Happy Days are Here Again

Who hasn’t experienced rejection? I know I have. There was that guy in class six who didn’t understand the signals I was sending him (I really should have waited for him to hit puberty first). There was that editor at the biggest daily in Karachi who showed me the door for not knowing where the Sea of Marmara was (first job interview post aborted undergraduate experience, hadn’t yet realized needed geography not talent). And recently there was that agent in New York who regretted not falling deeply enough in love with the first three chapters of my first novel to consider representing it. Then there was that other agent in New York, and that one in London and…the point it, for a writer experiencing rejection is not just an occupational hazard but also a hazardous occupation. You cannot let yourself be diminished by it.

Two years ago, as the first draft of my novel neared completion, I removed the Writers Guide to Book Editors, Publishers and Literary Agents wedged carefully under the bed to keep the kids from sliding off and dutifully read it cover to cover. For the last few years a potted plant on my windowsill had been muttering, “you’re not really a writer till you’ve published a book”, and it was time to silence it. I replaced the book after making a list of twenty agents to query and then set about doing it. Over the new few months I received rejections letters from fourteen of them. The other six just didn’t reply. My ego took a battering, but my focus didn’t waver (it hasn’t since I first vocalized my desire to be a writer, probably why I’m cross-eyed); that fern had to burn!

Since literary agents just didn’t seem to have enough love to go around, I decided to go straight to the publishers. As I began my search, looking for small fiction imprints interested in South Asian writing that wasn’t about mangos, jasmine or the immigrant experience, my life flashed before my eyes. Not too long ago I had been a 21-year-old struggling writer with a day job to support her passion. Now I was a 31-year-old struggling writer with a night job to support her passion. My parents would be proud.

I remember when I first told my father I wanted to be a writer. It was a blistering summer day. There was no bijli so we were walking up and down the drive of my parents’ house in Phase 5, driven outside as much by the furnace of my mother’s rage as the heat trapped in the wall to wall carpeting. She was angry because they had finally discovered the stash in my bathroom cabinet. My father had taken me outside for a ‘talk’. He was 66. I was 20. He was 6’2”. I was 5’5”. His height was not the only reason he had the upper hand. He was the retired business executive who still commanded tremendous respect. I was the perennial problem child who’d just been caught smoking out of the loo window.

Any other straight-laced Pakistani father would have been propelled straight into orbit by sheer righteousness. Mine told me about the time in England when he decided to fight the boredom of a long train ride by taking two tabs of LSD offered by a friendly stranger. “But nothing happened! Do you know why?” We talked a little about body weight and quality control. I knew that he was not avoiding the issue but putting it in context. The question, when it came, would be perfectly placed, flawlessly delivered. Was early onset cancer my only plan for the future?

Except I was done with other people taking control.
“I’m going to be a writer!” I blurted right after he begun steering me away from open declarations of war against academia (‘perhaps it isn’t the right college, why don’t we say you’re taking some time off rather than dropping out forever?”)
He continued his stately march down the flagstones. I scuttled behind him like a crab with a wedgie.
“What kind of writer?”
“A good one.”
“Well there’s no point in doing anything unless you do it well is there?”
I concurred. No there wasn’t. Which was why the done thing didn’t do it for me. I was singularly bad at it. People pointed and sniggered.
“So you want to be a journalist?”
“Not just write for papers, I want to write a book. I’ve already got some short stories.”
“Why?”
“I feel like its what I’m supposed to do.”
“How do you plan to support yourself while you write a book?”
“I can work for a paper.”
“No one will hire you without a degree.”
“I’m sure I’ll find something.”
“Hmm,” he upped the pace and left me behind, “you do what you have to do. Just remember,” I sputtered in his wake (I generally did before sickness made him vulnerable), “It takes a long time to write a book.”
Neither he nor I knew just how long.

I heard from a publisher in India early this year that they plan to publish my first novel at the end of this year. If things go according to plan, and they don’t send me a letter explaining they meant that other Shandana, over a decade will have passed since my father and I had that crucial conversation in the driveway. I rushed to tell him when I heard the news. He said “its about time. ”

Used as I am to rejection, this acceptance thing really threw me for a loop. Yes they’d said they’d publish it, but they probably didn’t mean it did they? Probably just a prank by some warped half-wit with a decent computer and a valid street address and bona fide google entries. Then they sent me a contract, and a cheque for the advance. It wasn’t a million rupees and 25% of royalties. It was only then that I really believed it.

For a longest time I hesitated before telling anyone, a problem my friend Maheen solved easily by working “her first book is being published this year” into every conversation we had when we went out together. Now I’m meeting people who say ‘so I hear your book is coming out’ and I have to nod, dreading the inevitable. And sure enough, the next question is invariably “what’s it about?”

If acceptance throws me for a loop, explanation petrifies me. If I were a verbal person, I wouldn’t be a writer now would I? No two people who’ve asked me what my novel is about have walked away with the same answer. I’d often wanted to say its about warped love and mental illness, but then they’d assume it was autobiographical.

Then there was the guy who asked me ‘what have you thought about the cover?”
“Well I definitely think there should be one. Spiral binding is a little tacky.”
“Yes but what’s going to be on it? You can’t seriously be telling me you haven’t considered what would best reflect the theme?”
Nodding furiously, I pretended I’d heard a commotion outside and rushed through the café exit screaming ‘my car my car!”

But I’ve been thinking about what he said, and next time someone asks me what I want on the cover of my first novel, I know what I’m going to say.
“My name.”