Hey everyone,
I almost feel embarrassed telling this story but hey, if you can’t embarrass yourself in public, what is even the point of being a writer?
So, quick background: This year I changed my name. It was a name I chose when I was 14. Last year I wrote a novel.
Now, see, I didn’t really intend to change my name. I’d discussed it with several professional friends as well as my agent years ago and they’d all said that my old name (Mridu) was my brand, it was unique, and my publishing history was so wide and varied that it could only help me with future book deals and opportunities. I mean, I had a twenty-year career. A successful career. Why mess with that? So I decided I wasn’t going to change my name (even though I hated it).
Then I wrote a book, my second novel. It’s a fictionalized version of my own life. In it, the protagonist, a female Indian journalist working in New Delhi, is raped by a psychotic white male bureau chief of a major newspaper and the expat community rallies around him and refuses to believe her. He is discredited eventually, but only after a white woman speaks out against him. In the meantime, the Indian journalist’s career and reputation is irreparably ruined. I was never going to have the name, so I gave it to her. I called her Natasha. Tasha. Tash.
She’s me, just better. So much more kickass, so much more self-assured, a much better reporter, too. Basically, an idealized version of me. (Professionally speaking. Personally, she’s a hot mess.)
The day my agent called to tell me that she loved the book, I felt something loosen inside me. We prepared the submission under my old name and were ready to go to publishers on a Friday. On Thursday, my agent was taken to hospital because she needed some pretty serious surgery and my book submission was put on hold. As she recovered, I felt that old familiar feeling and I emailed her yet again to see what she thought of me changing my name. I made a case for it. Big, lengthy, goes-on-and-on-and-on kind of email. She wrote back saying, “I can’t see why not.”
BECAUSE YOU SAID SO, I wanted to scream.
Of course, my agent (who is absolutely brilliant) is too kind to say to my face that I hadn’t published anything of value in the last five years to have my name make any difference anymore, but I had her blessing and that’s all that mattered.
I changed my name.
So now we have a manuscript with Natasha as the author and Natasha as the protagonist. And this won’t make people think I’m a narcissistic twat AT ALL. Because, oh, isn’t it perfectly normal and natural to write an exaggerated version of your life and then name the main character AFTER YOURSELF?!
I could change her name, but I don’t want to. I’ve already changed mine. So.
The most fun part, the one that makes me look like a complete egotistical maniac? Because this character is a kickass journalist, when I’m facing any kind of challenge as a journalist, I’ve taken to saying, “What would Tasha do?” or “Be more Tash.”
I mean the character of course, but I have to be careful not to say it out loud so that I don’t have to explain to people why I’m not really the prick they think I am.
It’s all fun and games inside my head. 😉
As my husband says, there’s nothing I can’t take and turn into a complicated mess. Including, as it turns out, my own name.
Cheers,
Natasha