Being A Young Writer

No, I'm not referring to myself as a young writer. I truly believe that I am one of the older writers in the fanfiction-verse. I was referring to a fanfiction that I was reading recently. Um... at point of writing, it has been many months. I finished reading that fanfiction a few months back, before I went on hiatus.

I won't go into too much of history and dive straight into the topic. I came across this fanfiction and thought that the summary of the story was quite interesting, so I decided to read it. Nowadays, to be committed to a story takes a lot out of me, and I'm not referring to writing my stories. I'm talking about reading the fanfiction of others.

The story is about the protagonist who was thought of as weak and useless (quite in line with the canon storyline). He has a twin brother (original character) who was better than the protagonist in many ways, even though he is horrible. Unknown to many, the protagonist lives a dual-life. His alter ego is a master assassin.

Sounds interesting, no?

The author was thirteen at the point of writing. I must say... Wow. To write and get yourself published online... it takes a lot of guts. It took me a few months to write my first chapter (which is "Romeo and Juliet in Balamb Garden") and many more months after that to ask my friends to read them. And that was when I was 15.

It probably also meant that younger people are less aware of what they are actually publishing.

So as I'm reading this fanfiction, my brain began to go from, "I can't wait for this story to tell me what it's about!" to "O----kay. I'll give this story another chance for the next five chapters." to "What is really happening?"

I can't tell you how bad it is without spoiling the story content or revealing the title. In fact, I'm pretty sure that I was really bad at my first chapter too. Unfortunately, I threw away my old drafts in disgust. ("Romeo and Juliet in Balamb Garden" is updated about six years ago because I could not stand how bad it was.) So I'll never know. I don't want to know then anymore too!

I'm not here to tear bridges and make fun of fellow fanfic authors. However, I can, very vaguely, tell you what are some of the things that happened that I did not like in another post, another time. Today, that's not my agenda. In case you are wondering, I really did give reviews and I was honest with her about her writing, but not done harshly. I pointed out what could be strengthened and she (the humble, lovely person she is) willingly accepted my comments and thanked me for taking my time to give feedback. Wow. That's good attitude there. I could always be a more thankful writer to my readers so there's something commendable in her attitude :)

Being a young writer is really something to be proud of. In my country where writing is often met with groans and complaints from students, I feel excited to see someone who is into writing fiction. More so if the person is a young person. I hope that that young fanfic writer will meet more people who will help her to become a better writer.

It took me many years to improve my writing. Truth is, fanfiction.net is not exactly the best place to improve because everyone is nice and they won't be able to give feedback anything more than grammar. I am also guilty of the same thing too. I am bad at giving comments to improve my fellow writers. However, let's do our best to help each other. After all, we are all in this because we like writing. Let's not make this a horrible experience for anyone.

Okay. I need to sleep. My opinions are a little muddled up because of my fatigue.

Of drawings and such

I was talking to a friend of mine just a while ago. She's a really talented artist but she said that she can't draw people very well. So that kinda reminded me of myself when I was a kid.

You may have heard me mention that I've watched anime and manga at a young age. What you wouldn't know was that I was really influenced by it. For the record, the very very first few anime that I watched were bits of Sailormoon and Ranma 1/2.

Anyway, it got me so into it that when I was in Primary 6, I tried drawing my own manga. I got caught for it by my parents and was scolded because I was not concentrating on my final exam (good ol' PSLE). When I went to secondary school, or middle school as some people would call it, I met a good friend and we started drawing together; showing each other's work when we were done. With her encouragement, I tried drawing another manga and guess what? I managed to finish one and a half chapters, yo.

Ah, good ol' days. I didn't last long though. It was one fine morning after my O' Levels that I realised that I wasn't quite cut out for drawing. I could only draw figures in a particular angle and they look pretty static. Furthermore, I. totally. suck. at. backgrounds. and perspectives. and the list goes on. The shame. I am too embarrassed to even look at my pictures now.

I lost contact with my friend after o' levels but the last time I checked, she was still drawing. Awesome.

With that, my drawing days crashed pretty quickly. Since that moment when I told myself that I wasn't cut out for drawing, I totally stopped. Nowadays, my drawings are just limited to cutesy animals and etc to make little children happy.

However, through that experiment, I realised that I was more interested in the other aspect of manga-making... the storyline.

And the rest, my friends, is history.

Celebrations are in order...

First of all, it was Meia's birthday about 4 days ago, so happy birthday Meia Etsky! I'm so glad and proud of how she had turned out after all those nonsense and brainstorming. I'm so glad that you felt that she was a wonderful OC and that she had tugged on your heartstrings more than once. She is indeed, a special one, because I've put in so much effort and work in shaping her to become who she is.

Next, I realised that this year would be my 10th year since I've started writing fanfiction. Like, gee. In fact, according to Fanfiction, 20th of October 2004 was my first chapter, ever. Considering that I have never read any fanfiction prior to that? The date would be pretty accurate. So I'm about 2 months late, but I wanted to celebrate nevertheless.

Finally, in my personal life, there is something worth celebrating too. I'm happy that I'm moving on to the next stage of my life and may the new commitments not lead me too far away from fanfiction writing.

What are the celebrations? Honestly, I did not make myself really do something. I have the intention of opening something to drink after Days of Exile is fully uploaded, but we'll see :) Well, I've been taking a break, reading manga to my heart's content, and writing really slowly... if you consider THAT a suitable celebration. Hehe.

Don't worry, I assure you that "Days of Exile" will continue uploading till the end.

Workshop: Fiction Writing (Part 1)

I went to a writing workshop a few weeks ago. To those who are clueless, here is the details of that workshop. You may need to click on the image to have a larger view.

If you remember my previous post, I was talking about how afraid I was to meet other writers because of my background as a fanficion writer. Turns out that I was too paranoid about it.

The workshop was amazing. Well, I think it's kinda rude to disclose what I've learnt. I think that it's best to the facilitators at the workshop. At most, I'll give some kind of remark rather than a detailed  So if you are here, expecting some kind of crash course, well, you're not going to get it, sorry :(

Firstly, we did a self-introduction. I was the second one in the line, so I had to make quick decisions. Should I just keep quiet? Or kick myself in the shins and jump into the fire? Well, I made the latter choice.

"Hi, I'm aichioluv, and I'm... I'm a closet fanfiction writer."

No one really reacted. Do they even know what is fanfiction? My facilitator, however, chuckled, though not in a bad way (I hope). So I continued.

"I'm here (in this workshop) because I want to see what I'm lacking in my writing, which should be a lot. And I want to see how I can improve in my writing."

Yup, my self-introduction went by smoothly. Not angry mob of nay-sayers, no pitch forks, nothing. Yes yes yes, I was overreacting, I admit. But seriously, I know the general reputation of fanfiction being completely unoriginal (duh, it's fanfiction!) and substandard. Of course I worry. It was absolutely liberating, my confession. After that, I felt less concerned, for some reason. No one judged me, at least they did not say it out.

I really enjoyed the workshop and I've picked up some tips for improvement. If I really had to nitpick, I wished that we had gone more in depth. Maybe analyse author's works and discuss how we can use their awesomeness to improve ourselves. Hmm, is it even legal?

Apart from that, I'm simply glad that the workshop delivered what it needed to deliver. Here are some of the things that I've discovered and rediscovered during the workshop.

1. I had no idea I have an inner critic.
At the start of the workshop, we were supposed to dismiss our inner critic. I was thinking, "What inner critic? I will be happy enough if I was more critical of my work." Due to everyone from fanfiction.net being so nice and friendly, even if I had any mistakes, they may put it in such a roundabout way... or maybe they did not even notice.

Then, I remembered. Once upon a time, I received a painfully honest review for one of my earlier works. In his/her defense, I'm super grateful for that review because it gave me a good reality slap on my face. Unoriginal as it may be, fanfiction is, obviously, works and characters created by the original author. To make characters out of their character is kind of an insult to the author, in my opinion now. So I'm glad that that reviewer was honest enough to tell me.

That being said, since then I was ever so cautious in my planning and I try to be real critical with myself - especially with character portrayal. Sometimes, I feel exceedingly frustrated when I can't illustrate certain personalities the way I imagined it to be. I guess that could be my inner critic trying to giving my ideas 'friendly reminders' back to oblivion.

So, I do have an inner critic. Never thought about that. While it's good to have a certain standard for yourself, it is just as important to ignore the internal naysayers and write what YOU want to write.

2. I've pushed myself out of the box.
I guess I really surprised myself there. Not that I am a really good fantasy/adventure writer in the first place, but I never considered making characters more than what I was comfortable with. In the end, I thought of things and ideas that were sort of out of my usual style. At least, what was what I tried to do. I did try to make one of the characters in an exercise a failed comedian, but I guess even the function of a failed comedian failed on me. *sigh* humour was never my strong point. Nevertheless, I was glad that I tried to do something slightly different. Turns out that I could so it if I really try.

I'll continue another time!

Details of workshop were taken from here.

Happy New Year!

I don't know what time it is in your countries, but it's already 4 PM into the new year. I told myself that I would do a end-of-year reflection before the new year but... I got sleepy and I went to bed after counting down.

2013 had been a good year for me, at least for the first half of the year. I continued Days of Exile faithfully... I had new plot bunnies (though no time to produce them)... I had opportunities to write in my workplace... Even though the second half of the year was rocky for me, I was glad that I persevered. Days of Exile is (possibly) reaching an end but who's to say what will happen in 2014? No one is the wiser.

What's in store for 2014? I can't be too sure actually. Days of Exile is currently reaching the crossroads in its development. Everything will be revealed in due time, but for now, I'm still at loss in my decision. All I can say is... hang in there, everyone. Depending on the direction of Days of Exile, I may release some new stories, but no guarantee, of course.

The biggest challenge for me yet, would be the things happening in my life outside the writing world. My workload has increased and in my personal life, there are new commitments. Perhaps even finding a day in a month to shut everything out and just focus on writing will prove to be hard to do this year.

Nevertheless, I'm not giving up. I'm enjoying the entire writing journey. I'm not ready to give it all up. Till the day I know I have to abandon this and move on, I will dedicate every ounce of my time in planning, researching and writing the best stories I can ever come up with.

Please continue to stay with me for another year of surprises. It is my pleasure to entertain you and I will do my best.

Happy new year!
aichioluv

Letting go...

If you are wondering, "Oh. My. Gosh. Is she giving up on her fanfiction?" I'm sorry...

But you're WRONG!

I was referring to letting go of some of my old blogs when I was still a student. Because of circumstances of my job, I was advised to remove my blog posts in case my past comes and bites me. I wasn't some kind of delinquent, neither did I have a horrible past or anything of that sort. I just wanted to remove anything of my past online, just in case. Let's not talk about the amount of information stored for so long. I think a basic blog removal suffice.

I've been meaning to remove them for some time, but time was not on my side. Hey, I was working hard on "Days of Exile"! But today I had a little bit of time to do so, plus... certain circumstances have pushed me to do it as quickly as possible.

So I am in the middle of removing my blog, but first, I saved all my blog posts. Whoever said that I can't keep what I wrote? It was interesting to see how I wrote last time. I was more emotional and less... sophisticated with my words. It was a personal blog, after all.

As for this blog... I will obviously keep it. This is a semi-personal blog, I will just be more aware of my online conduct. As such is the mystery of my job. (A note to my friends in real life. Just do me a favour and not mention anything unnecessary.)

If you are wondering, "Days of  Exile" is coming along fine. I'm still struggling to build back the chapters, but it's slowly forming. I'm currently writing one of the biggest events before Meteorfall. In one single day, many many many things happened. I foresee it spanning five to six chapters actually. I will cut down, of course. Just wondering how much I can cut down, that's all.

Oldies are Goodies?

In this entry? I suppose... nah.

I was looking at my author profile (yeah, i know. i'm probably the only one who does that.) and I thought that my repertoire of stories looked impressive... until I saw the last two stories at the bottom of my list and I wonder: What happened?

Basically, I can't remember much of FF8 already so... *sheepish smile*

I mean, when I first started writing, I only knew Final Fantasy 8. So naturally, I began writing using that fandom. that turned out as a disaster (even though nice reviewers said it was good). bad characterisation, out-of-character, sloppy sentences... the version that is online was edited much later. I wish I had the old version to read and laugh at myself with!

Well, it is obvious that I no longer remember the details of Final Fantasy 8. Plus, it will take me another month or two to research on FF8 again so... maybe I won't be writing it, not until I'm done contributing all I can to the FF7 fandom. After "Days of Exile", there are at least two more fics that I want to write and upload before I look into any other fics. So it'll be a LONG time before I even think of writing these.

So anyway, I thought I'll explain a bit more on those two fics, just for fun.

Romeo and Juliet in Balamb Garden - Used to be hideously dubbed as 'Romeo and Juliet (FF8 style!)' because I had no better name for it. It's after the gang defeated Ultimecia. Everyone was living happily except for Squall and Rinoa. For some reason they drifted apart. Meanwhile, Selphie bugs Squall let her organise a Shakespearean play for the Balamb residents. During which, Rinoa's childhood friend, Firzen, appears. The story will continue in a frenzy of mad preparations, love triangles, and Squall realising how different he has been compared to in the past.

... On to the next story!

Be My Knight! - Alternate Universe. Princess Rinoa was given permission by her father to go anywhere she likes outside the Deling Castle... on the grounds that she must have a bodyguard (Guess who?). The story will continue in a love story of different social classes and all that jazz.

Sounds great? I'm not too sure if I can deliver it well!

So yes, I hope that some day, eventually, I can finish all the plot bunnies in my head!
But we all know these are just velleities.