On Not Being Good Enough

Well, here goes.

*deep breath*

I am a writer.

*exhale*

I never allow myself to think like that, I never allow myself to say it, and I definitely never write it down and put it up on the net so that other people can point and laugh. Haha. Writer indeed.

It's simpler to just say something like 'I dabble...' or 'I'm interested in...'; less mortifying than having people find out my gmail ID.(which is an open secret among my friends, just another silly pet name)

But if I never believe in it myself, how the hell am I going to convince people to read what I write? Sometimes I wonder if all that nonsense on being true to an art form is real, if all I'll ever be is a penner of short stories to make people around me laugh. Sometimes I think I'm being unrealistic, that even those little dreams I have; of completing a novel, of rewriting until I'm happy with every little piece of it, are never going to happen. I know the ratios, I know how many people dream of writing best-selling books and how many truly achieve success. It's not easy, and I've never yet done anything I've set out to do in completion. Take the summer project I'm meant to be doing, for example. Didn't even start. My failed attempts at learning the violin and playing squash. Maybe I'm just not cut out for doing something with my life.

Someone told me once that maybe I'm meant to be a short-story writer. Well, I'm sorry, but I think you have no idea. I want to write, I'm willing to give up years and years worth of doing anything else, anything 'productive', to bang out words on different types of computers, different interfaces, even different word-processing softwares. I'm willing to spend hundreds of thousands of hours doing nothing but thinking about characters and people, putting them in places and putting words in their mouths. And none of this may make sense to you, I may look like an inveterate slacker who likes to 'dream' her life away, but I'm serious about this as I've never been about anything else. It is the only thing I can imagine doing for the rest of my life, without rest, without boredom, and without external prodding.

And if someone like me, a general all-round waster, can put all this effort into something, then I can darn well be whatever it is I want to be, short-story writer or novelist, or even poet(though not really. I can't rhyme or anything).

So that's it. I'm going to be a writer. All those flippant promises are going to mean something. They do already.

BdK.

P.S. This post doesn't, in fact, come from out of nowhere. Recently(very recently) I came into possession of the holy grail of all notebook nerds(like yours truly): a Moleskine notebook. And everyone I know thought I was completely mad for spending that much on a notebook for my ideas. What ideas, indeed.

Fiction is a Lie...

...but beautiful fiction is the truth hidden in the lie.

Status-dreamdreamdrea-NO.

I am...

...in the middle of my vacation from college
...learning how to drive
...getting ready for the Big Family Trip(we haven't had one for a while)
...cooking a bit at home(just a teeny-tiny bit. must not starve if ever faced with an empty refrigerator)

More importantly, I am...

...writing my FMA fanfic as a series of drabbles(see below)
...writing a short fic based on *gasp* ASOIAF (with my own characters, don't worry) right here on blogger
...stuck on that one fic which I was excited about/ashamed of, a bit... don't look at me that way, darn it!

Oh, and most importantly I...

...had a weird, freaky dream. It was the weirdest of weird, freakiest of freaky dreams. Only it wasn't like a nightmare, like I dunno what I'd do if it actually happened... and that thought is freaking me out right there. You can't see me, but I'm yelping right now. And dancing around like I'm on hot coals. It was a weird, weird, weird dream- andmaybesomepartofmeishopingitllcometrue. Maybe. There, I said it.

P.S. It's not that bad. Don't get any ideas. It's really not that bad. Just for me, it is. Cuz I'm like that.

Here's a drabble(part of my FMA series) to get my your mind off of things. Enjoy.

“What is that?”

Roy tries not to be surprised, he really does, but ever since Xing there’s always been something Anna does, on purpose, he's beginning to think, to keep him bemused.

She’s tracing in a notebook, poring over a puzzle block and then carefully redrawing it. She speaks carefully, the pen still moving over the paper.

“Sometimes, when I’m solving a puzzle, it helps if I take a fresh view of it. Then there’s no point in keeping it in here,” she points to her head, “since every memory of it will be slightly corrupted by the patterns I think I see now. So my brain will never be able to see past those patterns, and I won’t get a ‘fresh view’ at all. But if I draw it, all the steps I’ve done so far, I can put it aside for a while and come back to it, picking up where I left off.”

“Ah,” he says. “You’ve found my stack of little black books."

*****

As any author who puts up their stories online will tell you... review? Please? *hopeful smiley*

Weekly Fic #3: The Fight

Title: The Fight

"Go slower," she says.
His eyes glance off the road, to the speedometer and back, before he replies. "It's fine."
"It's not," she insists. "You're driving too fast."
"It's the expressway," he says, in a frustrated tone. "What's the point in having a fast car if I can't take it up to this speed once in a while?"
"The point is walking away with all of our limbs intact." Her voice is tart. She doesn't state all of her concerns. It's dark out, and the rain is obstructing vision. The expressway winds through the mountains, with an edge simply dropping away on one side.
But the shadow of the fight hangs over her too strongly and she can't bring herself to keep the snippishness out of her voice.
Ordinarily, he'd know it too. But he doesn't want to listen to reason any more than she does.
There is a sudden explosion of light on the side of the road.
"There, we missed a Food Mall. If you hadn't been going so fast-"
"What? You hate those places."
"Its still a place to get out, stretch your feet..."

A few minutes later, she's still going on about it. He's trying to defend, but the exchange is bringing him down.
"You want to stop? We'll stop."
Abruptly, he starts slowing the car dow, switching lanes to get to the left.
"What are you doing?"
"Stopping," he says, his teeth clenched.
"You can't stop on the expressway!" He would love to see her expression right now, but he's focussing on the road.
"Says who?" But just this little bit of outrage has switched his mood, making it more playful and less dark.
She's not impressed.