This makes me beam. I want my editor to like me. I want her to think I’m easy to work with, that I’m not a stubborn diva, that I’m capable of making any changes she asks for. It’ll make her more likely to sign me on for future projects.
It’s not all about pandering to authority. I do think we’ve made the book better, more accessible, more streamlined. The original draft made you feel dumb, alienated at times, and frustrated with the self-righteousness of it all. It stank of all the most annoying things about Athena. The new version is a universally relatable story, a story that anyone can see themselves in.
The whole process takes three editorial rounds over four months. By the end, I’ve become so familiar with the project that I can’t tell where Athena ends and I begin, or which words belong to whom. I’ve done the research. I’ve read a dozen books now on Asian racial politics and the history of Chinese labor at the front. I’ve lingered over every word, every sentence, and every paragraph so many times that I nearly know them by heart—hell, I’ve probably been over this novel more times than Athena herself.
What this whole experience teaches me is that I can write. Some of Daniella’s favorite passages are the ones original to me. There’s one part, for instance, where a poor French family wrongly accuses a group of Chinese laborers of stealing a hundred francs from their house. The laborers, determined to make a good impression of their race and nation, collect two hundred francs among them and gift it to the family even though it’s clear they are innocent. Athena’s draft only made a brief mention of the wrongful accusation, but my version turns it into a heartwarming illustration of Chinese virtue and honesty.
All of my confidence and verve, dashed after my horrific debut experience, come rushing back. I’m brilliant with words. I’ve studied writing for nearly a decade now; I know what makes a direct, punchy sentence, and I know how to structure a story so that the reader stays riveted all the way through. I’ve labored for years to learn my craft. Perhaps the core idea of this novel wasn’t mine, but I’m the one who rescued it, who freed the diamond from the rough.
But the thing is, no one will ever understand how much I put into this novel. If news ever breaks that Athena wrote the first draft, the whole world will look at all the work I did, all those beautiful sentences I produced, and all they’ll ever see is Athena Liu.
But no one ever has to know, do they?
THE BEST WAY TO HIDE A LIE IS IN PLAIN SIGHT.
I lay the groundwork long before the novel is out, before early versions of it are off to reviewers and book bloggers. I’ve never made a secret of my relationship to Athena, and I’m even less subtle about it now. I am, after all, currently best known as the person who was at her side when she died.
So I play up our connection. I mention her name in every interview. My grief over her death becomes a cornerstone of my origin story. All right, maybe I exaggerate the details a bit. Quarterly drinks become monthly, sometimes weekly drinks. I only have two selfies of us saved on my phone, which I never meant to share because I hate how frumpy I look beside her, but I upload them on my Instagram under a black-and-white filter and pen a touching tribute poem to accompany it. I’ve read all her work, and she mine. Often we traded ideas. I saw her as my greatest inspiration, and her feedback on my drafts was foundational to my growth as a writer. This is what I tell the public.
See, the closer we seem, the less mysterious that resemblances to her work will appear. Athena’s fingerprints are all over this project. I don’t wipe them off. I just provide an alternative explanation for why they’re there.
“I was in a really difficult place with my writing after my debut flopped,” I tell Book Riot. “I didn’t know if I even wanted to keep going. Athena’s the one who convinced me to give the manuscript another try. And she helped me with all my research—she navigated the Chinese primary sources, and she helped me hunt down texts at the Library of Congress.”
It’s not lying. I swear, it was never as psychopathic as it sounds. It’s all just stretching reality a bit, putting the right spin on the picture so that the lurking social media outrage mob doesn’t get the wrong idea. Besides, the train has left the station—coming clean at this point would tank the book, and I couldn’t do that to Athena’s legacy.
No one is suspicious. Athena’s aloofness helps me out here. She did have other friends, according to all the Twitter eulogies I read after her funeral, but they’re all spread out across different states and continents. There’s no one else she was regularly hanging out with in DC. There’s no one who can contradict my account of our relationship. The whole world seems ready to believe that I was Athena Liu’s closest friend. And who knows? Maybe I was.
And yes—this is incredibly cynical, but the fact of our friendship casts an awful light on any future detractors. If anyone criticizes me for imitating her work, they’re coming after a friend who’s still in mourning, which makes them a monster.
Athena, the dead muse. And I, the grieving friend, haunted by her spirit, unable to write without invoking her voice.
See, who ever said I wasn’t a good storyteller?
I set up a scholarship in Athena’s name at the Asian American Writers’ Collective’s annual workshop, where Athena had spent one summer as a student and three as a guest instructor. The director, Peggy Chan, had sounded confused and suspicious when I called about Athena, but changed her tone quickly enough when she realized that I was offering money. Since then she’s been retweeting all of my book news, spamming my Twitter feed with messages like CONGRATULATIONS! and CAN’T WAIT TO READ THIS!!! #GoJune!
Her enthusiasm makes me a bit uncomfortable, especially since the rest of her feed is exclusively stuff about racism in publishing and the industry’s shoddy treatment of marginalized writers. But, if she’s going to use me, then I’m going to use her right back.
MEANWHILE, I DO MY DUE DILIGENCE.
I research. I read every single one of the sources that Athena cited in her draft, until I’m as much an expert on the Chinese Labour Corps as anyone can be. I even try to teach myself Mandarin, but no matter how hard I try, all the characters look as unrecognizable as chicken scratch, and the different tones feel like an elaborate practical joke, so I give up. (It’s all right, though: I find an old interview where Athena admitted that she didn’t even speak Mandarin fluently herself, and if Athena Liu couldn’t read primary sources, well, then why should I?)
I set up Google Alerts for my name, Athena’s name, and both of our names in conjunction. Most of my search results are publishing press releases that say nothing new—splashy information about my book deal, memorials to Athena’s work, and occasionally mentions about how my work is influenced by hers. Someone writes a long and thoughtful piece on the history of literary friendships, and it tickles me to see me and Athena compared to Tolkien and Lewis, Bront? and Gaskell.
For a few weeks, it all feels like I’m in the clear. No one asks questions about how I came to my source material. No one seems to even have known what Athena was working on.
One day, I see a headline from the Yale Daily News that makes my stomach drop.
“Yale Acquires Athena Liu’s Drafting Notes,” it reads. From the opening paragraph: “Late novelist and Yale alumna Athena Liu’s notebooks will soon become part of the Marlin Literary Archive at the Sterling Memorial Library. The notebooks have been donated by Liu’s mother, Patricia Liu, who has expressed her gratitude that her daughter’s notebooks will be memorialized by her alma mater . . .”