Make Good Art

Neil Gaiman, in his commencement speech, says:

"Something that worked for me was imagining that where I wanted to be, which was an author, primarily a fiction, making good books [...] and supporting myself through my words, imagining that was a mountain, a distant mountain, my goal. And I knew that as long as I kept walking towards the mountain, I'd be alright. And when I was truly not sure what to do, I could stop and think about whether it was taking me towards or away from the mountain."

People work with freelancers because:

1. their work is good
2. easy to get along with
3. they deliver the work on time

2 out of 3 is fine!

I'm just a little behind, is all.

Gingerbread Man

Am I a fan of Ed Sheeran?

Well, yeah. I squee and aww all over his most recent interviews. I jump from statement to statement about his tattoos and his love life... but it all comes down to his music. His passion. More importantly, his job. And every time, every single effing time, I get all these feelings. Awe. Frustration. More awe. More frustration. And then overwhelmingly, motivation. Inspiration. He’s only two years older than me, and he’s achieved so much in life.

We’re so different, and yet I want to be who he is. I figured out what his motto is, on a recent interview. I’m definitely going to try it out.

He said, “I try to choose a role model, and then be 2x better than them. Work 2x as hard.” (I’m paraphrasing, but that’s what I got out of it)

Well, Ed, it’s time for me to try to work 2x as hard as you, then. Because eff this life where I’m holding myself back because I’m too lazy, too comfortable. People would kill to have the opportunities I have right now, and all I’m doing is sitting on my butt pretending that everything will work out somehow. Well, guess what. It doesn’t work that way, not if you want something as bad as Ed does. And he got his birthday wish three years in a row!

How many times have I got my birthday wish?

...

...Never.

When is a good time? When I'm out of school? When I'm out of college? When I'm stuck in a job I don't like, doing something I don't believe in?

How about now?

Sometimes I think I sound like one of those self-help websites, the ones that claim they'll help you help yourself or whatever that is.(My guilty pleasure when surfing. Shh, don't tell anyone.)

Also, been reading a LOT of Brandon Sanderson. He's another one who pushes himself, and a true inspiration.

The Listener

I am an expert at faking smiles. 

It’s what I’ve always done, always thinking about other people and other people’s feelings and their problems. Why bother them with whatever useless emotion I’m feeling?

He was the only one I never tried to hide with. He listened to me: not to other people, no, they bored him. But I was this hurt person and I was his person. It felt good to be heard. I could talk and talk and not worry about judgement or boredom. Of course, I listened in return. But that’s what I do. 

I’m a listener.

I listened to him all the way through his friendship with her, the ups and downs, the fights and the birthday surprises. And I listened as he told me we were too different, that he couldn’t hurt me or hide it from me anymore. I listened all the way to the door, and beyond.

I listened when he told me he’d moved on, when my traitorous heart was still hoping against hope that things would go back to the way they were. I listened when he had fights with his new girlfriend and he needed to vent, the ache in my heart not fading but growing sharper, it seemed, with time.

And I began faking smiles again.

Admiration

You. You out there, yes you, who I've been stalking all over the internet, who manages to do everything he wants.

You've done all I have and much, much more. You leave me speechless at the thought that someone like you can actually exist.

I envy you the fact that you're not allowing your laziness to get the better of you: that you can be dedicated in a way I've only ever dreamed of being.

A dream? I have a dream, too. But I'm crap at reconciling it with my reality. I know the ideal case, because I struggle to achieve it; give up, believe that no one can be that ideal case. And you prove me wrong, again and again. I'm impressed, just like everyone else is.

I want to know you(I suspect a lot of people do).

I want to be you(Even more people, I suspect).

And you just foil my ideas of spending my life gently drifting down the stream of compromise and mid-level achievement. You make me want to do more and be more.

K.

Dear Writer's Block

Dear Writer’s Block, 

It’s not you, it’s me. 

I’ve had a good run with you, and we’ve grown reasonably fond of each other, even if we do have little quarrels whenever I cheat on you with my novel. Well, I know you’ve been with me longer, but there’s no denying that you’re stifling my creativity. It’s a vicious cycle, honestly. The more you’re around, the less I feel like writing, and then you come back, stronger than ever.

So I’m breaking up with you, because I can’t keep having you in the back of my mind, a little nagging voice saying, “You can’t do that!” and “I’d like to see you try”. I want a better, healthier relationship in which I can really grow as a writer and, of course, as a person. I want to be able to work on my novel in peace, and to stop having to make up flimsy excuses like “Life got in the way” or whatever. I want my creativity to find real expression, and not just as mindless little fairy tales I make up for Sravya as she falls asleep every night.

You wouldn’t understand the joy I feel when I put words on paper, as I read them back, again and again, finding mistakes and correcting them, improving, always improving. Those mornings when I sit by the window, a cup of tea in one hand, and a fresh idea in my head and the world just seems to work.

And that is why I can’t be with you anymore. I hope you understand. I don’t wish that you’ll find another fruitful relationship, but only because I want writers everywhere to be able to do their thing without you getting in the way. Yet, somehow, I think you’ll be alright. 

As long as there are people who don’t believe in themselves.

Katze

Writing exercise. Isn't pre-midsem week just the best time for these? :P :D

Title: Undecided. Status: Incomplete.

I'm five thousand eight hundred words below the par word count.

So do I give up or gather the shreds of my willpower and complete the damn story?

Hmm.

Katze

Hope

It's probably fitting for me to follow up a blog post on how I hate myself and my writing, my life etc. etc. with a blog post on hope.

I'm feeling hopeful.

I wrote around 4,000 words yesterday. They were doubtless not some of my best words, and I know I'll have to rewrite and rewrite until I go insane, but somehow, I'm more hopeful about this story now. I don't know if it'll be any good, or even if I'll want to rewrite it after I finish the first draft: but something in me says:

COMPLETE IT. One way or the other, finish it, and we'll see what happens in the end. Hopefully something good will come out of it.

I really, really believe this, and that's all I have to hold on to.

My goal for today: 13,295 words. :D That is a lot, considering my word count is around 6,000 at the time of writing this blog post. But I'm going to make it interesting somehow. And I will COMPLETE IT.

Katze

Fic # 3:Secret

For Archu, with no dialogue.(Oh, however will I make the characters and setting believable to my readers??)

Title: Secret
Word count: 506
Genre: No clue :P

****

This big secret. I take it with me wherever I go, and it weighs on my mind.

Life's suddenly become too exciting. All the frustrated wishes that things would change, become better, wilder, have vanished, and all I want right now is for things to go back to normal. To be a nobody, with nothing and no one's attention.

But I should start at the beginning. I have a friend; don't ask me who it is, don't think it's about you, or you, or you in the back there. So this friend of mine, she begins to go slightly crazy. Nothing anyone will notice, of course, but ever so slightly. Things which are unimportant happen, and she's freaked out by them. I, being a half-decent friend, as I like to believe I am, am concerned, then worried. I try to speak to her, and she asks me to leave it alone.

I don't listen. I don't want to.

So then I do what everyone else does, which is poke my nose into her business. I sneakily read her texts, watch her ever so carefully as she walks to and from her apartment, and just generally do things that eventually warrant a restraining order.

I find?

...Nothing, of course. Everything is completely normal. And then(I'm assuming) she finds out about me, because she freaks out even more one evening, as we're sitting in her kitchen and talking about life. So I ask her point-blank, what it is she is so terrified of.

And she won't tell me, but I ask again and again, and it's too late, and we're too high on lack of sleep, and she tells me things. Things I don't want to hear, things I've never wanted to listen to. But now that I have, can I simply go back to the way things were?

The short answer is no.

I want to help, though. I'm unsure about a lot of things, but I know for certain that I want to help her. This burden that she's carried, it seems to have eased simply by the telling, and I wonder if it would ease even more if I try to actively help.

So I try. I follow her around more, and she becomes tired of telling me to go away, go home and leave her to her task. I am always with her, on her side, sometimes the only one. I tell her she is important(not only to the world but to me), and as the weeks pass I realize this has become the truth. She has become irreplaceable and precious and important.

And when she falls, my important, precious, irreplaceable person, I go slightly crazy. Ever so slightly, nothing anyone will notice.

This is the burden I carry, the secret I have shared with no one but her. Her life's work is now mine and I will(must) do anything to achieve its completion. I wish none of this had happened, I wish I hadn't been so curious and so thoughtless, enough to throw my life away.

What choice did I have, though?

It was love.

****

I'm still not sure what that was.

Katze

We live in a Beautiful World

...yeah, we do
yeah, we do

The Coldplay video 'Don't Panic'. Also the inspiration for the title of this blog post.

I've been panicking recently. Thinking about my life, and my future, and where I'd like both to go.

There is the commonly accepted view, that I'll get a degree, do research further on, and settle as a professor. That is the science-related profession that is least loathsome, or most enjoyable, to me. I'm not quite sure which. At the moment, I do enjoy the subjects I'm taught, except when I'm to actually study them. Perhaps that is just my natural tendency to laziness and under-utilization of my brain.

There is another, that wants me to take a year off, concentrate on my writing, and try to get published. This has a lot more uncertainty in it than anything else: whether I'll achieve fulfillment in doing something I've always wanted to do; whether I'll be good enough to live on my writing alone, a rare enough return on the dream that I, like a lot of people before me have possessed.

Not writing for weeks and weeks together, not expanding my mind through wide reading, is putting me back three and a half weeks for every month of progress I make in my writing. It's simple, really. Writing is a profession like any other. No one simply sits down to be a writer. It needs practice, and learning, and reading and then some more practice, and so on. If I have to be a writer I need to work on it 24x7 for three or four years or 20 minutes a day for 20 years.

Being a good scientist will require me to give up my voracious reading and focus on my studies, and external science-related stuff, work in a lab, perhaps, with lesser free time to write as I please. Or else I'll mess up like I have so far, with my CPI, not getting a good project: no one wants a half-hearted student. I will not learn what I need to, to be successful in the future. Everything I've worked on until now will be a waste if I don't avail myself of the opportunities I've been given by putting my soul into science.

There are no shortcuts in life.

Katze.

P.S. Still panicking. This didn't help at all.

An Analysis of the Psychological Trends of Demon World

Or, why the Demon Tournament works.

Updates (yawn)

Konbanwa!

And this isn't my adolescent fangirl-japanese, either. Because... dum dum dum...

...I'm officially learning Japanese! Yay me. Incredibly happy with my classes and my sensei. People, sign up for language classes. They be awesome.

I haven't been writing again. I had such high hopes, with my romantically-inclined thoughts and my moleskine notebook(which is gathering dust in a drawer, btw) that to realize two entire weeks have gone by without me writing a word is a huge shock, but not unexpected. Plus, I've been commissioned to write so much that I'm beginning to fear for my life. I'm doing one thing sort-of officially, and two more sort-of unofficially.

Things are going as well as can be expected. I have thoughts to think and things to do, but nothing's the end of the world exactly. At least, I need to keep telling myself that. Is this feeling of despair deep down in me normal? Or am I suffering from some kind of psychological syndrome? Maybe they could call it Over-sensitivitis. Everything hurts me far too much, and writing this blog post's suddenly worsening my mood instead of making everything better.

I have a good life, a great life. I just need to keep that in mind.

BdK.

P.S. Shit. This coping mechanism where I publish my thoughts on random topics to make myself more optimistic forget real life seems to be failing. I almost signed my real name just now.

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.

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*

Picking Up the Pen

So I've only ever written using a pen and paper when I was around 13-ish, just silly little stories featuring my friends to make them laugh. Actually, no. There was that one comic strip(recurring) about the adventures of the can of tuna.(With wings and a halo)

In Junior college, I'd while away the lecture time writing rubbish fake-articles about little glass prisms or bottles of hydrochloric acid taking over the world, sprouting little legs and destroying the college building, giving me much-needed vacation time. But recently, after trying so hard to understand what I need to be a 'grown-up' writer, I've completely given that up. And of course, even the fiction I used to write and put up somewhere on the net was all written in word documents.

Now, when I try to start something new, I open Bean and just start typing. I love the freedom, but I wonder if maybe a pen and paper would work better for me. I've tried, writing one part of a short story in a Classmate notebook on a rainy day before giving up. And nothing annoys me more than not being able to come up with words. Nothing. Whatever kind of screen it's on, whatever medium it's going to be read on, I hate not being able to keep the words flowing. And it almost never happens to me. But somehow, when I try and write on a book, I stop. I cross out. I over write. And it just... comes down to crap.

Also, looking at my rubbishy scrawl, maybe I feel like I can't take myself seriously. Maybe that's it.

 How can someone whose writing looks like this ever write anything of any value?

Maybe it's never going to work out. But I never know until I try, right?

Trying hard,

K

Weekly Fic #2: Supply and Demand

Title: Supply and Demand

Genre: YA

Word count: 447 words.


"Are you guys sure?"
My friends, girls to the point of idiocy, giggle and give me a victory sign each.
"Don't worry, someone's already told him about you-just go over there."
"Okay, okay."
I'm incredibly nervous. I've never done anything like this before, and if it weren't for some guys we overheard talking in class, I might never have thought about it.
The delinquent--I've always just assumed he was a delinquent--is leaning against a handy set of rails. I wonder if he's just trying to be picturesque--
"What?"
"Huh?"
"What? Why are you over here?"
I give him a weak smile. Damn my inability to converse properly with strangers.
"I'm--"
"No names. I know who you are and what you want."
"So," My voice drops an octave. "Can you supply me with... what I want?"
"Can I?" He mocks. "Do you want it or not?"
I nod. Then I nod some more, just to make sure he gets the point. He gets tired of it after a while.
"Hand it over."
I duly hand the pendrive over to him.
"When will I get it back?"
"When I'm ready."
"So... tomorrow?"
He just gives me the evil eye.
"Day after? Sunday?"
"When I'm ready."
"-because I'm not in campus on Sundays," I rush to reassure him.
"Monday morning. Fine?"
Before I can splutter my 'yes's or 'thanks', he's slinking down the stairwell -just like a real delinquent.

---------

It's bright and early Monday morning, when I walk past the same spot three times. Each time, I notice he isn't there. I'm beginning to worry for my pendrive. It's not like I had stuff on there, because, as an obsessive-compulsive password setter, I backed up and deleted all the data before giving it to an unknown hoodlum. But still.
Finally, in the break between the last two classes of the morning, I see him.
I take in a breath. His hand is in a cast.
"Um..."
"Here." He tosses the pendrive in my direction. I flail a bit before catching it.
"It's got-"
"Yeah, yeah," he interrupts. "Just give me the payment."
Looking surreptitiously from left to right, I put a hand in my bag. Rummaging around, I give him a faint smile. "It was here this morning. My bag's like a sack, just gobbles everything up and- ow!" I pull out my hand and examine my finger--it's bleeding from the pin of the Rolling Stones badge I'd dumped in there.
His patience is probably running out. I do not want a delinquent mad at me.
"Ah! There you are, paid in full."
He grabs the chocolate bars from my hand and does the slinky thing with the stairs.

---------

Note: This is probably a part of a short story I just decided to write... like just. Like ten seconds ago. I'm not sure where this is going to lead, but I've a start and a finish. It should work out.(probably)

Weekly Fic #1: Giving up on a dream

Title: Giving Up on a Dream

Genre: Slice of life

Word count: 552

The guitar's been lying in the corner of my room for a while now. I pause and try to recall just how long a 'a while' is, and wince. It's been longer than I thought. I want to go right over there and start making music, but I can't. I have somewhere to be.

It's been like this for a long time now, me putting everything else in front of my music. I can still remember the times when I would stay up all night, with my parents safely asleep in their room, trying to come up with a tune to capture what I was feeling. It didn't seem to matter if the next day was a schooldays, ir even if the day held more than that, like an exam or a competition, I felt like I just had to play, and that's all there was to it. It's strange, that I've always been called lazy or doesn't apply herself in school, but when it came to teaching myself the guitar, learning to compose, crafting lyrics and reading poems, I've never had to force the concentration. It just came naturally. That's why I had those fights, when all the adults around me told me that a musical career wasn't worth it, wasn't, in fact, even possible for me. And that's all I wanted to do.

"Play for us."

It's so common now, something like a usual refrain, that I only blush and stutter and wave it aside. I haven't played for anyone. Never. Sometimes, I like to let people hear me play, when I'm already practising. Most people don't understand, though. How do I expect to be a musician if I don't allow anyone to hear my music? I don't tell them the truth, that I've been putting up my music on MySpace forever, ever since I listened to the other amateurs, back when I was a kid. And I didn't get much recognition. A few fans, here and there, who asked me, almost immediately, to fan them back. And the truth is, their music sucked. So yeah, I never thought I was anything special back then, and I was right. Listening to it now makes me laugh. The crap I put up. Of course, there's still some of that in my music today.

"Are you free today?"

Yup, not a thing to do. Was planning to just compose and weed out most of the crap today, but I can always postpone that, to do something totally fascinating, like walk along the lake, chatting, with you. (Do I even know you?)

The guitar's been lying in the corner of my room for a while now. I pause and try to recall just how long a 'a while' is, and wince. It's been longer than I thought. I want to go right over there and start making music, but I can't. I don't have anywhere to be, or anything to do. But I still ignore it and walk out of the room.

Now the bitter truth hits me, that it has nothing to do with my other commitments, that the fact is, I can't face my guitar anymore. Nothing comes out, or if it does, it's stilted and unsure. I'm unsure.

Do I give up on what was, after all, a lifelong dream?

New Format :)

Qwertyuiop. Don't mind me. Just checking out this cool iPad I've been ordered to finish the net balance on. Aren't I lucky? Anyway, this is going to be a short post, just to inform you people(if anyone is indeed listening) that I plan to update weekly from now on, following a strict schedule which will, likely, be broken for half-a-dozen reasons. But I will try. I promise. My posts, along with the ordinary, infrequent ones about things I love and real life(though I was never supposed to mention it at all) will be me writing fiction, but about things I've experienced. I feel like I have experienced quite a bit, though I haven't been around all that long. But this way, I figure at least I'll have a reason to write, and at regular intervals, too. First one when I get the "proper" net back. Tomorrow, possibly. But most probably Sunday. Till then, Ciao. BdK

Cycling

Cycles excite me.

Senti and Interview With A Fire Demon

So I was looking over my old posts, and I had a lump in my throat when I realised that all the effort I'd gone to, all the seriously good writing that I had put into my blog posts had gone completely and utterly to waste. Because, honestly, no one cares.

Mysterious Forest

This was the sucky poem I wrote/thought I wrote back in tenth. I think I wrote it, because it genuinely came to me when I was staring at a blank page. But it's kind of good, or so I think, so I can't possibly have written it.