Okay…I’ve been posting quite a bit recently, and I’m still trying to get used to the odd bit of inspiration popping up at inconvenient times, and making that creativity flow naturally. It feels like someone triggering some gigantic neon EUREKA! sign in my brain without my permission.
And I would like to say hello to my new readers and followers! *enthusiasticaly waves hand* It’s a first for me on the WordPress platform, getting amazingly warm responses to my writing, which has been very, very encouraging.
I should add here that I’ve never actually exhibited my work to anyone, apart from myself, the odd teacher, a few close friends (and a cousin who managed to find my admittedly convoluted stories in my closet, read through them and exclaiming,”You could try being a writer!”) while I was still in school. My Maths teacher echoed the same sentiments to my mum after receiving my GCE O’ Level results.”You know, you should get her to use her language skills, it would be a waste.”
I started writing as a kid for kicks, when I realized that it was infinitely easier to create something uniquely mine that no one could blatantly copy. This gradually evolved into an activity largely for self-entertainment, which might also have included some self-amusement. There wasn’t much money lying around for those new-fangled handheld game consoles, and any board games were largely a left-hand-vs-right hand-or-random-stuffed-toy affair (one-and-only kids should know what I’m getting at!), so the best option was to meander around in my imagination like a luxuriously lazy cat, and hastily jot them down on paper. Fantasy stories, short stories, diaries, letters…I tried my hand at writing a fantasy novel but stopped after realizing how hopelessly inept I was at writing love scenes. (To my readers: How do you go about writing one without blushing and embarrassing yourself?)
I stopped writing when I was studying in a polytechnic school, and it’s been an on-off affair ever since. I would start to write something, get frustrated while trying to work a plot out, and then subsequently get plagued by the nasty gnome of self-doubt (an infamous patron saint of Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky). I just shrugged, and stopped, thinking I probably had lost my touch.
And then one fine day last month, my mum happens to pick a book up from one of those book-sharing shelves in the vicinity. “Look, it’s about astrology,” she titters, and I take it home to read. I get my natal chart online, and after countless Googling about planets, houses, aspects and chart patterns I am struck by its accuracy: an apparent super-secretive introvert who hides her work away from people’s prying eyes, because she doubts her capabilities.
Three natal planets (Sun, Moon, Mercury in Libra) in the 12th house, with Mercury conjunct Venus, Sun conjunct Venus…And Sun Rising. And a stellium of Saturn, Uranus and Neptune in Capricorn in the 3rd house. Pluto in Scorpio in the 1st house. Yikes.
Then a small voice chirps in my head,”Look, it’s always been there, why not have a little more faith in yourself and try again, goddamnit?”
And so here I am, trying my damnedest to spin up ornate literary pictures, hoping that they are not beautiful just for the sake of aesthetics or empty poetry, and hoping that people will read them, savour their meanings and interpret them in vastly different ways, and hopefully learn something new in the process, or gain a new perspective…or…just appreciate beauty In its own merit.
So…to my readers again: How did you get into writing? What makes your creative juices flow like the Amazon River? Do you write in a notebook, or do you jot them down in an app, like me…or do you have other methods? And are you into astrology? Looking forward to hearing from you in the comments!
June Korea: “Many people are interested in the project and my life because it has to do with such an uncanny subject matter they have rarely seen. However, Eva and I are metaphors – metaphors of our emotions and relationships with humans, cats, dogs, A.I.s, and people living in this lonely world. I hope viewers to find deeper meanings hidden underneath such metaphors, rather than just focusing on the subjects themselves. In the artificial eternity I constructed, I hope for myself and viewers who are struggling with different types of emotions everyday, that we can find more meaning by sharing stories of the solitude in our lives.”
Zelda Reville 