Ten Brief Things About The River

I know what I promised, so I’m going to talk very briefly about my current project today.

Actually, I’m not really going to talk about it.

I’m just going to tell you the first ten things about it that I think of.

Here they are:

1. It’s title is The River.
2. It is based in Singapore, yes, which also in some sense tells you that the river in the title is in fact the Singapore River. Here’s how a part of it looks like:



3. Central to the whole arc, there is a love story.
4. It has very few characters.
5. It’s not very realistic; but that’s kind of the point.
6. It is written in first-person.
7. The narrator’s name is Joyce.
8. It is rather experimental in nature, and uses a bunch of techniques that are probably postmodern (although I would say that some of them originate from the modernist era).
9. I’m not sure whether I should call it magical realist in nature. Perhaps mythopoeic is a more appropriate word.
10. I used intertextuality rather extensively.

Hmm, that probably doesn’t tell you very much. It’s a start.

Catch you on Monday.

d

Natural State

Sadness

Just yesterday, I became rather sad at some random thing and it kicked me into the next gear. It always happens that way. I just get hurt or upset or unhappy about some… thing, and I start to write. It probably isn’t related, it probably is, but all the same, the energy just goes into the whole writing thing.

I suppose the natural state of imagination for me is just that. It’s that sadness. That unhappiness. That bad mood. I think figuring out how to channel it into something that wasn’t emo nonsense probably took a bit of experience, but ever since, my writing has come to depend partly on such bursts of energy. It’s kind of a morbid way to look at it, I suppose.

Okay, let’s not. Let’s just say that it’s therapeutic.

Brr.

But I wanted to tell you this because I got to scribble down (well, figure of speech, since I really typed it out) some fragments of the new project and it all looked promising.

Kurosawa Revisited

They’re restoring Kurosawa films for screening. [via The Envelope - LA Times] Such news makes me happy.

Roth Reviews

The reviews of Roth’s Indignation are coming in. Here’s one you might be interested in reading (the Michiko Kakutani one). [via The New York Times] Somehow they kind of put a damper on my spirits. Oh well, I’ll just pick it up when it hit paperback then.

Not So Tough

I crashed a lit lecture yesterday, and it really wasn’t all that bad. And today’s the last day of school before the mid-term break. Let’s get it out of the way first.

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Thursday Photo: on a rail

A Roth Winter

Day Of Indignation

Yesterday was the 16th, meaning it was the date of release of the new Philip Roth, Indignation. I suppose that’s something you already know and I don’t have to tell you about, but so there.

In celebration, I’m planning to read a couple of Roths that I’ve missed, like Everyman, and reread a couple of classics, like American Pastoral. It’ll be a good excuse for me to add them to my library too. I won’t be able to get my hands on them so soon, so it’ll probably be… by the end of the year. A Roth Winter, so to speak.

Other Readings

Of course, just reading Roth alone would kill me. Apart from the usual fiction and graphic novels, I’ll probably identify a couple of writers I want to re-explore along the way. A sort of targets thing, I guess. I’m thinking Borges and Nabokov now, but I’m sure I’ll change my mind by year’s end.

School =(

School leaves me very tired. It’s not like it’s tremendously busy or anything. It’s more like a vampire visited during my sleep and decided just to leech me of blood and never turn me into another one of the undead because… I suppose it means more competition.

Oh, and tomorrow, I’m going to drop by at an advanced literature module just to have a look. I have a feeling I will be terribly out of place, considering I haven’t even one basic literature module under my belt, but hey, the academia doesn’t worry me that much. Hope it turns out interesting. I think they’re doing Jeanette Winterson, which, curiously enough, is the one writer in the whole module whom I’m not familiar with. =S

Test today. Wish me luck.

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Tuesday Photo: tracks

Orange Notebook

Not So Half, After All

Immediately after I wrote my last entry, about the half-ideas and all, I kind of settled on a concept. The concept fleshed itself out over the day, and right now, I think I’ve got something to hang on to. It might be temporary. It might not be. Still, it’s all I’ve got for now.

With the ideas working themselves out, I took out a new (Alcatel) notebook. Orange. I started scribbling. As I always do. It’s the way I work. I just started listing down everything. I forget ideas easily. Though the result of such scribbling is usually terribly disorganised, it’s also the only way I can make sure that I don’t miss anything.

Given time, this will all sort itself out. I’ll settle on some things, discard others. I’ll revise. I’ll change. I’ll cheer. I’ll despair. It’s all part of the way it works.

There is an unusual pressure involved with this. Part of this is down to how (after the sense of personal accomplishment with my current project; which I know I was supposed to talk about a week ago or something but failed to) I’m trying to turn this writing consistency into something more reliable. That is, I don’t want to live with the 50-50 (well, actually, more like 30-70, on the side of failures) uncertainty that it’ll live or die. I want to be able to eke out something with some degree of consistency, or at least, know early when the ship is going to sink. This transition makes me nervous.

The other part of it that gets to me is that I realised I was subconsciously invoking what to me is one of the most important works of literature. I don’t want to have something to live up to, but I do see the similarities, and I’ll have to work my way around those somehow.

But at least it’s a start.

No School Today

I have no school today. It’s not that I love going to school or anything, but I must say that it leaves me with a strange sense of emptiness. Very unusual. Test in two days, though. :|

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On David Foster Wallace

I just learnt that David Foster Wallace has passed away. [via The Elegant Variation] He was 46.

The only work of his I’ve read is Infinite Jest; and now, I still remember the deft touches, the power of voice, the immensity, the sprawl, the exuberance of it all. He was a really special writer.

It is truly sad that he had to go. Rest easy, sir.

d

Mid-Autumn

A happy Mid-Autumn Festival to one and all. The Jade Rabbit loves you.

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Weekend Wondering

What Should I Do Here?

I was planning to do something different on the weekends. I considered writing. I considered some other strange features. Books, maybe. Book club. I don’t know. They all seemed to suggest themselves in some way over the course of the week. None of them seemed like great ideas, as hard as they tried to suggest to me that they were. (You sly, conniving ideas!)

So, if you have any idea, do try to suggest them in the comments or maybe the contact form.

Half-Ideas

I want to write something new. Only trouble is, nothing really convinces me quite yet. (You weak, impotent ideas!) And most significantly, none of them seem too far removed from my current novel draft, in the sense that I want to do something new, something I’ve not quite tried yet, something refreshing, something that’s… just not the same. (You ordinary, look-alike ideas!)

The burden of requirement increases as I try to address the things that I believe in, as well as the things that I’m just beginning to learn for myself.

It doesn’t look like I’ll be embarking on any big project soon, but I guess, with ideas, you never really know.

(You ambush-happy, sneaky ideas!)

Half-Time Report

It’s the middle bit of the two busy weeks I’m having, and things are looking pretty bright. I mean, the first week went by without incident, well, except for a good incident, which now seems to be just sort of going on and I can’t really tell you very much more about it. The second doesn’t look that awful now that we’re halfway through, so I guess things will naturally sort themselves out, as they always do, though the knowledge of it certainly makes it all better.

All right, I’ll probably see you next week.

d

Conspiracy Theorist

Fixing A Hole

It’s been happening for a few days now, and no one really knows why. Sure, they talk about it, whisper and murmur, trying to figure out what exactly is going on, even as they know that no one has any clue at all. And there it is again, outside my window, a group of workers surrounding a tall machine, staring down a hole in the ground as the machine just drills and drills, making whirs and buzzes and other assorted noises.

It’s all pretty shush-shush-hush-hush. I heard stories though. I heard, for instance, that there’s more than one of these. At other blocks, and I mean many other blocks, there have been similar set-ups, with their workers and their drilling and their whirs and buzzes.

What could they possibly be doing? At first, when they brought in the machines and surveyed the sites, we imagined that they were adding lifts to the block. Then it became clear that they weren’t building lifts. They weren’t going up. They were looking down. Maybe they’re looking for treasure. That explains their frowning faces and paranoid eyes. No, maybe they’re poisoning the water.

Recently, my tap water seems to taste of metal.

I’m watching. I’ll keep watching. And what worries me is that that’s all I might be able to do.

Embarrassments

I think I embarrassed myself a little in one tutorial yesterday. No one said anything, of course, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I said something terribly stupid or slighted someone unintentionally, or… I don’t know. Nothing to worry about, of course, but I get these feelings sometimes and have no idea why I get them.

Booker Nominees

The Booker shortlist is out. [via The Elegant Variation] I’m surprised to see that Salman Rushdie didn’t make it. Also, I’m a bit shocked to find Netherland not there, because they’ve all been raving about it so wildly. I’ll make sure to get it on my next shopping trip.

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