Ruta Sevo's Blog: Roots of My Writing - Posts Tagged "nepal"
The Start of WHITE BIRD
I have a novel nearly finished. It is still in revision, and revision, and revision. There is a famous successful writer known to go through forty revisions. I am on number fifteen. While I wait to decide when to terminate, it might be fun to think back on the 30 books I read for research and share some of that excitement.
Last January I decided I should write a book I would want to read. What would that be? What do I wish I’d done but didn’t do for some reason? I could do it in fiction. This came up: Peace Corps in Nepal in the 1970s, a love affair in the field, a love child, a Tibetan Buddhist nun, and a Tibetan Buddhist shaman. Go!
First I had to find out if the Peace Corps was in Nepal in the 1970s. It turns out it was, according to http://www.peacecorpswiki.org/Nepal which is a place where volunteers put information about their experiences and the history of the PC in particular countries. The security situation reduced the program in 2000 and again in 2002, and then suspended it between 2004 and 2012. Since my story takes place in 1970-72 or so, I was safe. Also, there were women in the field then, so there could be a love affair.
What was like to be a volunteer there and then? A wonderful resource is a one-hour video called Jimi Sir you can watch on YouTube. The subject is the experience of an actual volunteer: see http://www.jimisir.com/ The video was made by a friend of his, Claude von Roesgen, who visited in order to make it. It won awards. “Live alongside Jimi, a Peace Corps volunteer in Melung, a day’s walk south of the trail from Kathmandu to Mt Everest base camp. Delve into the ways of the Tibetan Buddhist people living and farming side by side with the Hindu Sanskrit culture.” The one-page introduction to the video on the website is nice. I was ecstatic to find this, of course.
Why 1970-72? I was in West Bengal, India around that time. I didn’t go into the Peace Corps because I was in graduate school to get a degree in South Asian studies, and part of graduate study was to do field work. (Thank you, National Defense Foreign Language Fellowships at the University of Chicago.) My challenge was to find out if village life in Nepal within a day of Kathmandu was anything like village life within a day of Calcutta. It turns out that Nepal is 80% Hindu and many things are similar, especially among people growing rice for a living. I could describe people, food, shops, streets, festivals and such that I had seen. Additional videos helped me come to this conclusion.
A novel is not a travelogue. In fact, there are writers known for writing about places they’d never seen. A famous one is Karl May (1842-1912) “ranked high as one of the best loved and most widely read German writers. His tales of adventures set in the American West and in the Orient have sold close to 100 million copies in German and dozens of more millions in translations (33 languages).” http://www.karl-may-stiftung.de/museu... He was called an imposter, a liar, and a con man for making up stories about PLACES HE NEVER VISITED. Let’s look at the number again: 100 million copies sold, 33 languages.
Here’s to Karl May: “Inventing a world is the essence of being a writer.” http://www.spiegel.de/international/g...
Last January I decided I should write a book I would want to read. What would that be? What do I wish I’d done but didn’t do for some reason? I could do it in fiction. This came up: Peace Corps in Nepal in the 1970s, a love affair in the field, a love child, a Tibetan Buddhist nun, and a Tibetan Buddhist shaman. Go!
First I had to find out if the Peace Corps was in Nepal in the 1970s. It turns out it was, according to http://www.peacecorpswiki.org/Nepal which is a place where volunteers put information about their experiences and the history of the PC in particular countries. The security situation reduced the program in 2000 and again in 2002, and then suspended it between 2004 and 2012. Since my story takes place in 1970-72 or so, I was safe. Also, there were women in the field then, so there could be a love affair.
What was like to be a volunteer there and then? A wonderful resource is a one-hour video called Jimi Sir you can watch on YouTube. The subject is the experience of an actual volunteer: see http://www.jimisir.com/ The video was made by a friend of his, Claude von Roesgen, who visited in order to make it. It won awards. “Live alongside Jimi, a Peace Corps volunteer in Melung, a day’s walk south of the trail from Kathmandu to Mt Everest base camp. Delve into the ways of the Tibetan Buddhist people living and farming side by side with the Hindu Sanskrit culture.” The one-page introduction to the video on the website is nice. I was ecstatic to find this, of course.
Why 1970-72? I was in West Bengal, India around that time. I didn’t go into the Peace Corps because I was in graduate school to get a degree in South Asian studies, and part of graduate study was to do field work. (Thank you, National Defense Foreign Language Fellowships at the University of Chicago.) My challenge was to find out if village life in Nepal within a day of Kathmandu was anything like village life within a day of Calcutta. It turns out that Nepal is 80% Hindu and many things are similar, especially among people growing rice for a living. I could describe people, food, shops, streets, festivals and such that I had seen. Additional videos helped me come to this conclusion.
A novel is not a travelogue. In fact, there are writers known for writing about places they’d never seen. A famous one is Karl May (1842-1912) “ranked high as one of the best loved and most widely read German writers. His tales of adventures set in the American West and in the Orient have sold close to 100 million copies in German and dozens of more millions in translations (33 languages).” http://www.karl-may-stiftung.de/museu... He was called an imposter, a liar, and a con man for making up stories about PLACES HE NEVER VISITED. Let’s look at the number again: 100 million copies sold, 33 languages.
Here’s to Karl May: “Inventing a world is the essence of being a writer.” http://www.spiegel.de/international/g...
Photos of Sacred Places in Nepal
Click on http://www.erwinvoogt.com/overland/sa... for a great photo of a stupa.
Photos are nice, especially good travel photos, to get the mood of a country. I surfed for pictures of Nepal and religious places. There I found Erwin Voogt’s gallery: http://www.erwinvoogt.com/
He’s Dutch and travels by Land Cruiser to exotic places like Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon, taking professional-quality photos. They are for sale. Each photo has a description and the GPS and Google Earth coordinates, so you can place the photo exactly. The travel notes are fun too.
You can also search Google Images and find a whole gallery of “Buddhist stupa.”
Those pictures can lead to you a blog about India, for example: http://basia.typepad.com/india_ink/ She has a great picture of a stupa: http://basia.typepad.com/india_ink/20... And many travel stories around the pictures.
I would love to include a bunch of photos here, for example my favorites from surfing, but most photos, and the best, require permission.
Photos are nice, especially good travel photos, to get the mood of a country. I surfed for pictures of Nepal and religious places. There I found Erwin Voogt’s gallery: http://www.erwinvoogt.com/
He’s Dutch and travels by Land Cruiser to exotic places like Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon, taking professional-quality photos. They are for sale. Each photo has a description and the GPS and Google Earth coordinates, so you can place the photo exactly. The travel notes are fun too.
You can also search Google Images and find a whole gallery of “Buddhist stupa.”
Those pictures can lead to you a blog about India, for example: http://basia.typepad.com/india_ink/ She has a great picture of a stupa: http://basia.typepad.com/india_ink/20... And many travel stories around the pictures.
I would love to include a bunch of photos here, for example my favorites from surfing, but most photos, and the best, require permission.
A hike to Annapurna Base Camp
A few weeks ago I travelled to Nepal to join a hiking trip to the Annapurna Base Camp. It was quite arduous. However, it gave me a view of the countryside.
I also spent days in Kathmandu taking in sights that I can use in the novel. The city is awesome. It is full of colorful real people, and I will enjoy building up my characters with some of my observations.
Our hotel, Thamel EcoResort was like a "best exotic marigold hotel," full of trekkers, missionaries, teachers, world travelers stopping between Tibet and Bhutan, and so on. I could go back there for more stories!
See my longer story report with many pictures at http://momox.org/nepalruta.pdf
I also spent days in Kathmandu taking in sights that I can use in the novel. The city is awesome. It is full of colorful real people, and I will enjoy building up my characters with some of my observations.
Our hotel, Thamel EcoResort was like a "best exotic marigold hotel," full of trekkers, missionaries, teachers, world travelers stopping between Tibet and Bhutan, and so on. I could go back there for more stories!
See my longer story report with many pictures at http://momox.org/nepalruta.pdf
White Bird is finished!
Paperback, Kindle and ePUB versions available.
The ePUB is only on lulu.com now but it will appear on iBookstore and other places soon.)
I spent years in Calcutta and Madras (now Chennai) as a scholar, doing field work for a Ph.D. However, in the 1970s, a degree in Indian studies did not lead to a job. WHITE BIRD came of wishing I’d had time to go to Nepal and into the Peace Corps.
Reading about thirty books satisfied my long-latent interest in Nepal and Tibetan Buddhism. A fierce trek up the Annapurna Valley topped it off.
The novel is in the tradition of writers bringing the East to the West, like E.M. Forster and the Victorians Alexandra David-Neel and Madam Blavatsky. White Bird draws on Tibetan Buddhism which spread out of Tibet by Chinese force after 1959. Half a century later, Buddhism is well known in America.
If you like reading about a character's discovery of Buddhism, shamans, séances, and sex, it's for you.
The ePUB is only on lulu.com now but it will appear on iBookstore and other places soon.)
I spent years in Calcutta and Madras (now Chennai) as a scholar, doing field work for a Ph.D. However, in the 1970s, a degree in Indian studies did not lead to a job. WHITE BIRD came of wishing I’d had time to go to Nepal and into the Peace Corps.
Reading about thirty books satisfied my long-latent interest in Nepal and Tibetan Buddhism. A fierce trek up the Annapurna Valley topped it off.
The novel is in the tradition of writers bringing the East to the West, like E.M. Forster and the Victorians Alexandra David-Neel and Madam Blavatsky. White Bird draws on Tibetan Buddhism which spread out of Tibet by Chinese force after 1959. Half a century later, Buddhism is well known in America.
If you like reading about a character's discovery of Buddhism, shamans, séances, and sex, it's for you.
Roots of My Writing
About my fiction: WHITE BIRD, VILNIUS DIARY, and MY BOAT IS SO SMALL (pending)
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