Pink Think: “People really want to think that these things really happened. I don’t know why that’s important, but I know that when I finish reading a novel or something, I want to know how much of that really happened to this author.” – Alison Bechdel
I finished the revision of my historical novel Blemish at 2 a.m. this morning. 75,936 words, 271 pages in double-spaced 11 point Times Roman.
I am absolutely happy in a wiped out sort of way.
When I finished it, I moved the laptop I’ve been revising with the last few weeks from our kitchen counter, back to my writing corner in my bedroom. For the next few days at least, my kids won’t have to ask me to move my laptop so they wouldn’t splash it washing dishes.
Up next: a guilt-free nap. Maybe a Paris sable from the new local pastry shop.
What might actually happen: grocery-shopping. Because I can no longer improvise with “what’s in the pantry”.
***
I don’t know about you, but after reading a novel, especially a historical novel, I am always excited to find an “Author’s Note”. I love seeing what inspired the author to write the novel and to see how much of the novel was based on actual historical events.
Blemish is a historical novel set in the Philippines about a 17-year-old socialite whose life is turned upside down when she is diagnosed with leprosy and banished to a leper colony.
This is my Author’s Note:
The setting of BLEMISH – Kolong – is a fictional island I based on Culion, a former leper colony in the Philippines from the early 1900s to the 1950s.
Just after the turn of the century, the Philippine government decided to stem the growing number of leprosy cases in the country through forcible quarantine. To this end, they asked residents of the sparsely populated island of Culion – including the Sandovals (a branch of my paternal grandmother’s family)- to move out, so they could establish a colony there. Today, this island in the southern region of Palawan is a world renowned research and treatment facility for leprosy, or Hansen’s disease, and is striving to move away from the stigma of its past.
Due to the family connection, I put Culion on my list of places to visit and finally had the opportunity to do so in 2007. The museum was closed that day, but Dr. Arturo Cunanan, head of Culion Leprosy Control, graciously opened up the building. My group and I wandered its halls and slipped back into time.
One of the displays moved me deeply – that of a nursery with a glass window. Through that window, mothers could glimpse their children playing or sleeping, but never hold them in the hopes the disease will bypass their children. Somehow, that image clung to me and never let go, planting the seed for this novel.
Although this novel is a work of fiction, some of its details are based on actual historical events. For example, in the early years of the leper colony, marriage was banned among patients, and a group of young men rebelled, taking their sweethearts into the mountains. Also, a fishing cooperative became successful, necessitating the production of ice and making Culion one of the first islands in the region to generate its own source of electricity.
Kolong exists largely in my imagination, but the juxtaposition of emotions – of despair and hope, of suffering and triumph, of need and compassion, of isolation and love – was real.
***
I usually dread revisions because I get muddled real quick and then I just have a mess in my hands. But this time, I enjoyed deepening the characters, adding foreshadowing, fleshing out scenes, showing not just telling. My initial 65,000 word draft grew and the end became a running joke between my husband and me, because one day I would be 20 pages away from being done, and the next, 30, back and forth. But finally, FINALLY, I got to THE END. Next up: it’ll make its rounds with my awesome beta readers.
See you at the pastry shop! And then the grocery store…
Follow