. Send in your work, truly.
This month’s short story selection is in strong contention for my favourite of the year so far, it’s incredibly layered, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Judging by the comments you did too.
Next month we read and discuss ‘There’s No Hurry in Botswana’ by Masiyaleti Mbewe.
And now I must go back to writing what I’m actually supposed to be, which is a personal essay that did not survive a move from tablet to laptop and must now be retrieved from memory. I mean if that’s not a good excuse for procrastination I do not know what is.
Thanks for reading!