The #StrangeLit Struggle, Conquered

Yep, you read that right, folks. All the sleepless nights have paid off because as of 4-ish in the morning today, I have officially turned in my #StrangeLit manuscript! *insert canned applause here*

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Now to be completely honest, I didn’t think it would happen. Somewhere along the way, I’d already thought of throwing in the towel and cheering everyone else on Twitter, but I’m really glad I decided to soldier on and put in several hundred words per day until my story’s roadblocks were cleared by a goddamn motorcycle. I’ll probably elaborate on that someday, maybe when the book bundles have come out and are accessible to readers–that’s going to happen really soon, and I’m really excited!–but for now let me save that story for another day and tell you all about what I learned in this class.

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Finding my way back home

I think I was in pre-school when I first fell in love with the performing arts. My mother was a Whitney Houston fan who would always play her cassette tapes at home, and I learned to sing most of her songs by listening to them over and over. I was in kindergarten when I joined my first singing contest–The Greatest Love of All, anyone?–and since then I’ve kind of found my way back on stage every so often, even when I’d transferred schools at thirteen. There were stage plays, dance competitions, instrumental performances, and everything else in between that made it so natural for me to be affiliated with anything connected to performing arts.

Being able to stand in front of an appreciative audience is, in itself, its own high. I remember being up there dancing, representing my school as a member of the St. Scholastica’s College High School Dance Club and feeling so inexplicably happy hearing people cheer wholeheartedly. It’s kind of addictive, actually, in that I recall feeling sad whenever I don’t get picked to perform for certain events because my skills weren’t at par with the others that were chosen. But after a while, I realized that working behind the scenes also had its perks and one need not be in the limelight all the time to feel fulfilled.

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A little more than peeved

Don’t you just love positivity? Don’t you just appreciate waking up every morning to a loving family, having meal/s with them, going to work and meet awesome, hardworking people (with whom you get stressed over job-related things with), and then coming back home to a nice warm bed, maybe curling up to read a book or watch something you like? Wouldn’t it be nice if life were this hassle-free all the time, or most of the time at least?

Yeah. It would be really nice, but you know what? We can’t all be that lucky.

(A lot of ranting after the jump, so if you’re not in the mood to get annoyed or feel bad today, I suggest you don’t click it. This is just for me to release all the rage building up inside my chest over the past several weeks. Again, don’t click if you don’t feel like getting negative energy on you. Deal?)

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Backtracking a bit: My #SparkNA journey

It’s been almost a month since the #SparkNA writing workshop came to a close, and I never really got around to writing about the experience–or I did, but in increments over the past few months–because 1) things got crazy at work, and; 2) I think I’m still in denial that it had already ended.

During our second and last face-to-face class on the 6th of June, our mentor, Mina, asked us to answer three questions: What went right? What went wrong? And: What’s next?

It’s funny how most of our responses were very similar; I guess it’s true what they say about birds of the same feather, haha. Anyway, I think this whole experience merits another round of . . .

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끝. Wakas. The End.

I am a writer who dislikes writing endings.

Which is kind of weird, right? As a writer, I should feel happy about getting to the end of my story. It’s an achievement, something to be celebrated, even in the simplest of ways. And yet, during the past few years I’ve realized a trend when I’m about to close a work of fiction: I stall.

Two or three chapters away from my ending, I stop looking at my manuscript altogether. I read or reread books, think of new stories to write, watch dramas or films . . .  I do anything to keep myself from writing those last few chapters, and all because I’ve gotten attached to my characters and don’t want to let them go yet.

It’s probably not a good thing, what I do, but hey . . . I’m pretty sure we all have our own quirks. I almost did the same routine with my #SparkNA novella, but I had a deadline to beat this time, and maybe that’s one of the reasons why I joined this class in the first place: to learn to discipline myself as a writer.

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