Craft by Ananda Lima

Author:Ananda Lima
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tor Publishing Group

{  }

It was Tuesday evening again, workshop night, and the writer sat in the middle of the conference table, surrounded by other writers, or soon-to-be writers, which was how they all thought of themselves. Her role was to stay silent, while the other writers told her what was wrong with her story. The writers were gentle and kind, but their job was to find the problems so they could be fixed and the writer exculpated in the next draft. The exposed wood of the mid-century table was walnut. Article, she guessed. The writer didn’t want to make eye contact with the others but didn’t want to be rude. So she scribbled notes, like “make this clearer” on her manuscript, and “timeline” or “pg. 6” and “why her?” and “why now?” on the yellowed lined pages of her little notebook. It was pocket sized. Peter had brought it to her, from a conference goody bag. The workshop instructor at the head of the table said things like “interesting” and “can you expand on that?” and “hm.”

She took a break from taking notes and stretched her fingers. The fellow curly-haired woman next to her smiled sympathetically. And then the writer was done. She thanked everyone and collected all the copies of her manuscript her classmates had annotated.

Everyone was going to the pub next door, but the writer couldn’t. She had an early meeting the next morning at work. It was dark outside and drizzling. But her walk to the subway was not too long, and she would be okay. Cold, but not too cold. Early March, almost spring. That was one of her favorite things, spring. She’d grown up in uninterrupted good weather, and the first time she’d witnessed people sprouting at every outdoor space, patches of grass, benches, and cafes, stretching toward the sun. And she felt it too, in her own body, a happiness that felt physical, driven by her body more than her mind, a happiness for the simple, commonplace, and marvelous presence of warmth, the sun, and chlorophyll. Something she’d never experienced before she left, when those things were a constant, a pleasant background song.

The writer was also an immigrant. Sometimes, when the immigrant writer wrote, there was no migration in the story, and she wondered if there should be. Sometimes the immigrant writer wrote immigrant stories and wondered if she shouldn’t. These were the kind of questions she talked about with the Devil.

In her story, she had only seen the Devil three times and spoken to him only once, that one night, but the writer still had conversations with him all the time in her head. Maybe it wasn’t always the real thing, but it didn’t feel completely unreal either. Like fiction, whether it was real in a literal sense was not the point. Though, at least with fiction, everyone was on the same page.

Not so with him, the Devil highlighted, appearing next to the writer with an umbrella that covered them both from the drizzle and the yellow streetlamp light.

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