The Belly Of The Rock: Notes On A Story

#ShortStory #SpeculativeFiction #Inspiration

The issue cover!

Is life worth living?

Is it worth staying on this side for the people you love?

BIG EXISTENTIAL QUESTION, I know.

But stay with me (ha-ha).

When I write, whether it's short stories, essays - even blog post, really - I have discovered a useful aid that guides me as I create.

It is called the central question.

OR, the question at the heart of the story.

And those first lines above, the questions you see at the start of this blog post, they are the central question of my short story titled The Belly of The Rock.

The story got published in a dream mag. Shout-out to Augur Magazine’s editorial team for giving this piece a platform, and for the careful hands they held my work with during the editorial process.

SO, this story was fun to write in the world-building aspects.

But emotionally? Wow, it required A LOT from me.

It was an uncomfortable question to ask myself, and I can imagine Nigerian readers of this blog post feeling that jump scare once they read it. We don’t feel comfortable talking too openly about these kinds of things, it is taboo almost; why are you questioning the order of things? Can’t you just be grateful for life?

(I know some will also be very happy that I broach this subject in a context that is very familiar and real to who we are.)

Anyway, I wrote this story in the middle of Housejob. Back then, I wasn’t asking if it was okay to stay alive – my experience wasn’t that bad – I think I was asking myself - on a subconscious level - if it was worth it to keep striving at all. For anything. With the way that the world can break your heart at any time.

Remember that BIG THING I spoke (over) a year ago? This piece was partly about me reckoning with it.

So, I wrote this story as a salve to my wounding heart then, and I am so happy I get to share it with you now.

Even more, that I get to share the behind the scenes of the story!

Let’s get into it.

EXAMINING THE HURT.

(Yes, we are truly going in deep today)

To start with, this piece is has been described as melancholy.

One of the mags I submitted this story to (and who rejected it after some weeks), gave me that feedback that they enjoyed the story’s melancholy feel.

That is not exactly what I was going for. Of course, one of the themes this story converges on is grief.

Still, what I found more important in the story is how the characters navigated that feeling.

Without giving too much away, this story is about a pretty complex mother-daughter relationship.

I find the relationship between mothers and daughters to be so interesting.

The excerpts I have read from Arundhati Roy’s new memoir, Mother Mary Comes to Me have been exceptional. I cannot quite relate with the harrowing experiences she had as a child, but I feel like some of the things she describes relate well with the emotions my characters have in this story.

The relationship between child and mother.

And the complexity of it.

For Morenikeji (the daughter in the story) she feels at odds with the, should I say ‘separateness’, that exists between her and her mother. She finds her mother impossible to be fully known. Maybe even more, she worries that there is a part of her mother she will never have access to. This woman with a juggernaut of a scientific career – who was actually a good mother to her as a child – but there was always something that felt... off.

That disconnect is the heart of the story.

Or maybe, the heart of the story is how they choose to navigate that disconnect. How Morenikeji wants to go to the ends of the earth (and beyond to fix the crack between them)

I love that while the chance to just sweeping things under the rug exists, both women decide to face their emotions head on.

Well, at least one of them does.

WHAT ARE WE PREPARED TO DO FOR THE PEOPLE WE LOVE?

I want to share with you some lines I loved in the story.

There is no beauty, no emptiness that can compare to her.

And

“Mummy, can you not see? You are the only thing I love in the universe”

These lines might look simple, but I find that they describe a heartbreaking devotion that Morenikeji discovers almost too late.

This story asks that question; how far can we go to help the people we love.

For Morenikeji, it is as far as it takes.

And her admission in those lines quite possibly made me cry (it might also have been the stress of housejob though.)

I think that there are moments where we find it hard to understand why our loved ones make certain choices.

And we don’t know if we can save them, or if we can even convince them that they need saving.

Or if we can convince them to even let us inside in the first place. Bear some of their burdens with them.

When faced with this, what do we do?

Morenikeji’s mother deals with a dizzying loneliness that that convinces her to stop fighting for the life she has, and Morenikeji is simply not going to have that.

What happens next?

Read the story and tell me (ha-ha)

But really, there is something quite noble about how sacrificial love can be. How it will chase you to infinity, just to make sure you are okay. To convince you that you are worth fighting for.

I find that to be incredibly beautiful.

WHAT WAS I PREPARED TO DO FOR THIS STORY?

I was prepared to believe in it.

That it was worth writing, even when doing so required a lot from me.

Writing is hard. And it gets harder when you are trying to do so while holding down a day job that demands EVERYTHING from you.

Writing stories can feel like fighting back against the tide of work that wants to consume all of you.

I am so glad I have this story as a keepsake from that time. It feels like I won against something that is very hard to beat.

In addition to writing it in the midst of all of that, I was willing to believe this story would find a worthy place to be published.

It was rejected MANY times.

When it got accepted, I opened the email expecting another rejection and it took a moment to compute that it wasn’t.

I might have been jaded in that moment, but guess what? I was also the one that sent it out in the first place, believing it had I chance at all.

I was and am very proud of this piece, and I knew it was one of my works that I would definitely fight hard for.

Regardless of how many initial No’s it got.

But, even without an audience, I think this story is a wonder by just existing.

It was cathartic to write it. It healed something in me, and I think that is the real triumph of creative writing. That we get to say exactly what we need to say, and that doing so sets you free in a way that feels incredible. It makes you feel lighter.

You have taken off the weight and power of unspoken words.

You are free.

I remember working on the world-building of this story (it is pretty minimal, I don’t like world-building heavy stories too much), and how listening to Sola Allyson’s Eji Owuro. (Who else remembers that song?)

It really helped me stitch together the feeling that I was going for; which is a very transcendent kind of love.

Not melancholy.

But a love that can cut through even the deepest pain.

Also that song is such a touchstone of my childhood. It makes me think about how pure and powerful I believed love was when I was a child. I wanted that feeling to shine through in Morenikeji’s perspective as well.

If there is one thing I hope I achieved with this story; it is showing a pretty fierce affection that dismantles everything in its path.

That is what I was prepared to do for this story.

Then, I added some other cool world-building things that I do not want to give away.

I hate spoilers, so I’ll give you the chance to read it yourself.

(But it features the history of the Egba people who took shelter in Olumo rock during the Egba wars.)

Okay, I’m not saying anything more, I promise.

Also!

I have been slowly reading through the other stories featured in the issue my work appears in.

I think Dark night suffused with stars is so tender and specific and a great read. You should definitely check it out. It is about the loss of language, and it features the desperate weight placed on academic excellence – but it is done in such a unique way that the weight of it is feels poetically cosmic.

Okay, let me not give too much of that away either.

Writing the behind the scenes of my works gives me a fresher appreciation of what I was trying to do when I wrote them. And I hope they give that to you too.

Nobody loves a ‘how to video’ more than Busayo.

But I don’t make videos, so this is what I have to offer you; my words.

Well, that's our post, folks.

I leave you with the promotional image of Augur Magazine’s issue 8.1.

Asked all my friends which one they think describes my story. Can you guess?

Take care.