Powerless Monday Blues

Nope

No electrical power today, so I guess I’ll be heading out. They’re changing the meters for the entire block, so they’re shutting down the power during office hours. I suppose this means I’ll have to do something other than staring blankly at a computer screen.

Synopses

I was right about Singapura in that that was a false start, so I’ve stopped writing. In the meantime, I’ve started to draft a plot document that I think might prove useful. The good news is that some plot details are starting to fit in, and also that there’s no hurry, since I’ve got about two-and-a-half years before my first draft, according to my self-imposed deadlines.

Meanwhile, I’ve tried my hand at the query letter so many times that I think I’ll just step back and leave it alone for a few days. I’ll probably resume after Christmas.

Lonely Days

And in these days, a canny, persistent sense of solitude dogs my senses. It seems that as Christmas draws near, I’m feeling worse and worse. I think part of it comes with being a little unsettled right now. So many things I should be doing but I don’t know how to. (My query letter screams in anguish at this point.) So many people I want to meet but probably never will ever again. (And this hurts.) So many events that I can only wait for even if I don’t want to. (Like my results.)

Just another Monday, I guess.

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Queries And Monies

Hmm…

After a couple of days of shopping and hanging out with friends and family, I suppose it’s time to figure out the query letter, a process that will likely take a long, long time. Especially since it’s my first.

I have a vague idea of what I need to do, but the fact is that until you seriously consider it, a synopsis or summary of your book seems like the child’s play. And when you finally do consider it, it seems to fling you into a state of huh?. It feels as if I have no idea how to describe The River in three or four sentences in an engaging manner. It certainly appears to be the most difficult part of this (for now).

Speaking of which, I might soon be talking more about The River over here.

In the meantime, there has been a complete lack of inspiration and my original intent to do a couple of short pieces (or so) will probably take longer than expected. Not that there’s any hurry, since those are really just a kind of cool-down sequence that I hope will keep me writing and writing something else for a change.

Spending

I bought… an Arctic Monkeys DVD, The Dark Knight on Bluray, a Rilakkuma, and Travel by Yuichi Yokoyama yesterday. I suppose this almost puts my holiday spending at an end, save for a couple of presents and maybe one or two small indulgences along the way. It’s been a good shopping holiday, to be honest, although it has also left me with about 20 books waiting in line.

Doctor Who Merch

Hey, they’re making the journal of the Doctor from the Family of Blood two-parter in Season 3! [via Adventures Through Time And Space] I wonder if I can get it here, or if I’ll have to place some sort of order… It even comes with a Sonic Screwdriver!

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Children Of The Dusk

Third Draft

Yesterday, I finished work on the third draft and I’ve since decided that it’s probably as close to the final draft as I’ll ever get it, and therefore I might as well start treating this as my manuscript for submission. In other words, this will presumably be it for The River, with some proofing and minor corrections ahead. (Oh, and as I am in the habit of naming my drafts, this one is called “Children Of The Dusk”.)

Look Out Below

Wait, so what does this mean? I’ll have to figure out how this thing works, I guess. I’ve been able to find quite a bit of information about the industry worldwide, but that information probably isn’t going to help me too much with the local market. I have a feeling that things work a bit differently here given the size of the industry and the state of literature in general in these parts. So that first thing is research.

I’m not sure quite where to start. I have a couple of leads, a couple of ideas, but they’re not of the optimistic sort. I probably need to look for a bit of help.

I’ll also be working on my query letter, since that will certainly have to figure in sooner or later.

I also see myself doing a short piece or two just to take my mind off of this for the time being.

And that will probably be it. It sounds so simple. What could possibly go wrong?

…Sigh.

Also Finished

I finished Half-Life 2 yesterday, and the ending isn’t as bad as I remembered it. I don’t know why I had this negative impression of it. Now it seems pretty okay.

In any case, really enjoyed myself with it. It reminded me of how much crap I’ve been putting up with some of the recent (and much lauded) games. I think the only game that hasn’t thrown me that kind of nonsense in recent times is MGS4, which I really love too.

Gargh, stop feeding me useless, un-fun games, game companies! I don’t want to date all my friends to go bowling to raise their percentage admiration or drive around on barren moon surfaces.

Loot

I went to the bookstore on Saturday and got myself:

• Boxwood, by Camilo José Cela
• José Saramago’s Blindness
• Basho: The Complete Haiku, by Matsuo Bashō (duh)
• Anne Higonnet’s Lewis Carroll
• The Alcoholic, Jonathan Ames and Dean Haspiel

Because I could choose my Christmas present, I also got myself Sebastião Salgado’s beautiful Africa.

Some notes:

The Bashō book is very, very pretty, and I’m very happy that I bought it. The Lewis Carroll book is a photography book featuring photos that he took. It’s a very elegant book by Phaidon and I’m glad to add it to my library. And I had never before heard of The Alcoholic, but on the morning before I went, I read Charles D’Ambrosio recommending it and couldn’t resist.

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Working Methods

Almost There

I’m pretty sure I’ll be up to my third draft soon, and then I’ll have to figure out how things work around here (meaning the local publishing industry). I say that because this draft appears to be good enough to see the light of day. I probably won’t be worrying about getting a big deal or anything, especially since this is a book about Singapore and I suppose we’ll start here.

Long Days

And this is how I’ve been working: I wake up at about 9am, check some news, head to the shower, get breakfast, and maybe play a bit of Half-Life 2.  By the time I stop, it’s 11am and I get cracking. I work all the way up to lunch, which is a 15-minute break or so, and then I’m back again at it until a little past 5. Then I have some tea, shower again, and it’ll probably be about 6pm. Depending on my mood, I’ll either get back to work or I’ll play a up to dinner, which is just before 8pm. I start work again at 9pm, and work up to 1am. Then I hit the sheets and it’s the same routine the next day.

It’s actually quite similar to how I work when I’m writing, except maybe my hours are slightly shorter and my breaks slightly longer.

2.7!

Much thanks to the Web Walrus for pushing this up to 2.7.

Interesting

I found this The Year In Reading article on B&N fairly interesting. [via Barnes & Noble]

Photograph Of Jesus

Also, this video tells of the rather silly photograph requests received by the Hulton Archive.

[via The Online Photographer]

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Hit The Pause Button

Paused

I’ve decided to take a break from the writing until after the exams are over. I’ll almost certainly be starting on the edits for The River during December, so that’ll take precedence, so this probably means I won’t be doing Singapura for quite a while.

Exam Schedule

Here’s what my timetable looks like:

On Monday, I have Chinese Music.
On Thursday, I have Singapore History.
On the next Monday, I have Biofluids.
On the Tuesday after that, I have Biochemistry.
And my last paper is on Wednesday, with Organic Chemistry.

GMail Themes

There are now themes for Gmail. [via Official GMail Blog] How very colourful.

John Barth Interview

I also found this interview over at Barnes & Noble with John Barth interesting. [via Barnes & Noble]

Well, it goes through several filters. My wife, bless her, who is my first reader and best critic, is very sharp-eyed — not only catching typos, but also applying her wonderfully retentive memory so that she can say, in effect, “Look, you played this card on page 4 and you forgot to pick it up on page 137.” Or as Chekhov said, “If you hang a rifle on the wall in Act I, you have to fire it in Act III.” You needn’t shoot out all the lampshades in the room — just fire the damn thing.

Ah, so it appears I’m missing a wife!

Book Arrangements

Finally, there’s also this intriguing article about arranging books in one’s personal library. [via The Online Photographer] I suppose that’s something I’ll have to worry about in the near future.

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Study, Study, Study (And Study)

Not Yet

It hasn’t quite hit me that the exams are right at the doorstep. Maybe there is a bit of confidence going into a couple of the papers, which has me taking the foot off the pedal a bit so as not to send myself crashing and burning. I’m sure that by the time next week hits the sense of oh-no-it’s-here will be a bit greater, and I’m also sure that by the end of next week, I’ll be suffering from a stiff left shoulder (I lean on my left when studying on my bed) and a horrendous amount of examination fatigue.

Until then, all looks peaceful. Maybe a bit too peaceful, but I’ll take all the peace I can get.

My papers are on the 24th, 27th, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. Postings will probably be affected, but we’ll see what happens.

Inspiration, Desperation

While all this is going on, I’ve been writing tiny bits every day. Mostly it’s been the new project Singapura, which as you already know I’m taking my time with. It’s gone at about a hundred words or so per day ever since when I first said I had started, which I believe was Saturday. (See? That’s why I need a reminder post.) Of course, I haven’t had much time to actually sit down for hours to work at it, so I think a hundred words or so is in fact an extremely positive outcome. And it doesn’t look bad. Not horrible, at least.

In the meantime, there are just some days you think of the old projects (i.e. The River) and you just feel that most of it is trash. Yesterday was such a day. I’m sure the attitude will be different by the time the exams are over and I get back to editing, but it sure looks terrible and amateurish right now. ):

All right, back to work…

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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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Visions And Vanities

Karma

There is this strange, almost karmic coincidence that I always experience. This is the way it happens: death of romance, birth of idea. That’s right. Death of romance, birth of idea.

In some unusual, sudden, and cold way, the lights just got punched out yesterday and I felt extremely alone. Not sad, mind you. Almost not sad at all, in fact. And in recognising things, or perhaps accepting them, I consolidated the broad vision for my writing. Actually, consolidated is probably a terrible choice of word, since it’s all blurry, but I’m convinced that something clicked into place, if that makes sense.

The River happened this way too. In the aftermath of some rather cruel event, I made the biggest connections and conceived some of the most significant elements.

Perhaps in failing to sort myself out, I manage to sort out my stories. Morbid, sure, but that seems to be the way of things.

In any case, I’m just keen on moving things forward for now. The work is my first obligation, my last defence, and my deepest mystery and singular truth. So I’ll stick with it, and see where it takes me.

National Book Award

Here are the finalists. [via The Elegant Variation]

Lonely GTA

I think I’m destined to abandon my GTA IV again, having started up FIFA 09 all the time in these past couple of days. I was supposed to practise, but I’ve found more fun in doing the Be A Pro things and trying to pretend I’m a precocious teenager destined to play some legendary football.

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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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2.00: “Abhurite And Thunder”

It’s Saturday and I ought to be a little upset now that the mid-term break is almost over, but I’m doing fine, partly because yesterday afternoon, I finished up the editing on the second draft of The River.

It looks structurally the same. The corrections mostly have to do with continuity errors and just plain bad language. The changes are meant to make it all flow a little better, catch the rhythms I’ve been missing, remove the awkward bits, and bring in more focus thematically.

Things look quite good for now. Sure, it doesn’t aspire to greatness, still, but at least it’s significantly improved and far less embarrassing to read.

I’m supposed to tell you where it’s going to go from here, but the truth is, I don’t really know. I’m just going to let it sink in a bit and wait to see what happens in a couple of days. Maybe I’ll spot something in a book I read that’ll show me what to do next. Maybe some feedback will come in and I will figure out what I can work on. Maybe I’ll poke around and suddenly get a massive lead of some sort. Well, I don’t know.

But at least it looks good for now.

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