Late bloom
The tale behind the story #1
With this post I start a new series about my novel Returning East. It is a celebration, and at the same also a way to motivate myself to keep writing. And hopefully inspire also others, by showing what’s behind the creation of a whole book. Here on Substack there are plenty of authors who had a similar journey, but here is about my experience, as a part-time writer with an office job, with no background in writing or prior knowledge of the business and writing in a foreign language too!
I listened to many podcasts, where countless authors told the podcast host how they had the urge to write since they were kids, and how they were actually already writing stories with 5 or 6 years old. Well, that’s not me. I loved playing with Barbies and Lego at that age. Nor did the urge come in my teens. I am a late bloom…
Unsatisfied by my office job, I often looked for interesting things to do. I happened to find affordable classes in creative writing after work and I attended for a few months. I enjoyed the experience and the feedback from the teacher was positive. I started having some fragments of stories and one day I decided I wanted to challenge myself and write a longer form: a novel.
I set a schedule, but I had no plot and no particular idea about a possible story. I spent some time researching the internet, I don’t even know what I was looking for and I still ask myself how I got the old advertising of a shipping company. But this is where it all started.
My interest was probably picked by the image of the stylized Asian girl. Having spent some years living in China, I have an emotional connection to China and East Asia in general.
I started researching the shipping company, and I found a wonderful website with a large amount of information and pictures (www.messageries-maritimes.org).
Reading about the history of the shipping company plunged me in another era, where men and women travelled by boat to reach distant places. While going through the intercontinental lines the company had, I saw that there was also one arriving in Shanghai via Hong Kong chartered by the ship “Cambodia”. That was the detail which led to specific choices: my protagonist was French, the journey would take place a few years after the ship started its service and would end in China. These few facts were like an anchor: my mind was more settled and I could let my creativity kick in.