i had this little collaboration with an artist for a little sort of a magazine, where i provided the story, while she came out with the illustrations.

during our interaction, once i commented that i really admired and perhaps envied artists a bit. because they can draw very nice pictures, with many different kinds of expressions, ranging from happy to angry to disappointment to sadness. if you know how to draw, an artist could invoke the emotion of the audience. sadly to say, i am far far away from that.

in reply, she told me, that writers are in the same way amazing too. in that they can make a person cry with only words. in short, writers manipulate a reader's emotion with words. as a person who love to read, i usually let my emotions go with the flow of the story. but of course, i always know that i am reading a story, and fictions and real life has no link. all fans of fictions would probably know this, that to enjoy a story in its full measure you have to immerse yourself in it, and go along with the emotions.

sadly to say, i only have made my proof-reader go emo once, and not made any person cry. hahahaha. she was supposed to be my proof-reader for the whole length of my little 'novel', which was supposed to be updated every week. but due to my laziness (excuses such as exams and work are just nonsense, i admit that) the update has been slow. although now everything is back to normal. well, my proof-reader, i guessed she was only excited for a moment, and after reading the whole length of my story, and doing a little editing here and there, she lost interests and went off. lol.

anyway, talking to a friend today about the stories i posted made me suddednly realized, that i got a few hundred pages, well actually only about 250 pages(?) of texts (arial 12 font size in microsoft word with no spacing or whatsoever) which i had written (most of them are part of the novel which storyline extended far far away compared to what i posted) that i had not posted.

well perhaps i should not be lazy and start writing again. afterall, recently i have been addicted to reading again and spent whole days reading when i should be doing other things. i was supposed to practise my drawing skills, and to try to complete the novel which ending i had already conceptualized more than a year ago. haix.

for now, let me go back to reading. in preparation for the after-exams holidays, i stocked up stories which would at least last me 200 hours of continuous reading to at least see some hope in finishing them. i don't do speed-reading, since it only allows me to know what is going on in the story instead of enjoying the story, therefore spoiling the story. but i think my speed is much faster than most of my friends though. well in short, i really really stocked up on books and stories to read.

die. i spent my last holidays playing games. i think i will spend this holiday reading. addiction is win. and give in to temptations my money ~~ ~~ there goes my hard-earned money...

the moral of the story?

give in to temptations do everything in moderation

after a period of pondering, a decision was made regarding the release of short stories in the near future. well, those who went to the stories section would know, that there has been an inactivity in that blog for quite some time.

this decemeber, pencil leads is going to resume posting the long story again. well, hopefully. most probably, assuming nothing serious crops up. so for those of you who read it, kindly check back again when december comes.

also, regarding the short stories, both of us have decided to base our stories around a certain theme. it has been decided that it will be around the so-called 7 sins - wrath, lust, sloth, pride, greed, envy and gluttony.

both of us will of course, write out 7 stories (hopefully), each tagging with one of the sins, in our own unique styles. it will be a mini-competition to see who can write better, given restrictions. for now, it has been set that the the competition will officially end at june 2010. meaning to say, an average of 1 story per month, lasting 7 months. average, meaning to say i can have no post for the first 6 months and 7 posts in the last month. well this is extreme, but i am sure you get the idea.

well, to some of you it might be too long of a time. but we are not full time writers. work, studies, as well as our social activities and our hobbies take up much of our time too.

in any case, i certainly do hope that everything will go well and that readers will enjoy the stories. in the meantime, pencil leads will also continue to work on the long story, trying to catch up the time lost due to laziness.

pink pencil

in the past, when i read stories, i just read and enjoyed them, without thinking much about it. it was only when i started writing my own (perhaps not so good) stories that i realized, that, in the stories that authors / writers wrote, they usually contain the dreams, the feelings and the wishes they had.

not feelings about the stories, or dreams about the characters. they reflect the dreams they have in their real life, the feelings they experienced in reality. perhaps, with nowhere else to express it, they turned to stories.

and one thing i discovered, is that more than anybody else, writers want a world of fairytale. perhaps, among all the people in the world, those who wished for a life of fantasy and fairytales are writers. their desires are so strong that they have to write them down and put it in word or picture form (for mangaka and comic artists). or perhaps, there are people even more 'dreamy' than us writers, just that we have the talent to put them down into words.

i once commented about the drawings of an artist, saying that she (as well as the rest) was very good, able to create such fantastic piece of art just by drawing lines. in reply, she commented that we writers have the ability to make people cry using nothing but words. aww i haven't reached that level of mastery yet.

the above paragraph was definitely and absolutely out of track.

we want a life of fairytale so much, that we create stories to match it. yet at the same time, you would have realized that the characters in the stories always wished for one very simple thing. to live an ordinary life. from japanese books like the haruhi series, the famous trilogy lord of the rings, back to japanese manga like getbackers... i realized that books of fantasies always carry this concept with them

that for all the troubles and tragedies the characters in the stories go through, they just want a simple life. to complain about the school life, to emo over romantic relationship problems, to grumble about an unpleasant boss, to fret about school results. you do realize now, right? that these little yet unattainable dreams of the characters are what we experienced everyday as ordinary humans. by ordinary humans i mean, we dont live in a war zone, born with the HIV virus in africa, or a starving kid in india. not that i mean the people are abnormal. just that all these are not the ordinary life that we know of.

in a way, you would also have noticed that the authors themselves live in such a lifestyle. we authors and writers, well maybe you should just call us story-tellers, wished for such an alternate reality so much we began spinning stories about it. yet as if it is a consolation to us who could never ever step out of this reality that we know of, simply because we live in such a reality and we are not God, we created the stories in such a way that our ordinary lives are the wishes of these fairytales.

we wished for a fairytale, yet created a fairytale which looked upon our lives as a fairytale.

is it a futile attempt for us to be content with the lives we had? it feels funny, now that me too, planned my stories in such a manner. what a big contradiction. is it funny or is it sad? that for all the work we put in, we put a final line at the end that says, 'hey! your ordinary life that you are living everyday is actually a blessing!'

of course we heard that line in the past so many times, yet we writers have to find such a roundabout way to convince ourselves. maybe, me too, am convincing myself.

or maybe, these are the thoughts of one writer who deviated from the main stream. or perhaps, these really are also the thoughts of most story-tellers elsewhere in the world, if not all.

what... a contradiction. dreaming about the impossible, and then creating the impossible in a way that the 'ordinary' we have is the impossible in the impossible that we dream of.

listening to : caged bird, by 宮本 駿一

what a fitting song i am listening to while writing such a post.