ieva melgalve

The job I’m doing right now with Virgin is clearly experimental, switching between different perceptions of time, focusing on nuances instead of the obvious, and going slow, having no major stuff happening (yet). This is probably what could be named “literary fiction” if I wrote better, or “high literature” in Latvian (actually, Latvians have trouble even accepting commercial literature as “literature”).
This is enormously delightful. This is also scary for me personally, and not just because the market for mediocre literary fiction is incredibly small.
This goes back to my personal history. Namely, I used to write literary fiction a lot. I was told to; all other kinds of literature was called trash. Besides, there was that myth going on that it’s impossible for somebody from a small country with a tiny language to write commercial fiction. And writing literary fiction was fun and it got me recognition that I thought I enjoyed. I published a book where every story proved a point: there was a story where no two sentences were interlinked in any way (not even sharing a protagonist…not that it had any protagonist), a story with no emotions named, a story where the protagonist is a time-traveling, reincarnating ghost, a story that was repeated many times, decomposing in the process, and a couple of surreal stage plays.
Then, at some point, I realized that there are–cannot be–any rules for experimental writing. If I write to prove a literary point, it will not work for most of the people. And I stopped writing because I lacked that point of evaluation. I stopped writing because I wasn’t thinking “outside the box” since I didn’t have a box at all.
After a few years, I started researching, studying and writing genre fiction because it had a box. I learned what “scene” meant and that my protagonist had to have some sort of personality and needs, and obstacles. I chose to write in English primarily because I didn’t know the language well enough to pull fancy literary stunts. I learned a lot, and I still have lots and lots to learn. I survived the shock of the discovery that instead of requesting stories, editors were actually rejecting them.
Right now, I’m trying to combine both features: the box and the outside of the box. I have scenes and protagonists and antagonists, needs and complications. I am re-evaluating the rules I learned and bending them when I think it could make sense.
Am I ready to do that?
I don’t know.
But this is exhilarating, and it’s scary and it’s what I’m doing right now.
My only consolation: that in any case, I’ll learn a lot in the process.