Time and the Digital Now
I returned late Saturday night from an overnight trip to Nashville (though my bag took a detour on Delta and stayed gone the entire weekend). Why Nashville? My agent, Chip MacGregor, gathers all his authors annually and provides us with an industry update. He also offers info about how to market our books. We authors cover our travel and lodging expenses, and he covers the conference room and the content. Last year, Chicago; this year, Nashville. It’s always a great time to network with his other authors. And Chip could be a stand-up comic, so the time passes quickly.
Before the Saturday conference, I spent Friday night with a husband-wife team with whom I have long shared the infertility journey. They picked me up from my hotel, and for the first time I was able to meet their four-year-old twins conceived via IVF. Yay! What a joy to see their happy ending(s). The couple are also both my former writing students—one is a photographer, and both had terrific non-fiction book ideas. So the twins went to dinner with their grandmother, and the grown-ups cooked for me while we talked about life and art and writing and next steps for them. The time flew. And our fellowship reminded me why I do what I do.
Speaking of time (too little of it!), another highlight of my weekend was a delightful conversation with Abha Dawesar, whom I met for the first time. She did the TED Talk featured below, "Life in the Digital Now," which has garnered nearly a million hits.
According to the TED Talk description, Ms. Dawesar began her writing career as an attempt to understand herself—at age 7. (Just like me.) Understanding herself is a goal that remains at the center of her work. Sensorium, her most recent novel, explores the nature of time, self, and uncertainty, using Hindu mythology and modern science as prisms.
“At a very basic level, writing was always my way of apprehending the world,” she has said.She told me she moved from India to the United States to study at Harvard, and apparently Delhi appears at the center of her novels Family Values and Babyji. But the oversimplified genres of immigrant fiction or ethnic fiction do not appeal to her. “Those looking for a constant South Asian theme or Diaspora theme or immigrant theme will just be disappointed in the long run from my work,” she has said. “The only label I can put up with is that of a writer. And my ideas come from everywhere.”
In the days to come, you will probably hear from me about book marketing. But today I give you Abha Dawesar and something more foundational to living well. If you're anything like me, you will fall in love with her grandparents.