Writing a mermaid’s tale with a twist…she’s brown-skinned and walks on land
What if it was the other way around — a human undergoes a mysterious transformation that allows her to roam the seas like a fish. How would this story look like? This was the question I attempted to answer when I wrote The Aqua Human.
The story had to be as gritty as the sand under my feet. No magic, no deities, no sailors enticed by a lovely singing siren. There would be sacrifice and loss that only came from true love. I wanted to include a pervasive sense of danger with moments of freedom. There would be a physiological transformation, anchored in a little bit of science. The sidekicks were marine mammals. The ocean was a new world to discover. And my superhuman protagonist…a teenager.
Choosing the time period was a little tricky. Definitely, it had to be pre-digital technology. But which era in the past? I wanted a period in history that was dark and dangerous, and also when people still believed in folklore. I considered this a lot. I didn’t want to write about an environment I had only read about. I ended up using World War II in the Philippine islands as my setting. It was my birth country. I grew up listening to my dad, aunts and uncles share their childhood stories about the war.
I thought that writing about the struggles and adventures of a mostly solo character would be easier. Quite the opposite, I found. I created a timeline of what happened to her life in nine days. Then I expanded and wrote the scene-by-scene content from the outline. Came to realize when I was writing each scene, that I had to break long paragraphs describing what she was doing or thinking because the dialogue was non-existent. With whom would my protagonist speak? She was on her own. My solution was to treat a part of her mind as an almost separate character.
I had to recall how to crack open a coconut with a cleaver. I used to be able to do that when I was young. I read about the Bajau people of Southeast Asia, the predominantly female Ama of Japan, and the Moken in Thailand; groups of people who were natural free divers. I checked the oldest living human from the Guinness Book of World Records. It was a woman who lived to be one hundred and twenty-two years old. I read about the intelligence of marine mammals and selected which species would best interact with my heroine. I suppose I devoted as much time to research as to writing.
I learned that perhaps I’m better at rewriting than writing. I wrote this story only on weekends. And nearly without fail, it was a slow restart. I would stare at an empty Microsoft Word page after looking at the outline, and prayed to my muse to drop the first line. “What happens next?” I always muttered to myself. But it was a step in my small stairway of achievement whenever I marked each bullet point on the outline as “Completed”. Finally, after declining several Sunday coffee and brunch invitations last year to rewrite and rewrite some more after editor’s notes, Amaya’s tale was ready.
I’ve resolved to continue writing on weekends. I’ve kept a small notebook in my purse so I can jot down ideas as they come. This experience was far different from my day job. But one that I, for the pure pleasure, would keep.
