Oh hey, happy May Day. May 1, 2009

Oh hurray, 1st of May.

While strolling through the park one day, in the merry merry month of May…

I don’t see how merry May can get though, Elmer. It seems to be the start of a not-so-entertaining summer (as they like to call it elsewhere), and I think, I won’t be having much time for myself in the next couple of weeks, with the whole Cambodia trip and all. I know my readers know I’m full of complaints, and I hate to disappoint, but, I think I’ll save it for another day.

I shall just choose to talk about a new hobby I have. Writing. Yes, writing. No, no. Not argumentatives. Narratives. It’s something that I haven’t 3+ years, not since moving to an educational level where academia begs to have more professionalism and stronger arguments in writing. And how I miss writing. It started a little less than a month ago, and although the genre and characters wouldn’t have been my choicest had it been another phase in life, the stories and ideas have been coming in a flurry, and I’m just so eager to put it all down in words. The only thing that bothers me quite a fair bit is the need to have the dictionary and thesaurus opened constantly as I struggle with finding the right words to suit the mood, different words to govern the flow of the story.

There’s been a sudden realisation that writing really takes practice, and I know this from reading back, starting from my first chapters to the latest ones. In all honesty the first one was utter crap, compared to chapter 12 (which I seriously consider my best chapter by far). It gets harder as it goes, trying to better the previous story with the next, and I’m not quite sure if I’m up to that task.

I don’t have a lot of readers to critique what I write, but I’m glad there is that very small handful (and I mean really small, that can be grasped by a baby’s hand) who, at the very least, appreciate my style of writing. A small excerpt of chapter 12, if I may, because I am a little desperate to get more people to read and critique. I removed the charater’s name (that happens to appear only once in the paragraph), just so that one can imagine/embrace the character with more freedom and less restraint.

[She] gasped, sitting up in the king-size bed suddenly. Her T-shirt was drenched with sweat, and perspiration poured from her brow, yet she felt a certain chill, like being left out in the snow. Her long hair clung to her face, her neck. This nightmare, it felt so… Vivid. Those faces, those voices, so full of anger. Sadness. Disappointment. She held her face in her palms, sobbing uncontrollably. No… Please don’t think like that. No… She sat alone on the bed, the darkness of the hotel room enfolding her, drowning her in morbid sorrow. So deep in her anguish she was, she noticed neither the stirring from the armchair, nor the dip in the bed just beside her. Her senses numbed, that even the strong arms that gently circled her from behind, over her heart and around her belly, the chin that rested on her shoulder, they barely brought her comfort. Her sobs, the sound of breathing, the only human sounds amidst the buzzing of the air-conditioning and the occasional footsteps from the corridor.

Do comment if you like it or not, I’d be glad to have more opinions.