Behind the Story: Naming Maya

 
Where do ideas for books come from?  The idea for this one came from an editor who was reading my work back in 1997.  None of the pieces I was sending her at the time her seemed to work.  She said,  "I would be interested in something with a deeper, richer emotional grounding.  For instance, what if you took an immigrant family going back to India, and something happened there that changed the young protagonist's life irrevocably?" Well, that editor moved on to other work soon after, but I'll always be grateful for her interest. The idea she planted took root, and grew into Maya's story. . 
 
 
The events of September 11 took place while I was in India, working on the final manuscript for this book.  September 12 was my parents' 50th wedding anniversary, and we had arranged to visit a national forest and spend part of the day on the back of an elephant, looking at teak trees and peacocks and herds of bison.  We did visit Mudumalai National Forest, and I wrote.  In the middle of all the rumors and those dreadful images of falling towers,  it was the only thing I could do.  I e-mailed what I wrote back to my local paper, The Daily Times, in Farmington, New Mexico.  It was published before my return in October 2001.  The world may be a place filled with hate on all sides, but it's also a smaller place than it's ever been before.
Writing the first draft of Naming Maya, I felt as if I was in the grip of the character.  The first few chapters wrote themselves--and then came to a grinding halt. Between 1997 and 2001, I wrote and rewrote a dozen or more versions. Then I thought I was done.  By the time I'd submitted it and it was accepted I truly thought I was done.  Boy, did I have a revision lesson in store for me!

About halfway through revising the manuscript, I got to visit my parents in India.  I spent some time in Chennai, where the book is set--my mother couldn't figure out why I wanted to spend time hanging out at bus stops and in hospital courtyards, but she indulged me.  I even got scolded by a policeman, just like Maya. See the pictures from that trip.  

Some people have asked me if the woman on the escalator was real.  Back in 1996, on another trip to India, I did see a woman get her sari caught in an escalator at the airport.  It was so dramatic and scary that the scene stuck in my memory.  I'd been about to step on that escalator myself when it began eating her sari up!  When the universe hands you scenes like this, you have to put them into stories.
When I was halfway through revisions on Naming Maya, I also began playing with making hand made books. I decided that every time I was able to bring a story to completion and get it published, I would also create a hand made book to capture some part of the writing process for that story.  It seemed a natural thing to make a small book with loose-leaf pages for this project.  It's not quite an accordian-folded book like the "two-gift" that Mami gives to Maya, but it's about the same size.  It ended up being part of an exhibition, Women and Their Books, at San Juan College, Farmington, New Mexico.

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