I was raised in a bicultural household in the U.S., but have lived most of my adult life in Japan, South Africa, and the U.K. After spending several years as a presenter and news/copywriter for a Tokyo radio station, I took on a less glamorous, but deeply rewarding role in 2010 creating and writing English educational materials for Tokyo-based primary and secondary international schools. I’ve been writing creative fiction for about five years, and have been long and short listed in several flash fiction competitions, including the WestWord Prize and Wild Atlantic Writing Awards. I have two completed (but unpublished) novels under my belt and am currently working on a third—(women's) literary fiction set in war-time Japan. (X: @WattersSk)
If you haven't taken the time to read "Out of Character," take a moment to read Sumi's excellent story. Then come back here to learn about her writing process.
------interview with Sue Bradford Edwards-----
WOW: What inspired you to write “Out of Character?”
Sumi: My writing group's monthly prompt for February was 'music lyrics,' and I happened to hear Dolly's "9 to 5" on my way home from a meeting. So, I took the lyrics--'I tumble out of bed and stumble to the kitchen,' and thought of all the possible scenarios where one might tumble and stumble.
My first (in-my-head draft) involved characters performing in a play, and the main characters (Jaykob and Sherbet) having a go at the director for not having a clue how to direct his/her actors. I'd recently seen "A Christmas Carol Goes Wrong," and realized there was nothing original about my story idea. Idea scrapped.
But what if, I thought, J & S were characters in an in-progress novel? What if they were unhappy with the author's choices and her writing progress? And so, "Out of Character" was born.
WOW: You made so many changes before committing a word to the page or the computer file. Revision is an important part of the writing process. How did this story change during the revision process?
Sumi: To be honest, once I got the 'right' idea in my head, the story pretty much wrote itself. My word count was a little over the limit when I finished the first draft, so all I really had to do was tweak here, tighten there, and change a few bits around.
WOW: You write both flash and novel-length work. What do our readers need to know about transitioning between the two forms?
Sumi: Not to toot my horn, but I think Flash Fiction is my thing. I have an idea, then I work all the details out in my head before I physically write the first word. I do this whether it's a 250- or 1000-word story or anything in between. When it comes to FF, I rarely write a true second draft. It's usually just the first with a few minor changes. I've written close to a hundred FF pieces in the few years since I started writing creative fiction. I LOVE flash fiction.
WOW: That's amazing! I'm more than a little jealous. Can you tell readers about the novel you are working on?
Sumi: As for novel writing.... Well. I enjoy telling a longer story, but I don't always love how long it takes. I start by writing a treatment of sorts--a chapter by chapter outline for the entire novel. I treat every 'scene' as flash fiction just to get the story down. (That means I do it all in my head, then write it down, one scene at a time. The chapter outline for my most recent WIP is nearly 30,000 words long and took me three weeks to complete. I've been working on the actual novel for about six months. As of today, I'm at 14,000 words. Laughable, right? This isn't my first novel, I've completed two others, but for some reason, I haven't had the 'long-term' attention span needed for stringing all those scenes together. Partially this is because of my day-job workload--writing/creating English, History, and Science textbooks for international schools. But it is also because the world has felt like it's burning these past few months. I'll keep plugging away--one word at a time.
My novel-in-progress is titled Akita Beauty. Akita Beauty is a story about Shino, a (fictional) luxury-brand beauty consultant and celebrated performer, who is summoned home under the pretense her widowed father is gravely ill. When she returns to her hometown in Akita prefecture, she is forced to marry the son of a wealthy, but morally corrupt merchant, only to be sent back to her family a year later for failing to produce an heir. At age twenty-one and no longer a virgin, Shino is branded spent goods—disgraced, discarded, but most damning of all… barren. Set in wartime Japan, Akita Beauty is a story of sacrifice, duty, survival, and hope told through the eyes of a plucky, young woman determined to reclaim her identity and independence, despite Showa-era patriarchal societal expectations and norms.
My mother was Japanese, so I spent a lot of my childhood in Japan. Growing up, I'd heard so many stories about life during wartime Japan and the years that followed from my mother and maternal grandmother. Shino's story is very loosely based on my grandmother's experiences. Spoiler alert: My grandmother wasn't barren!
WOW: What do you wish all of our readers knew about writing flash?
Sumi: For me, writing flash fiction has allowed me the opportunity to explore different genres, POVs, and writing styles. My longer pieces tend to be contemporary stories told in the first person, but through flash fiction, I have attempted pretty much everything, even genres I'd never thought I'd write.
What I love most about flash fiction is that you can tell your story from start to finish in a few hundred words. It's a short-term commitment. An hour of your time. An afternoon or evening. I'm not gonna lie. Writing "The End" at the bottom of Page 1 is super gratifying. A mini-accomplishment, but I count it!
So, if you're pretty new to writing creative fiction or perhaps still trying to find your 'voice,' try writing a 500-word piece in a style that might be a little out of your comfort zone. You may surprise yourself.
WOW: I love that idea of writing an untried style in flash just to try things out. Please keep working on Akita Beauty. I think I speak for the group when I say that we need to see it!
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