From dream to reality

WRITING a novel was not in Clarissa Goenawan's plans.
The Indonesian-born Singaporean writer was content with writing short stories for literary magazines – for which she won several awards – as well as anthologies such as The MacGuffin, Your Impossible Voice, and Monsoon Book.
But one story idea took on a life of its own, and the result is her debut novel Rainbirds, which won the 2015 Bath Novel Award for unpublished and self-published novelists.
The story, set in an fictional town outside of Tokyo called Akakawa, begins with recent Keio University graduate Ren Ishida who receives news that his sister Keiko was stabbed to death one rainy night on her way home.
Ren heads to Akakawa to settle his sister's affairs, and to find out what she was doing there.
It is during this time, and through the people he meets, that Ren begins to piece together Keiko's life and what eventually led to her death.
Speaking about her inspiration for Rainbirds, Clarissa (right) said it started with a question: "What if one day someone whom I thought I knew was not the person he or she is, and by the time I knew that, that person was already dead?"
Clarissa added that she just could not shake the idea out of her mind.
"At that time, I was writing a short story and I thought it would make a good short story. But I kept adding more, and then I thought maybe it was time I started writing my first novel."
She decided to write the novel in November 2013 during the Worldwide initiative NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) – where people were encouraged to write a 50,000-word novel.
She then had to find an agent, a publisher, and go through another editorial process.
Essentially, it took the book about five years, from its first draft to the time it hit the stores.
"I am not a person who plots a story. I just write and write. Usually the story writes itself. It is only once I see the whole picture, only then can I edit it."
Rainbirds is set to be the first of a five-book series, with each book focusing on a different character from the main story.
As to why she picked Japan as the setting for her novel, Clarissa, who moved from her native Surabaya in Indonesia to Singapore at age 16, said: "When I was living in Surabaya, I used to love Japanese culture, manga, anime, these kind of things.
"I learned the Japanese language and I was in the Japanese club.
"When I came to Singapore, I continued with my Japanese classes ... ultimately, it is because I like their culture.
"It is like if you like collecting butterflies, you will write about butterflies."
The novel begins with Ren having a dream about his sister waking up in a black sedan.
"I never went for a creative writing course and so I did not know that you are not supposed to start a novel with a dream," Clarissa said.
"Even after I heard of this rule, I did not think there was anything wrong with breaking it."
In Rainbirds, through a series of flashbacks, we learn about Ren and Keiko growing up in a troubled household with only each other to lean on.
"They needed each other for emotional support even when he did not want to admit it.
"He idolised her and created this perfect image of her even though it wasn't true."
Keiko was a complex character. Clarissa said that even in her first draft, she started questioning Keiko's motivations, and especially why she fell in love with the wrong men.
"It took me a while to get to know her and her reasoning. She actually kept getting more complicated as I wrote the book."
Clarissa even wrote another novella to explore Keiko's relationship.
"It is a bit extreme, but it is only then that I got to understand her better," she said.
"It started out with a murder, and it was a mystery. Romance and love [were] strong elements, but this was not a romance story.
"I felt it was more a coming-of-age book, with [Ren] discovering himself and how he grows up as a result."
In the end, Clarissa finds she has written "a coming-of-age story masquerading as a murder mystery".