I’m supposed to be working on my vignette collection, yet there was something about this piece that just flew out from my fingers onto the keyboard. As it was, I couldn’t ignore.
I think one of the underlying themes of this vignette is the lengths at which we’ll go to self-punish ourselves. I didn’t really expect for the knives to be a motif of that theme and I feel like I stumbled onto some bit of technique, by writing the end line.
“We both fall to our respective tasks, but for me, the knife is a heavy blade in my own hand.”
To me, that’s very emblematic of the theme, an extension of it. How the power is in the narrator’s hand, yet she chooses to wield it against herself inevitably.
I do mean it when I say I stumbled onto the theme or a technique to kind of tie it all together. Most of the times, I just write what needs to be said and somehow, a theme somewhat surfaces, though unrefined. At that point, I try make small adjustments to what I’ve already written (in this piece, it was also adding the line ‘it’s a knife to the heart’) and just hope that my readers will get what I’m trying to do. Even if they don’t, that’s okay. I’m of the belief that even if my readers don’t specifically know what techniques I’m using, or themes I’m trying to input, my story should regardless be enjoyable. I’m also of the belief that if you’re using the techniques right, then your story can be enjoyed at all entertainment levels, analytically or recreationally.
Though I wasn’t thinking of theme when I first wrote this. I was hardly thinking at all. It was one of those rare moments, where the story flows from you and at the end of it, you’re like ‘The fuck? I did that? How?’ Some of the spare thoughts that did come to mind was just the pain that comes when finding a place you once loved has slightly changed. If anything is true in that piece for me, it’s that I’m pretty sensitive to place. I attribute it to spending my college years abroad, and constantly having to adjust myself to new environments and my role within them.
I do feel that place shows up quite frequently in my work. Partially because posting my vignettes online means that I have to efficiently absorb my readers into the story of each one; and setting is a productive way of doing that. But also partially, because I get really attached to places and in my own life, each one seems to have a metaphorical meaning to me.