Whatever happened to that book?

Edit: This post has been slightly updated at the end of 2023 to reflect a more recent status of the writing projects.

Today is the Sinhala (and Tamil) New Year day. As I sit in front of the computer to partake in my trade—as one does according to tradition—I want to try and answer a question.

Whatever happened to that book I was writing? If—for whatever unfathomable reason—you wish to know more about what has been happening with these, you might like this update. Let me start with what is closest to being complete.

Even though I work in technology—and am very passionate about that—there are other aspects of my life. One of those involves poetry, to the point I am as much a poet as a geek.

If I take quite a bit of liberty with the term “poetry,” I have been writing poetry since I was in grade school. More importantly, I always felt free when I was left in my mind to mind my own. Given a pen and a blank page—like many that came before me—I turned to writing, and poetry was my first choice of medium.

Somewhere, roughly around fifteen years ago, I naively thought I had enough poems to compile into a book. To get to the point, I am certainly not the person I used to be—nor is my art. My values have changed quite drastically, and some firmly believed ethos—I have shed without leaving a trace. I did all this while reading a ton of poetry from around the world.

As a result, I do something of a ritual to my old writing when I grow past them. To borrow an action from Paustovsky and from one of my own poems (roughly translated):

I set the field of paper flowers on fire
so that none may see

I usually do that in the most literal way possible. I discarded most of my old writing without any guilt or remorse whatsoever. As the papers burned, I felt the concern of being associated with them lift off my shoulders.

Today, I am much closer to a book of poetry than I have ever been. I work without any timelines to keep. So I take my time. The funny thing is, there might be a chance that I never quite finish them. Even now, I find myself editing the words of a poem I had written years ago. If I outgrow this collection of poems, I will not hesitate to burn them this time either.

For what it is worth, I think there could be a time when I decide it is as good time as any to take a snapshot of my words and call it a book. Who knows, it might even get published.

I had not really written anything this ambitious on longer formats. I once tried to write a fiction in Sinhala a long time ago. While I managed to have fun writing the first act, I realized a couple of things. First, it was only suited to be a short story—which was fine. But the other realization was a much more severe blow. I felt I was writing a derived story. It was not a plagiarized plot, but it felt like a story you would have heard. That proved to be the end of it.

I cannot really remember where the initial spark came from. But there is a story unfolding in my mind. Somewhere in November 2016, I started writing it down—bits and pieces, from here and there. When I started working on this sci-fi/fantasy novel, I not only started having a ridiculous amount of fun figuring out the main story, but I also found the need to write. It felt like a story no one else would write. A story only I could write.

Right around the time I was carefully climbing down that euphoric high, life got in the way. For one, I got very busy with work. I juggled three full-time job roles while receiving the benefits of one. Around the same time, I gave up on TV shows (with the occasional exception of Netflix) and fully embraced anime as my preferred entertainment medium. It was a breath of fresh air to experience anime for the stand-alone medium of storytelling it was, complete with many genres.

Finally, Black Panther happened. It is easy to overlook it as just another superhero film leading up to the next Avengers film. But as an outsider and a person of color, I could see Black Panther checking so many boxes I felt had been left unchecked for too long—things such as colored protagonists, colored characters in their native settings, celebration of their cultures, garb, music, etc., lack of white-saviors or white-narrators, etc. Black Panther may have been yet another superhero movie, but there is no denying how big a breakthrough it was. It made me happy and left me somewhat satiated for a while. At least a part of what I set out to do had been achieved—probably far better than I ever could. So, I left the book on hold indefinitely, even though not entirely deliberately.

Rather than actively work on it, I have to wait for the story to unravel in my mind over time because of time commitments. The world-building is not entirely fleshed out, and some character arcs are not fully developed yet. I still do not know how some of the plot points in the middle weave together. But there is a story slowly unraveling—and someday, I fully intend to tell that story. But that’s probably not anytime soon.