The meekfreak banner

Had wanted to write an explanation on the Banner photo at meekfreak for sometime. The significance/symbolism of clouds against the blue sky:

- of imagination: imagining the clouds are of etc etc shapes...
- of surrealism: the blue sky to me - and to some of the surrealists - are representative of the surrealist movement. It's like how the simpsons opens their credits with the white clouds and blue sky.
- of an elephant: I don't know why so coincidental, I think this crop of the clouds shows an elephant at the back. If you don't know, I collect figurines of elephants and adopt it on many occasions as my "emblem" should I need one.
- of a little boy/girl with rabbit/donkey ears: can you see him? in the foreground, in the side profile, with his/her face resting on his little hands and sorta turned to talk to the elephant. So i think it's also representative of my stories with the little meekfreaks characters I write about - the little boy/girl characters with an odd quality or two.
- of jasperware: jasperware's the pottery kinda thing with white patterns against often blue background. The white fonts against that particular blue, reminds me of jasperware that i seen in my childhood and the adults told me not to touch cos it's expensive. I like them cos they are fragile and pretty and delicate. Sometimes, i try to re-create that feeling in my writing. the precision, the delicate elegant depictions.

When I took this picture, it was for the first 2 reasons listed above, but as I was working on it, then the other things came about. so, actually, i like the picture a lot.

Lately, i've been wondering if i should change my meekfreak's name to something less of a mouthful than "chattering matterings of the original meekfreak" and been toying with the idea of "rebranding" - changing my banner etc... but i think that the banner is really quite apt and I wonder if i should change it for the sake of changing.

I also think about writing more things to explain about my book and the deliberation behind some things, but i think it's significantly less important as compared to actually creating new work.

A poem - Hm

Hm. was written tonight. I spent about 1-2 hours on it, and I think poems are very time-inefficient to write. Very little words, but require a lot of thoughts about line breaks and editing and precision of words, perhaps because there's so few of them.

Actually, I don't think free verses written in fairly simple language, like this one, is a real poem. But for reference's sake i call it a poem. It's like I don't think charles bukowshi writes real poems - because I seem to get a pretty clear idea from the first reading. When i studied literature at A-levels, the best i got with just the first reading was a pretty blur idea.

Anyhoos. Let me share with you more on my romantic evening. I reached home early, and before and after dinner sat in my room (which I just re-organised) on a seat in from of my window, with the lights off and just watching the night sky and stars. The dog star - in a familiar position - I remember past years around this time when i wasn't working and wondering about the meaning of life - I watched the star rise into the sky.

I watched the aeroplanes fly by - it must be a busy night with lots of flights chartered or something. And then small clouds rolled by. Could see them - low-hanging- and lit by the city lights - orangey dark grey against orangey black night.
The night breeze stroking my cheek. Cool breeze. It's august, are the north winds blowing again? that's very soon. i thought it had just left us not too long ago.

The neighbour carries the baby at home walking around at home. Another neighbour sitting on the floor of her room.

A bat flies around quickly. The tree in that corner looked different - don't remember that there was a tree that height around there last year. Did it grow so fast? Wondered if it was a coral tree. I like coral trees. But I doubt so. If i could own trees, i would want to. But then again, maybe trees shouldn't be owned.

My mother reminded me that she bought fruits and I unabashedly took the last flat peach and washed and broke into half and ate at my window seat. It's so nice and sweet and cool and juicy. Nice complement to the nightwatch.

The lizard outside the window tsked loudly. The dog star rose higher into the sky.

I wanted to write down these thoughts but to be casual like the above, but it's probably something i've probably written before. This relaxed sentiment is not new so just rambling would not be new because rambling is easy to write. Something abstract? Written something like that before too. So... just wrote what I wrote and it got edited into it's present form. I honestly wonder if the "hm"s are very jarring, and don't think it's a very relaxed piece after all. Well, it's experimental, i suppose.

If you've got the time, effort, and point of view, pls tell me what you think.

Trivial - Watch out!

Watch out! was inspired by my friends at work talking about shit and tapeworms over lunch. So they said they were fed with some "tapeworm medication" when they were young. But they didn't have tapeworms, because they didn't shit any out.

me: what do you mean you didn't shit any out?
them: apparently if you have worms, and you took the medicine, you wld shit it out.
me: how wld you know if you shat it out?
them: cos you can see the worms if you shit it out.
me: omg. you mean you go and see?
them: no lar no lar... you're young mah, but they say lar... cos kids shit in spittoons, and if the worms are shitted out, you can easily see...
me: omg, you mean you can see the worms? as in they're moving?
them: yah! they'd crawl out.
me: then it's like someone go and see the shit they just shit then he'd exclaim "OMG my shit is alive!!!"

then i think that's very funny, so i wrote a modified story on that line.

But i think it's a bit different afterall, i think a moving lump of shit is actually a very much funnier visual spectacle. so maybe I'd write another story about that next time. like an actual live moving lump/piece of shit...

Words in my mouth - Funnel

Funnel was written yesterday after being let known that somebody "put some words in my mouth" - ie. say that I said something I never said.

I wanted to write something to convert the feeling of frustration into positive creative tension or something like that. True enough, it resulted in some strange moderated, not so pek chek kind of ending.

And in my frenzy, i put it up on this blog instead of the meekfreak at first. :P so i correct it now.

Debit notes = invoice / note informing that I owe people money.

Article on aspiring - mangaka & writers club

Wrote an article for some people at the "aspiring mangaka & writers club" to share my experiences on self-publishing. Might well post it up here too - to share with my regulars? and to clock 1 more posting so I don't feel unaccomplished for not posting anything for so long.

i even thought about splitting it up into 2 postings cos it's so long...

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Hello, how are you?

A few months back I received an email from moon to share on my experiences of writing and self-publishing a book. I was excited to find a community of like-minded Singaporeans and flattered to be asked to write an article. I asked her what I should write about, and she said pretty much anything. Then I asked her how long should the article be. Then she said it’s pretty much up to me. It’s been hard trying to decide what to focus on – writing and/or self-publishing, to me, is very complicated. So, I thought perhaps I could share broadly about how it’s complicated. It is, perhaps, something that I wish I sorted out for myself earlier, and I hope that the brief outline that follows will be helpful to you.

To me, writing (or whatever it is that I want to do) is at least complicated in two aspects. Firstly, there’s the technical aspect of doing things – the “HOW” of getting things done. How to write, what to write, when to write… How to spell a certain word, what is grammatically correct… How to work what software, what is typography, how to design the cover, what shall I put on the cover… and the list goes on and on. Effort must be dedicated to researching, studying/learning, doing, reviewing or editing… I had wanted to do everything myself (including writing to laying out to publicity) because I wanted to have control over all these details, it was important to know what I needed to learn so that I could do what I wanted to do… and how much time and effort each phase (e.g. learning, training, doing phases) would take so that I can allocate my time and energy accordingly.

The second aspect is the psychological or philosophical aspect of things – the “WHY” and reason behind wanting to get things done. In some ways, I think this aspect is often less considered, although it is as important as technical competency, if not more important. This is simply because I could have used the time I spent on writing to do many other things. Similarly, everyone could spend his efforts on doing anything, for example, on doing other things, like studying harder, or doing something for his parents. Why do I want to spend the effort to edit my stories again and again and again, when it gets boring and tedious and trying? Why do I want to do what I want to do? Why do I write?

Understanding this was important to sustain my self-motivation. And even though I always gave different answers to different people asking me about my self-publishing project, it helps when I have the real reasons and motivation firmly establish in my mind. This also prevents me from being hurled into a whirlpool of self-doubt whenever someone asks about what I’m up to, having given up a cushy job, facing zero security with no income, etc.

I recommend putting together a “scrap-book” of why you do what you want to do, so that it’s convenient when you need reminding. It also helped me to have explained my motivations clearly to my closest friends and family members, so that they could better appreciate my pursuit, and helped to remind me, or at least, don’t question me too much.

On this, I recommend reading “Why I write” by George Orwell. You can probably find the full text online or neatly summarized in wiki here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_I_Write. Broadly, Orwell discussed 4 motives behind writing and it can kind of get philosophical. Whilst Orwell’s personal reasons did not always apply exactly to me, I generally related to the 4 motives and it greatly helped me organise for myself “why I write”.

In this way, I should think that every individual would have to figure it out for himself, why he writes, or why she draws, or acts, or dances, or become a lawyer or teacher, or whatever it is that he does or wants to do. This is because everyone is different and have differing background, etc, thus everyone’s motivation differs. Which brings me to my next point, writing, to me, is very personal and that it’s SO personal that it complicates things even further. (This is something that I really wish to have been warned about earlier.)

Say for example, taking in other’s criticism or feedback on my work. Because it’s personal, I can’t help emotionally reacting to these inputs and feel bad or upset or happy or proud, and my emotional and psychological reactions would affect how I might assess the criticisms and applying them constructively. On bad days, my psychological reactions to my work – whether I’m good enough to write or not, blah blah – it can even hinder me from writing altogether.

But say then, on the other hand, if I didn’t take my writing personally at all, i.e. I took it totally from the objective point of view, then would I take other people’s opinion or feedback more easily and improve my competencies faster? Yet if I didn’t take my writing personally, then what would I be writing for and what’s the point of improving anything?

Ugh, so how?

I don’t know of a better way, but I try to balance when to treat my writing personally and when to be objective. For example, I treat it personally when I must motivate myself (or put my personal point of view into my stories, but that’s calls for a different discussion). I treat it objectively when I must critique and edit my work, and I find it helps pushing towards higher standards. And this balancing-personal-or-objective-act is difficult. For myself, it demands more self-control, self-awareness, and self-discipline than is required to overcome all the technical complexities combined together.

And I suspect if I didn’t harness the power of how writing is personal, then I wouldn’t have enough energy to complete my project. If I don’t manage to keep it tame, I would not have the energy or self-confidence to continue writing (find my stuff on meekfreak.blogspot.com). Aside, I think “You’ve got mail”, the movie starring Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks, illustrates the difference between taking something personally, or not, quite well.

Okay, I hope my sharing helps.

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Kurt Vonnegut - Sometimes, life is like that.

This story was based on this picture of Kurt Vonnegut :


which is currently my computer wall paper. Thus, the story.

For those who don't know him. He's a writer of funny stories. If I were to have a writer-idol, it'd be him. Although i never read much of his stories. (i'm stupid like that.) Also, i learnt the term "scatological" from his wiki site. which means:

sca·tol·o·gy (sk-tl-j, sk-)

n. pl. sca·tol·o·gies

1. The study of fecal excrement, as in medicine, paleontology, or biology.

2.

a. An obsession with excrement or excretory functions.

b. The psychiatric study of such an obsession.

3. Obscene language or literature, especially that dealing pruriently or humorously with excrement and excretory functions.

He died from complications resulting from falling down the stairs.

I never wrote about ghosts before this (or at least never published any here, i think) though i often wld write about pple in my imagination etc. i suppose its a breakthru too, in that sense. And i thought better publish it before the 7th lunar month is here.

On "sometimes, life is like that" - this is gary's retort/reply to me to many of my questions (sometimes mundane, sometimes existential) and there's just too much greatness and truth in that not to shut up to it.

On "life is never fair, what" - it's something i always bene wanting to put in a story, actually i wrote an epilogue to "All the people imagine", but it was too violent and I didn't include it in the end. It was about how to be borned a girl = already unfair. Because i think women got the tougher lot in life, having to give birth and menstruate, etc.

Okay. that's enough trivial for a post.

(Link back to story. Which btw is usually the link from the first word of each sneak post.)