Please to be reading this: T.S. Eliot: Tradition and the Individual Talent
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The Rant: A Reaction

The point is not that you’ve read a gazillion stories with variations of similar plots. The point is this: are the plots inherently bad or weak? The point is not the search for novelty or an incredibly original storyline – though originality and imagination is a good thing and something we all strive towards.

Here’s the point: Was the story good? Did it stir something inside you when you read it? Did the words glisten so much that it made you want to taste it? Did it make you want to slip inside that world? Did you feel, when you were reading that story that you connected with it?

Or is the point just novelty and ensuring that whatever is written is fashionable?

Novelty does not make a good story.

Good writers write good stories. Sometimes otherwise mediocre writers stumble into a good story and that changes their style. And sometimes, good writers get buried by the sheer numbers of people who want to be writers. Yet other times, good writers turn mediocre because they try to fulfill the expectations and standards set by myriad templates and preconditions that are set by various gatekeepers. But of course it is unfashionable to say this; people are now embarrassed to admit to it being a passion and not a job. Heaven forbid! Only those multitudes of amateurs would admit to such a thing!
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Caveat: I am not claiming to be this hypothetical good writer. I am merely commenting on a trend I am noticing which I do not like. It isn’t personal and not aimed at anyone in particular. Except for perhaps the blog post I read which had me frothing at the mouth!

We all know I’ve been having problems with The Apothecary’s Box since last year. It isn’t the fact that I have nothing to write about. It is more that I have too much. Too many stories to tell, too much crammed inside my head along with my dissertation.

The good news is that I have actually been working on short stories this year, and despite all my whining, I’ve actually written more short fiction this year than the past 2-3 years combined. Which is not too mean a feat, I should think.

I’m really thinking aloud. I want to write the Yrole Triptych, really, I do. But there has to be a reason why I can’t, right now. But I still want to have a novel complete for submission by next year. And I do have three other novel W-I-Ps in various stages of drafting/completion.

I’m drawing this out, because I’ve been vaccilating since last year on “which stand-alone novel should I write?” – warring between Domus Exsulis, Saltwater Orphee and the Library Story, with The Ferahia sitting at the back of my head the whole time.

Well. Sometimes the most obvious and economical answer is the one you never figure out till. Today!

* grin *

Oh, I really do hope THIS ONE will work. And that it will be something I can offer up with pride.

I think it could be. And I’m so excited, but I need to find time and motivation to write it first.

After I’ve finished the two stories I am working on now. Or could I start drafting on it while the idea’s hot in my brain?

I dunno. How do some of you more experienced (and published) writers juggle multiple story strands? I have so many in my brain it drives me nuts sometimes.

“There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.”

(1) Returned to tussling with my confirmation chapter
(2) Working on three short stories: (a)MEFF (b)Re-working Graffiti Flowers (c) What I’m calling the interstitial mindfuck story on my dopod (pda phone with a dead phone function)

I’m quite gleeful in a sad way about the interstitial mindfuck story. It’s coming from an interesting place and I’m curious to see where it will lead me. But in a way, I’ve been wanting to write this story since I was 15 and first read bits and pieces of a certain old English Ballad that has haunted me my whole life. And that’s all I’m going to say for now

There are times when writing can feel so raw and painful; the words lodged inside feel like a beautiful and vindictive parasite gnawing and nibbling at your innards. And then one day, you figure out how to pull it out. Often the writing process for me feels like this, like being serially flayed by repressed or undiscovered emotions before you are able to void yourself of it. And when that is done, you feel like a Hollow Person, disemboweled by the process, wondering what else is left. Seeing it spilled out on paper becomes both the most wonderful and most terrible event. And even if it hurts, even if it scares you enough that this may be the reason for your next, inevitable block, you know that this is the reason why you write. It is enough to make you scoff at practical guidelines and workshops for teaching you how to work the market. Yes, on a practical level those things matter; you’d be savvy enough to know that you need to know these things.

But in the end, it is just you, your document, whether physical or pixellated. It is just that moment where everything else fades out and the only thing that matters is the movement your hand makes to eke out words your brain is spitting out. Except, it seems as if the words aren’t really coming from your brain. It feels too immediate, too physical, like it is spilling out of your chest, or your innards, or somewhere deeper still, as if there is a cord connecting your body to the keyboard or the pen. I live for the raw and painful bits, even if it hurts.

I live for the moments when I cease worrying about whether I am grammatical or if my prose sparkles. I just write, like my life depends on it, reminding myself once again that for me, writing is both an act of love and an act of aggression.

I like myself the way I am today. Snarky, slightly cynical, slightly sour, but also oddly joyous and sifting through the beauty of myriad and miniscule things waiting just beyond the line drawn by communal consensual perception. Nothing like getting your groove back, feeling “The Fool on the Hill”, chillin’ with the tricksters, swaying with the wind, a manic and gleeful howl lodged inside you, waiting to ooze from your fingers onto pixellated sheets.

The Lantern for the Moon Festival:

I was supposed to use colored paper but I had none, so I made a painting instead:

I’ve uploaded the other two pieces from Lady Dissonance that I wrote last year to last.fm but only as clips because they’re flawed and flubbed and I’m still a relative novice at the piano. It seems like the songs have been cleansed for me – released from what strange spell they were under for the past year and this is good because it means that I will want to write Lady Dissonance stories again the way they were supposed to be written: with an element of magic and innocence, and not the darkness that entered the stories. Or perhaps, it’s a different kind of darkness. After all, the faerie tales I love are always just a little…haunting.