As writers, we are just like Greek mythic sculptor Pygmalion and our books are like Galatea to us. We are attempting to create the most perfect book for our readers.
In a recent mentoring workshop in the Book Writing World, Elizabeth drew from the author Gilbert Sorrentino’s piece, “The Moon in Its Flight,” located in the collection My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead: Great Love Stories from Chekhov to Munro, (edited by Jeffrey Eugenides, (pp.184)) to teach us something new.
The exercise was to write a description with the narrator acknowledging his invention. Here’s the example from Sorrentino: ““Against the tabletop her hand, its long and delicate fingers, the perfect moons, Carolina moons of her nails. I’ll give her every marvel: push gently the scent of magnolia and jasmine between her legs and permit her to piss champagne.”
Elizabeth noted: “It’s that ‘I’ll give her,’ where the inventor acknowledges his invention, and yet the details are so concrete and we readers have agreed to believe what we can see, so we both believe it and know that it’s, if not a lie, then fiction.”
I used my protagonist Mrs. Lahiri, from my novel in progress Shadow Gardens. My sentence: “In the beginning she is always on foot, and never straying past the garden or the corner market; I cannot allow her to drive for I cannot trust her to fully stop at the crossroads and take the road less traveled.”
As an author and inventor, see what happens when you acknowledge your invention and still make it convincing. What invention might you acknowledge today?