How Sameer Pandya Sits Down & Writes
'Members Only' takes readers through one hellish week of Raj Bhatt's life after the white members of his tennis club accuse him of racism.
Anthropology professor Raj Bhatt wants to fit in. Having moved to the United States from Bombay when he was young, Raj was one of the few Indian kids at this elementary school. Now grown up and living in California with his wife and children, Raj is one of the only non-white members of his posh tennis club. Despite facing casual racism—like being called Kumar by a potential new member—at the club on a regular basis, Raj continually gives his white peers the benefit of the doubt.
When Raj finds out an African American couple is on the club’s list of potential new members he’s set to interview as part of the deciding committee, Raj is thrilled and begins dreaming of a more diverse and inclusive club. In a misguided effort to connect during the interview, however, Raj makes a racist joke at the couple’s expense. The rest of the committee quickly turns on Raj, no matter the years of prejudice he’s put up with at their hands. Meanwhile, Raj finds his job is in jeopardy, as well, after a group of students report him as a reverse racist, due to his alleged “anti-Western bias,” and dox him online.
Members Only is perfect for those interested in engaging in conversations about race, particularly the complicated space between Black and white America.
We got to chat with Sameer about his writing process, finding inspiration in character details, and about how we talk about race.
Q: Where do you like to write the most?
Someone I knew was getting rid of one of those old school partner’s desks. It’s now in my home office and has become my favorite place to write. On one side is my computer, and when I have to edit typed pages, I go on the other side and I’m relatively free of Internet access and other distractions. I’m my own writing partner.
Q: When do you like to write the most?
Bright and very early in the morning. I feel that my mind is the clearest at that time. There’s also something really magical about meeting the first light of day as it’s happening. I like the idea of being the writer who can write deep into the night, but to be honest, the night fundamentally scares me. And so, the morning it is.
Q: When it comes to drafting, do you prefer writing on a computer or freehand?
With my handwriting, I have noticed that it gets messier and more illegible the more I’m uncertain of my ideas. And since drafting is so filled with uncertainty, freehand is a mess of writing I can’t decipher. And so absolutely a computer.
Q: Are you more of a plotter or pantser?
I think I may be a little bit of both. I certainly don’t plot everything out before I sit down to write, but I do have some points on a map in mind. But being a pure pantser is far too unstructured for me. And so, I think I’m a plotter with some minor ambitions of being a pantser.
Q: Stephen King has a great line in On Writing that says “the scariest moment is always right before you start. After that, things can only get better.” That scary pre-start moment often inspires procrastination in writers. Suddenly, you have to clean your entire house, do the laundry and play Candy Crush for an hour before you can actually start writing. Is there anything you need to do before you can actually sit down and work?
I don’t have as much of a problem with the starting. I am so anxious to get down on paper whatever is swirling around in my head and so I usually get to it after making coffee. It’s the stopping that’s my problem. Not that I have endless inspiration or energy to write. Precisely the opposite. I have trouble stopping because I think that if I do, I’ll miss out on something amazing that is just about to enter my brain and come out through my fingertips. And so, on many occasions, I have wasted hours sitting at my desk, already exhausted from the day’s writing, when I should have been doing the laundry or cleaning house.
Q: Do you listen to music while you write? If so, what music? Is your choice of music inspired by the project you’re working on?
I usually don’t listen to music. Even if I know the music quite well, the delightful details of it always distract me from my own words. The one exception is probably the one exception for a lot of people: Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue. I have listened to this album on repeat through the process of writing my dissertation, my first book of stories, now this novel, and every other piece of writing I have worked on. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say I’ve listened to it well over a thousand times. The album soothes and somehow disappears in the background when I need it to, and reappears when I need a melody, a kind of musical bridge from one thought to the next.
Q: Some writers believe you have to write every single day. Is that true of your process? How often do you write/how long for each session?
I’m a big fan of writing every weekday, and first thing in the morning. Two to three concentrated hours, with minimal distraction, will wear me out. And personally, I recommend not writing every single day. If it works for you, fine. But I also like the break up in the routine. Too much of a set routine and then I’m just putting words on the page so I can fulfill the obligations of my routine. However, if the writing is flowing, I’ll certainly make exceptions.
Q: What’s one piece of advice you’d give an aspiring author?
Find a small, solid group of fellow writers that you like spending time with, with whom you can exchange your work. The honest criticism, the comradery, the collective knowledge about the craft and the business of writing will sustain you through difficult times and will be a built-in party to celebrate the successes.
Q: Where do you normally find story inspiration?
People mostly. The way they talk, dress, react, rage, revise. I’ve always found my greatest inspiration in the details of characters. Once I have them in mind, once I can combine various characteristics in the mind and body of an individual character, the action and the plot and the backstory seem to follow.
Q: Members Only follows Raj through just one week of his life. Each chapter encompasses a day of that week. Why did you decide to format your novel this way?
There are plenty of novels that take place over a day and plenty of others that take place over years and decades. In whatever timeline you choose, you want to create a sense of both expanse and intimacy. And by expanse, I mean a sense of the life a character has lived. A week allowed me to create a sense of intimacy and I tried to create the expanse by moving in and out of the present and the past. Ultimately, it was a lot of fun experimenting with a week as a unit of novelistic time.
Q: Though the main events of the novel do only take place over the course of one week, Members Only gives readers a pretty expansive view of Raj's life. What did you hope the extended flashbacks would bring to the main plot/present timeline?
I want to show how much the past shapes the present. But vice versa, I also wanted to think through how the experiences of the present help us rethink and reevaluate the past. And so, the backstory and extended flashbacks are there to give depth to the character. But at the same time, the flashbacks are not simply conveying information. They are being filtered through Raj’s narrative voice, and my hope is that in remembering them, he is also reassessing his memories as those very memories help him assess his particularly bad week.
Q: Raj, while going through possibly the worst week anyone could have, remains witty and sharp. How were you able to balance that with the serious nature of the story?
Raj’s sense of humor and his wit are a part of who he is. They are modes of self-deprecation, they are the means he uses to deflect attention from himself, they are his self-defense. He has spent a lot of time in various social spaces and humor becomes the way to both fit in, but also as a way of managing the tension and awkwardness of his place there. As his week gets worst as the days progress, his wit remains sharp because it’s his last line of defense. It allows him to balance out the seriousness of everything going on around him.
Q: Was Raj's job as an anthropology professor a purposeful choice? What about this particular career felt right for this character and story?
Yes, very much so. Both as an undergrad and then a lot more as a graduate student, I read a lot of cultural and social anthropology. The classics of the tradition, but then also the critiques of it. Levi-Strauss, Mary Douglas are names and ideas that are moving through Raj’s head constantly. Douglas’ ideas around dirt as social matter of place frames the way in which Raj understands ideas of inclusion and exclusion. And the Cliff character is vaguely modeled on an anthropology professor I had in college, but then also the great anthropologist Clifford Geertz. On one level, Raj is writing an ethnography of race and class in liberal spaces as a participant observer. The novel is an ethnography of our current social and cultural moment. At the same time, by using the first-person narrator, Raj is also turning his anthropological acumen on himself. To think about his own past, his blind spots, his strengths and weaknesses, his own racial identity.
Q: Do you feel like Raj's conflict with Robert and the other students protesting his lectures empower Raj to be more outspoken to the microaggressions he's dealt with at the Tennis Club for years?
Race operates in explicit and implicit ways. While Robert and the other students are framing their sense of offense as “reverse racism,” the explicitness here very much shines a light on the implicit forms of racism Raj has experienced. And so yes, it does allow him to be more outspoken. Outspoken, or perhaps honest and upfront for the first time about his own racial identity. He’s also honest and open because he’s having such a bad week. It has stripped him bare. And he’s not going to go down without a fight.
Q: Raj's experiences, both at the Tennis Club and at his teaching job, reflect this critical point in history and hold a mirror up to our society. What do you hope readers will take away from Raj's story?
We are in the midst of having a vital, necessary national conversation about race and racism, specifically in the ways that it has shaped the lives of African Americans in this country. Race has been such a defining feature of American life because it operates in the way that the protests have been pointing out, but also through our multiple racial histories. One of these histories is one my novel tries to narrate—not just Raj’s brownness in a white space, but also his relationship to Blackness that is at the heart of his slip-up. This novel is partly about how we talk about race and the ways in which we don’t and the Band-Aids we sometimes place on much deeper wounds.
Q: Do you think Raj ever goes back to the Tennis Club after that week?
I leave that open on purpose. I don’t know.
Pick up your copy of Members Only now at bookshop.org, Indiebound, or Barnes & Noble.
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