Business As Usual

On Singapura

Singapura is quite a different undertaking from The River. With The River, I had an ending in mind, right from the beginning. The whole story was developed from that ending sequence. The things that had to happen, the themes, the characters… Everything took root from the ending. Over time, I had a discernible plan and satisfied with most of the details, I just dove in and let it rip.

Singapura feels quite removed from that type of developmental process. For one thing, it certainly involves a greater depth of ideas, most of which I don’t yet have. It has a significantly greater degree of complexity, in the sense that it’s not so straightforward and not so one-track-mind-ish. I kind of know what I want to do in the ending sequence (again, yes, development began with an ending), but it’s far from clear how I’m going to go about it. The ending, I mean; I’m not even worrying about the lead-up yet.

I’m going to allow a longer gestation period. I have a few months to spare, I think. I’ll try writing here and there, but I expect quite a few false starts. All part and parcel, I suppose. I think the best I can expect at this time is just a bunch of useable fragments. I’ll worry about the actual writing later.

In the meantime, I’ll be hoping to settle on a firm plan. A solid outline of the story, for one. Requirements in form, for another. Concepts and themes, and all that stuff will come along the way. For now, I just have a bunch of characters, and I’m still wondering how they’ll interact. We’ll see.

On The River

I’ll be going back to work on The River soon, with the intention of producing a third draft. After staying away for these weeks, I get the feeling that I’ll be extending it a bit. The big idea is basically to provide it with more body. There are parts that are perhaps far more direct and bare than I had originally intended them to be, whatever the reason, so I’ll be looking to fix that. There are a couple of thematic items that I would also like to reinforce, and I’ll see how things work out as I go along.

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Crises Of Confidence And Suicide Salarymen

Thus The Weekend

This is how I spent my weekend. Apart from a rather strange interruption that took up half of Saturday, I played a lot of FIFA 09, having a lot of fun with my created pro, who is now the captain of the Republic of Ireland. (After getting only two call-ups, in fact.)

I also did homework. I talked to people and probably mildly offended them when we couldn’t reach points of agreement. By that time, some response for homework had come in and I had apparently done a good job, which I suppose goes in the way of gratification since these group work things are matters of responsibility and positive feedback makes you feel not completely worthless.

Over the two nights, I dreamt of my romance, which has since died, of course, and (since I’m writing this on Sunday night) I think I’ll complete a hat-trick by dreaming of her again tonight.

Meanwhile, I’ve picked up the slack on Singapura and have been trying to find some focal point for it. So far it’s all either been fragments or broad ideas. I need something to anchor it. I’ve yet to find it.

At one point, I went back to some texts I love. I ended up suffering badly because sometimes, when you read something, you become instantly conscious of how terrible what you’re writing is. This is a frequent crisis that shows up every now and then. Sometimes you think no one is doing what you’re doing and you ought to have a good strong case for believing that you’re making something groundbreaking. Other times, you think no one is doing what you’re doing because it’s stupid. After all, none of the masters you (and others) revere do these silly things. You’re alone because you’re the clown in the fancy suit and everyone’s just laughing because that’s what they’re supposed to do.

But I can deal with those crises of confidence. It wouldn’t be the first time, surely.

Also, my sister dropped by yesterday. She took my MGS4 and I took her Uncharted. While this was happening, my PS3 stopped detecting my computer as a media server, which made me a bit sad.

Oh yes, and my dad has stopped working and is on a month of leave.

Of course I did other things, but that ought to give you a rough idea of how the weekend went by. Just like every other weekend. Also quite unlike every other weekend.

I’ve Been Playing

This. [via Armor Games] The term ‘karōshi’ is the one used to describe the sudden deaths of people who are overworked. This usually occurs because of heart failure or some other stress-related consequence.

On the other hand, the music is fantastic, and the last few stages are rather creative.

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Singapura (The World Is Yours Now)

Three-Year Plan

Since Wednesday, I’ve settled on a direction and an approach. It was always a bit hazy and unclear for me before, what I was going to do with this writing, what it meant to me, and what I was going to do, but I think there are some definite answers now. Not every answer, mind you, but answers enough for me to move on.

In that spirit, I’ve found a new sense of imperative and have started on a new project. This project currently goes under the working title of Singapura, and as I’ve decided to tell most people, I’ll tell you that it is based in Singapore, it has a love story somewhere inside, and it is currently being worked on. The last thing you already know, but I just wanted to to get a little practice at delivering that line.

I can’t tell you much more for now except for the fact that it’s very early days and I really have nothing more than a few paragraphs and some vague ideas. I will say that I have a pretty clear idea of how it begins and ends, so it’s really a matter of trying to figure out what happens in between.

It is remarkably different from The River, in a sense, because I don’t have it planned in detail. In a sense, things are not so set-in-stone, and I’m kind of taking it as it comes with the confidence that the experience gained from writing The River and the strength of the concept are going to pull me through. I’m reasonably confident, and fairly excited about this, but then again, all new projects tend to be exciting.

I have it mapped out in the short term (well, relatively, anyway) and I hope to have it in good shape by my 25th birthday. That gives me about two to three years to hammer it into shape, which is far more time than I afforded The River. I also realise that it’s a little after I graduate, so I guess I can consider Singapura something of a thesis project.

In the meantime, I’ll still be touching up on The River. I also won’t be opposed to diving into other projects, though I suspect Singapura will take up the bulk of my creative energy.

It seems unlikely but I hope to have more to tell you about it soon.

Tempered Radicals

It ought to then be a happy time, bubbling with exuberance and positivity for the future. Just yesterday, though, my mother told me that they asked my father to retire.

There is a strange contradiction of emotions here, and it’s hard to explain. Hard to describe, even.

One moment, you’re going, I’m gonna’ take over the world, I’m gonna’ do this, I’m gonna’ do that. And then the next, you find that the keepers of the world are stepping down and they’re telling you, This world is yours now. So, alone and in a slight state of shock, you start to think about those ambitions you had before, and then you see that you have the world in your hands and you don’t know what to do with it. And it makes you scared.

That’s kind of what it feels like.

To be fair, the shock probably comes from how I wasn’t expecting it to happen so soon, and also how there wasn’t much in the way of a warning. Yet, it goes slightly deeper because everything now seems more tenuous and far less secure than it used to be. I’m sure if I knew what exactly was going to happen, it’d be slightly better. No one has said a word to me yet. I haven’t asked. I know they’ve plans of some sort. I wonder what they are.

To be honest, I don’t even know exactly when my father will stop working.

There is a deeper fracture in this, mainly in that it returns me to the choice between pursuing the arts and getting a steady job. Sure, they’re not exclusive, and it’s all a little hard to explain, and I expect plenty of people to make their assumptions and say, That’s not a problem; you can have both, but that’s not really what I mean.

To condense this and not turn it into a whiny post, let’s just say that I think there is a certain pressure, in actually ‘getting serious’ about one of them. A choice, in that sense. It doesn’t mean that I have to give up one or the other, but I don’t believe that it’s possible for me to set myself up to take on both. And in that, questions start piling up, like if writing is all it’s cooked up to be, then why is it that whenever I make up my mind to do something about it, to work on it, I feel like I’m letting somebody down? And if that’s the case, what does it really mean to me?

The questions have always been there. The answers are not always obvious, if they should exist at all. I think this new development tempers the world-conquering positivity I was having just a couple of days ago with a sharp tug at my ankles, dragging me back to the dirt. The imperatives and priorities have shown up to remind me that they haven’t gone away, and the questions still need answering.

Did I get answers back then? I thought I did. Now I can’t be sure.

The problem is, I could actually make something out of this, or my blind faith could really just be the only thing keeping me from recognising that I’m just a clown. I can’t tell. Taken that way, the arts seem like a gamble at best, and a childish idealism at worst. And I think I’ve just run out of time and the world is not going to wait any longer for me to grow up.

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