Saturday, January 26, 2013

According to dreamdictionary.org, this is what my recurring dream means:


Scared of Flying:
Flying in a dream can either be exhilarating or a nightmare depending the dream. Not being able to control your flight in your dream is rare but it does happen from time to time. Scared of flying has everything to do with lack of control in your life. Dreams of this nature suggest you have trouble controlling the path in your life. No matter what you do there is some interference. You have to ask yourself what is causing me to be afraid to take control of my life, and how to get back on track. Another possibility is with being afraid to fly is that you might be having trouble keeping up with the high goals you set. You may feel that you can crash at anytime.


I'm no Freud or Jung, but that is a completely spot-on analysis of my dream. I've been dreaming of flying for a few nights now, and no it's not as liberating as you think it'd feel. While takeoff was easy, I had a million worries while I was soaring through the sky.

Basically, in the dream it is night, and the city is twinkling below me. It's cold and I worry about not having enough to wear. It's high and I worry about falling - that fear plagues me consistently throughout the dream. It's not quite the witching hour yet so there are people on the streets, and I worry about being seen. My toes are freezing up, and I want to go higher but I don't quite dare to.

Always, there is something holding me back. But the wind rushes past me, and my cheeks are cold. I want to feel freer than I am.

Thursday, January 24, 2013

Two good links to share:

1. Laini Taylor, author of the award-winning novel DAUGHTER OF SMOKE AND BONE, shares some writing advice.

2. Mandy A, an aspiring author like me, blogs about her love for writing. It brought tears to my eyes, knowing that someone out there feels the same way about writing fiction as me. This writing business - it's a long and winding road, full of bumps and uncertainty. It's a gamble, a leap of faith. Sometimes, you just need to know you're not alone in this.

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

I borrowed an hour to meet up with my book editor yesterday to discuss my manuscript, LAMBS FOR DINNER. Can I just say that even though I don't seem excited about having my book published, my heart actually does a somersault every time I think about it? I'm just trying not to get my hopes up too much before anything's said and done.

Anyway, so I met up with Geraldine, who is super nice and very dedicated to making local YA a much bigger thing in Singapore than it is now. She brought along her pages of hand-scribbled notes and listed out which parts of the manuscript she loved and had problems with:

1. Drew - she loved him. As do I. I think it's obvious to anyone reading it that the character has a special place in my heart. I didn't have to work very hard on getting his voice right, or making it consistent, because his voice was just IN MY HEAD THE WHOLE TIME I wrote the story. Drew is irreverent, defiant, and there's this quote from Rainer Maria Rilke's LETTERS TO A YOUNG POET that I feel describes him: "Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love." I had loads of fun writing Drew.

2. Skye - my editor didn't quite love as much. And come to think of it, all my female protagonists sound alike. They're insipid, two-dimensional characters who observe rather than act. I don't know if this is a reflection of myself, but I somehow always seem to relegate my main character to a supporting character. Geraldine thinks Skye's history and inner emotions should be played up, or at least revealed, more, so that the readers can empathise with her better and actually WANT to read her story and not wonder why Drew would fall for such a watered-down character. Geraldine and I discussed female protagonists from books like Becca Fitzpatrick's HUSH, HUSH and Cassandra Clare's THE MORTAL INSTRUMENTS, and I grew to understand my responsibility as a female writer to present a believable character whom readers would be able to relate to and WANT to relate to.

3. Pool she liked, and wishes I can dig deeper and flesh out the nuances of the character even more.

4. The abduction was confusing to her because of many missing details and explanations. I was afraid I might overload the reader with too much information and have them skip over paragraphs, which was why I did more showing through dialogue and action rather than telling via exposition. But tell too much and you risk boring your readers; show too much and you risk confusing them by leaving too much up to interpretation.

5. The ending kind of got derailed, according to her. She said I started off the story with a strong build up, but then the ending became about something else - a subplot - and the main thread got lost or forgotten or skimmed across too conveniently to the extent of being unrealistic. For example, would a girl whose repressed memories of her abduction when she was six years old still leads to her experiencing panic attacks be able to forgive her abductor so easily when she meets him again after twelve years? Geraldine says there needs to be some form of closure for Skye.

It does seem like my story is too scant on the details now that I read back on it. As writers, we often don't see the faults of our stories because that's how the stories come to us. But to a reader, there are many things that may not add up or are not wholly developed. Which is why it's so nice to have an editor with a fresh pair of professional eyes point out the problems with my story and suggest ways to improve.

I left that lunch meeting with Geraldine wishing more than ever that I could write fiction full-time.

Saturday, January 19, 2013

So that's it. I've just told my editor I'm not staying.

My friends think I'm stupid for doing that, since it's my first job and they think I should suck it up and stick it out.

I did agonise about leaving for weeks, wondering if I should really take up my editor's offer to extend my contract for three more months before deciding. It's not a bad job, and the hours are forgiving (10am to 7pm, which gives me time to swim in the morning). My editor isn't an unreasonable boss, either, just occasionally frustrated when I make the same mistakes.

But the environment is, dare I say it, sterile, and the workload heavy and never-ending. I barely have time for water cooler breaks, much less lunch. If I take time out to eat, I'd never be able to finish my work on time and I'd have to stay on longer in the office. I don't want to be one of those people who stay in the office the entire day and go home just to sleep. Even if it's my first job and I need to pay my dues, this is not how I want to live. I'm in my twenties!

My dad told me to ask myself what I really REALLY want. To be happy at a job, or to to do well at a job but come home tired and stressed out every day. He asked me if I head to work with a sense of dread every day, and I realise that the good mood I start out with at the start of the day (I hum, I prance, and I just made myself sound like an idiot) is slowly but surely chipped away at by the end of the day.

Some days, just when I feel like I am in control of my work and can actually do this, I'm tossed a new assignment that I have no idea how to tackle. And with concurrent assignments I feel like I can't keep track of everything that needs to be done or covered; there's always something I forget or miss out, and that's the case for every assignment I've had so far. There's only so many mistakes you can make before you majorly piss someone off, and I know no matter how hard I try I will make more mistakes because I can't multitask THAT well.

Anyway, the bottomline is, I don't know what I want yet in terms of a full-time career (well, I do, but the one I have in mind isn't practical - according to my dad, it's just a HOBBY), but I know what I don't want. I'm not a journalist, never have been - I'm not curious, I don't probe, I'm not meticulous, I couldn't care less about details. I just like to write. I don't know where my love for writing (fiction) will take me, but I know that journalism is not something I want to do for long. It'll only be a matter of time before I leave.

On an unrelated note, it's been raining non-stop since 1am last night, which means it's been raining for 12 hours straight. I've been waiting since 8am to go for a swim, which means I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR FIVE WHOLE HOURS. I am soooo restless it's killing me! I tried pacing, I tried lifting weights, I tried dancing (or in my case, just jiggling about like an idiot), but nothing seems to work. I NEED TO SWIM. This need is gnawing away at my insides; I feel so trapped. Yes, I'm crazy, but this shouldn't come as news to you.

I'm trying to write (at page 234 of FIFTEEN MINUTES now), but I just get so distracted. If only I could swim.