The world he now saw, waves of canvassed white endlessly piled up to the furthest corner of the universe, must had been like this ever since the time God uttered “Let there be light.”
Dear friends,
My new year resolution was to write more: a short excerpts of diary everyday, letters to bomb you guys once in a while, and a short story a month to a magazine. So far, I’m still in the game, hanging.
Writing has not been easy for me. It’s a different language. And I often come up with wrong spelling, grammar mistakes or erroneous usage with super-pretentious vocabularies and complicated sentence structure intended to sound sophisticated and intellectual but results in ridiculously laughable outcomes resembling the case of a man using thesaurus way too much, which is in fact, the case. All that could easily discourage a man, but I send it out anyway. As embarrassing as it is, my theory is that, yeah, I kinda suck at this, but if I keep trying, maybe I’ll get better, even if just a little bit; but if I don’t, I’ll just stay this way, forever, and that’s kinda of frightening.
I started writing this short story on Dec, 22 last year. When I finished, all I wanted to do was to delete everything and not to look at a computer screen ever again. It's so disheartening to realize that I am so not talented that the experience seemed even harmful to my health. But slowly, I’m getting a little better with the next month’s story, and I am starting to discover so much fun for writing fiction, even for no one in particular.
Last week, I finally got the long expected rejection letter from the magazine, it’s no surprise, I wouldn’t even consider publishing the story had I a paper of my own. But I like the feeling that there’s still so much to fight for.
I first heard about the expedition on the Discovery podcast. I wrote the Chinese short story in 2008. And decided to come up with an English version of it because I had no idea for my first story of my new year’s resolution for January. Later while I was doing a little research online, I found out that I quoted most of the story, even the exact name of the operation leader, Russell, from memory. I changed the story a little bit. To me, the dialogue is simply weird, trying too much to sound real, and the flow is awkward, and nothing is new really. The style, if at all, is confusing, something between a high school play and abandoned drafts for a thriller script. The intern that’s hired to filter unnecessary messages to the editor must be thinking ‘oh, good, a school boy wrote in’ when he/she looked into the mailbox and sighed at the mails crowding in. As sympathetic as I am, sorry mate, that’s not gonna stop me.
Please advice and comment on it. My next rejection is due in another two weeks. Meanwhile, the show goes on.
Preview- Blocks
Jimmy was now on his knees in a middle of a park with a penny in his left palm. A little girl with a dirty yet innocent face came and smiled at him.
“That penny ‘twas mine.” The girl said.
Dead leaves were rained down on the grass. Jimmy did not move. The girl took the penny and capered away on the green. Jimmy looked around and recognized civilization. He then crawled Mulberry Street up the silk road leaving thin threads behind him.
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