Flow; Stretch

It troubles me that sometimes, I feel completely at a loss for words. There's just so much tension and stress bunched up inside my head that lying down and imagining something just for fun is difficult. It doesn't help that I'm not playing for the whole of this month, either. There's no time to take my mind off things, to simply drift.

I've been trying to understand the flow of short stories, of how authors stretch out a plot over 5000 words. Jennifer Crawford's advice and methods seem to really come in handy here. But the more I think about what kind of length makes sense, the harder it becomes to imagine anything just for fun. Everything has to fit into the flow. Everything has to make sense.

The fact that Golden Point is so prestigious is another problem. I want so badly to win it that I can't relax and really get a feel of what I'm writing. It's just like FYP- when you're scared or desperate enough, you become willing to turn a blind eye to things so you can believe that it'll work out. The more you obsess over it, the harder it gets.

I want it so badly, this chance to make a mark and to receive a sign that tells me that maybe, this is something I can do somewhere down the road, sometime. I'm not sure whether it's that I've never desired it more, or if I've never feared not having it more than now. Can't feel the difference. Always feeling the itch to write things in short, gasping sentences without an 'I'.

I wanna win so badly. I want to write something that could burn 'Trondheim' alive, roast it over a fire. A part of me wants that emotion because it's easy to think that that emotion will drive me to completely crush the competition, regardless of the quality of their works. But that's not how I feel now, and in some ways that's better, in other ways worse.

After the events of the past few months, I feel like I want to write a warmer kind of story, about love received rather than love chased. Funny that that's what's most on my mind, given everything that took place. But there it is. I do miss my friends in school, the ones I no longer talk to, the ones I don't talk to as frequently... Yet as much as I hope that I'll get to talk them again someday, I no longer yearn for it with that desperation of a person fearing death or total collapse. Something's changed. Indelibly. Irrevocably. Incredibly. Something's changed, and now I find I can stand, even when everything precious to me was scattered to ruins. I want to share it, but I don't know how. Making the leap to writing controlled, 5000 word (or less) stories was/is hard. Trying to write something that is not infused with emo/cynical/indifferent/jaded/ambivalent/hesitant/bewildered feelings, even more so. And to top it off, the temptation to douse one's work with ample amounts of nationalism and conflicted Singaporean identity is always weighing on me, clamoring to be heard.

Ambition without accomplishment. Dreams without desire. Half-existence of a soul without substance. The nightmare that can't be felt. Nor seen, nor heard, nor tasted or smelled.

Boiling blood and a fire burning within the bones. A hunger in the core of a soul I'd never bothered to know. I want to be filled with that blazing vitality I felt during HZ101, so that I wouldn't have to feel that I'm struggling through this, never knowing how it will end. And I know that that fire comes from being filled, filled by the works of others and the sight of their ambition and their swelling pride and their perverse, ravenous hunger for the prize.

Some people write for beauty, others for their idea of what a cultivated beauty means. Me? I gravitate easiest towards writing for glory, for the transfixing of hearts and minds. Yet something's telling me that that's not enough. I have to hunger without hungering, desire without coveting... Or something like that. I think I understand now that there is an optimum point/situation that every person has, where they can function as flawlessly and fervently as is possible for them. It's about knowing where our strengths and weaknesses lie, or something like that. Something like that. Sometimes it's all I can think of, to fill my writing and my FYP full of 'Somethings like that'. Cliches squeezed out like the shallow breaths of a dying, gasping man.

Breathe. Sleep.

Universe juice. Want.

Plots and Plans, Pots and Pans