GALLEY BEGGAR PRESS SHORT STORY PRIZE 2023/24

An interview with GBP Short Story Prize author Mohini Singh

Hi Mohini, and congratulations on being longlisted for GBP Short Story Prize! Your story, ‘Seven, Eight, Nine’, is about the complexities of childhood friendship and also that most (potentially) thorny of things, two happy friends who suddenly become a trio. Can you tell us a bit more about that?

That idea of a trio was what I intended to explore in the story, hence the title. Can a trio ever be perfect, ever equally balanced? All three characters have equal power over each other, they can only exist in that triangle. Despite their intense love, Rajan and Rajani can’t exist without the protagonist as a conduit. While she and Rajan always have the spectre of Rajani suspended between them. But as much as they try to make it work, as a threesome, there’s an imbalance at the heart of it. The childhood friendship, that bond, strong as it was, has been eclipsed by romantic love. And that imbalance doesn’t disappear even after only two of them remain.

Please tell us a bit more about the inspiration for ‘Seven, Eight, Nine’ too, and the writing of it.

The inspiration was very simply the similarity in names. Speaking to my mother one afternoon, she told me about an arranged marriage that fell through because of very similar names. It got me thinking about Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children and if people with similar names also have entangled fates. It was just an idea I jotted down and slowly built on. Initially, I just focused on Rajan and Rajani, but it didn’t go anywhere apart from being mildly interesting. It needed a third character which changed the dynamic of the story. I found it easier to focus on the protagonist and her relationship with Rajan. I hadn’t intended it to be as weird as it turned out. But the deeper I delved into their three-way relationship the more surreal it became, and I found myself really enjoying their craziness.

Every story has its backdrop, of course, and yours takes place in a kind of gated community which you bring to life with some terrific flourishes (the way, for instance, people call each other by their house numbers, not their actual names). How did you manage this – and how important was it for you to get it right?

Before I moved to England, I lived in a gated community for a couple of years. Or a “colony” as the residents like to call it. My mother still lives there. At the time, it hadn’t seemed strange to me that the residents referred to each other by their house numbers. I suppose, it still doesn’t, as I grew up with it. But what I could never get used to was how much everyone knew about everyone else. Marriages, break-ups, deaths, illnesses, job changes. Nothing was private. To some extent, people lived their lives in constant awareness of being observed and judged. I was very keen to show the impact of that on the various relationships, including the one between the mother and the daughter.

‘Seven, Eight, Nine’ feels to me like a very open story: by which I mean, there’s a life for at least two of the main characters beyond the ending. Do you wonder about that too, and do you know what happens to them?

I felt a sense of relief when only two of them remained, a sort of release from the angst. But as I’ve mentioned above, I don’t think they can ever be just two. The only way for them to carry on with their lives would be separately from each other. Rajan to live in his darkness where he’s finally found love, and for the protagonist to finally live away from their shadows. But I wonder if she would always try to emulate the love she found in her childhood?

The ending again – and open-ended again, too, in that I couldn’t actually tell you if this is a tragedy, or a triumphant story (in that someone feels freed). Maybe it’s both. What do you think?!

It is both, isn’t it? You’re right, the protagonist is liberated. Free from the responsibility she felt towards her friends and her love for Rajan. Rajan himself is freed from his pain. But that has come at the cost of the tragedy that befalls Rajani. And I don’t think that the protagonist would ever recover from her “first love”.

OK! On to  your writing more generally. How long have you been writing? Do you have a daily routine? Are you working on something at the moment?

I have been writing in earnest for ten years now. I had trained as a software engineer but took up writing just before the birth of my first son. At the beginning, it was hard to take time out for writing while looking after a young child, which soon turned to two boys. But once they started school, I have had more time to write and I’m really enjoying it. I drop the younger one to school, go for a run, come back and write until pick up time. I do take a lot of tea breaks but mostly to switch gears. I’m working on a novel at the moment. I’ve finished the first draft and now trying to make it more cohesive.

What’s the best writing tip you’ve ever received, and what’s the worst?

I attended a class by Andrew Wille where he talked about “Both Show and Tell” as opposed to “Show, don’t tell”. It was very interesting and I found it very liberating.

I won’t call it the worst tip, but I was once told not to attempt magic realism if I couldn’t pull it off. How can you learn something new or indeed get better if you don’t even give it a try?

Habits, too. What’s a bad writing habit you have – and give us one that’s proved fairly useful, too.

Editing myself while I’m writing. I find it hard to let things be. Sometimes, I can’t move on from a sentence because I keep editing and re-editing it until I’m satisfied. It can be quite damaging as occasionally I just freeze. To resolve this issue (to some extent), I write all my first drafts by hand. With a pen and paper I feel less inclined to go back and change things. And even if I cross something out it’s still there, rather than being completely erased, so I don’t lose all my initial ideas.

Other writers. Can you tell us about some authors you admire, as well as some that you are influenced by?

I love almost everything written by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Margaret Atwood, Jonathan Franzen, Haruki Murakami and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I’m particularly influenced by Murakami and Marquez and their use of magic realism. It’s simply beautiful.

And what are you reading at the moment?

Portrait of a Marriage by Maggie O’ Farrell and the Spring issue of Granta.

And here’s a spot to namecheck any other favourite things: artists, arts, films, cinemas, TV, music… whatever you like.

I watch a lot of films, especially Wes Anderson’s stuff. It’s so whacky. And when I’m feeling lost, unable to come up with ideas, I like to go through Munch’s Frieze of Life paintings. I find them to be so emotionally charged that they never fail to inspire me. 

“The horror of the blank page” is something that has – by pure chance – popped up in our social media timeline two or three times over the past week. So we want end by asking all of our longlisted authors: Do you feel that horror? And how would you advise other writers to get beyond it?

Absolutely. The joy of finishing a piece is always accompanied by the fear of “Would I be able to write anything else?” In my case, I fear the “blank screen” more than a blank page. So I always pick up my favourite pen and notebook and start jotting down my thoughts. Anything that I’ve observed or overheard or read in the news or has been bothering me. Sooner or later (fingers crossed) ideas begin to emerge. It’s important to know that not everything would materialise into a bigger or complete piece. But nothing written is ever wasted, so it’s important sometimes to just write.

READ mohini’S GBP SHORT STORY PRIZE NOMINATED STORY, ‘seven, eight, nine’, HERE.

MOHINI SINGH studied Computer Science at Cambridge and worked as a software engineer for eight years before deciding it was not the career for her. She took evening classes in creative writing at City Lit and completed a diploma in Novel Writing from Birkbeck. Her short story ‘Starlings’ won the highly commended prize in the Bridport Short Story Competition 2023. Her other stories have been published in Long Story, Short, The Wrong Quarterly and The Good Journal. She is currently working on a novel. In her free time she learns Japanese and does voluntary tutoring in English and Maths.