Hazia’s Reflections

I went through my usual routine this morning with my mind heavy from the thought that I had to get some work done over the weekend. Just after finishing breakfast at my favourite weekend place, suddenly it clicked that I’d forgotten something. I looked at my phone clock, it was 11.05am. I was 5 minutes late for a session with the Prince of Darkness (POD) at the bookstore upstairs! Yeah, I found out about it months ago and had it engraved on memory. So confident was I that I won’t forget that I even didn’t set my alarm. Little that I knew, when the time came, I’d be so over burden with work.

Well, the session was only 2 escalators up and based on Malaysian time, I was a bit early, LOL! I didn’t recognise the author but I recognised his hat. I’ve been following his blog and reading his books. It was good to finally meet him in person. I thought he was a bit too cautious and guarded though, probably worried about saying the wrong things, offending people, etc. This is Malaysia after all.

I was surprised to find my co-author there too. He was a guest speaker for a story he contributed for another book. A shrewd marketing person, he smoothly took the opportunity to casually introduced me and mentioned our book. LOL! By then, the POD’s memory was already ‘jerked’ and he remembered me posting comments on his blog and that I was a blogger, he probably got tracked to my blog by my visit. He had no idea how ‘anonymous’ my blog is, or rather was. LOL!

A reviewer of our book turned up and greeted me, one of the few who favoured my stories over my 2 co-authors’. He said that I could be nostalgic without being sentimental, whatever that means. He also said I have a fresh, distinctive writing style. Positive comments are nice to hear but one has to be realistic. Fresh style maybe, but I know my writing style is nowhere near distinct as yet. I’m still experimenting and playing around. LOL!

Solo Effort…

I decided to share 5 of my new stories with my instructor on Thursday. To my horror, after reading 2, he replied and said they needed much more work. Gasp! He asked me to drop by whenever I could and I did that just now.

The first one was my humourous hotel story, Preserved, which had already been shared with a writing group and edited by another author cum creative writing lecturer. The second one was a psychotic thriller, Nose Job, which several people liked and said was very different from everything else that I’ve written.  My instructor wasn’t that easily pleased though. His comments for the 2 were the same:

1) The story wasn’t convincing, I didn’t let the plot develop naturally. The twist in Preserved sounds forced and predictable.

2) I did not know the 2 main characters well

He said I rushed through the stories and should slow down and take a breather. They had so much potential. I shouldn’t show my stories to anybody until I’m really satisfied. He thought my commenters were too polite, and I stop re-writing and re-writing further because of that. I should be my own worst critic. He asked to focus on the story only at the moment, and forget about writing style.

Wow! There is a lot of thinking & re-writing to do. Nevertheless, I think after I’m done, the standard is going to be really high. Come on, these comments came from a man who thought that my co-author hasn’t got a distinct style yet, but said he was still much, much better than all the local master storytellers of his genre out there. My instructor stressed that he doesn’t publish kindergarten standard stuff & this is not a school project. LOL!