Hey guys, I got published. Only on an online journal, but I am excited.
Below is the link for the online journal.
34th Parallel online journal Issue 12--click hereIf you guys want to read it, give me feedback ok? I'm sure all of you will find something in the story familiar. Thanks for the memories. I turn them into stories because they are so wonderful and precious.
By: Nippy | Thursday, September 30, 2010 at 9:58 AM | | 
I wonder what Freud would say to the fact that I constantly confuse the words: Freud and Fraud.
By: Nippy | Tuesday, September 28, 2010 at 12:49 PM | |
Sitting in Lee's big leather chair, listening to him snore at two in the afternoon. The sun is roasting outside, I can feel the heat even with the curtains drawn. I'm lazily bored. I wish I was out swimming, or sitting in a shade reading a book. Instead, I'm cooped up at home waiting for Lee to wake up. Is it bad that I think of other people, other places, other possibilities when I'm sitting here in Lee's room typing away?
I love Lee, but it is in still and silent moments like these that I'm certain: this is not the kind of life I want. Not in the long run.
By: Nippy | Monday, September 27, 2010 at 5:20 AM | |
Oh yes, Sim, saw your posted video. Korean guys are so damn hot! (except for Lee's weirdo Korean roommate who pees with the door open every time.) I want to learn Korean just to go to Korea to get a cute Korean boy.
By: Nippy | Thursday, September 23, 2010 at 12:18 PM | |
Nothing is ever truly new. And my updates aren't really updates. So perhaps, I should call it old ramblings on new things.
My manuscript got returned in the mail the other day. The editor says: The premise of your story intrigued me, but the writing is a little flat and doesn't texturize anything. Go deeper--the story feels very much on the surface.
I was thankful for feedback. Finally someone said something, but disappointed. Not because the editor thinks it flat, but because I had intended for it to read that way. I was glad that he said it was "very much on the surface" because i was trying for that. But his feedback just made me realize that it just might not work at all. My attempt at flatness. The part when he says" It doesn't texturize anything" tells me that my writing failed. That is of all things the most important, I think that i am missing.
Watched Royal Tenenbaums again last night. Realized: Yes, Wes Anderson's dialogue is flat with awkward comedic pauses, but visually it is so rich with texture. That dissonance creates an interesting irony between the sparseness of the spoken and the richness of what's on screen. And this is something that is unique to the film medium. I don't know how a writer can do the same. You can't have a flat style and have the text bursting with details and texture. Or can you? Is it possible to have the text read very sparse and flat and yet, give a fully textured and unique world full of details? How?
I don't know.. still trying to figure it out. Meanwhile, it was my first day at work. It's going to be nine to five, five day weeks for me from now on. I'm happy in a way, but knowing myself, the routine will eventually be wearing me down. But hey, we all need to make a living. I just hope I'll still be able to write at the end of the day. I never want to lose that.
By: Nippy | Tuesday, September 14, 2010 at 11:35 AM | |
I'm beginning to learn to love Greene's writing.
'"How did you know he was dead?"
It was a foolish police man's question, unworthy of the man who read Pascal, unworthy also of the man who so strangely loved his wife. You cannot love without intuition.'
Pg 18. The Quiet American, by Graham Greene
Indeed, you cannot love without intuition.
By: Nippy | Saturday, September 11, 2010 at 9:19 AM | |
Got those damn wisdom teeth removed. It was all quite surreal, the pain is not though. Of course I felt nothing, my mouth felt like a balloon, and i was watching the dentist and the dentist assistant drill my teeth like it was part of a plaster wall. Then when they stitched it up, I felt the strings tug against my cheeks. I was on laughing gas that was supposed to calm me, but all it did was made me feel lazily detached. So I laid there going in my head: Oh wow, those little white bits of stuff flying up was once my tooth. Wow, they are completely destroying it. Oh, is that how a wall feels? I am getting renovated. And when I got stitched up: The strings were mildly disturbing, the fact that I had no pain what-so-ever, just made it even more strange. It was all cerebral :" Wow they are sewing me up."
I was looking at the dentist's determined face, and I heard a voice in my head going: DAMN BASTARD TEETH. It was strange.
Lee and Gabe were scaring me with all these horror stories about their wisdom teeth removal. Lee told me he still has nightmares about it. And Gabe, Gabe was out the whole time but still when I told him the dentist told me I didn't need to be blacked out. He went: "the dentist is lying."
So it's over with. I'm just glad. Now I'm sitting at home, with two pieces of gauze clamped inside my mouth, with my mouth full of spit I have been collecting for over a hour, thinking of cheeseburgers. I hate the taste of my own blood so I refuse to swallow my own blood-laced spit.
Tried to write but am too sleepy. Just looked at the story I have been working on. It's quite honestly shit. Right now, I'm just hoping that it is one of those mood I'm in, that it'll pass and I'll like it at least a little. I'm going to keep working on it though.
Re-reading Out of Africa, so so so beautifully written. Isak Dinesen has great pacing and is a master at delivering her stories in such a non-sentimental way. The fight against nostalgia makes it such a great read. SHe never colors anything with sentiments. But it is not sterile and trivial. I think the greatest weakness of my own writing is triviality. If it's too trivial, no one cares. I hate that old formula that something big has to be at stake, but it is true, if nothing is at stake, then what's the point of reading. But the problem is that I feel that from my experience of being in my generation, we don't suffer any big stakes. THey are simply personal disappointments and grudges--which might explain why people like things like : Eat, Pray, Love. The problem is that I don't know how to capture that ennui and still captivate. How does Wes Anderson do it? Seems like all great representative voices of the younger generation has gone to write for or produce films. No wonder, literature is stuck with wannabes and people trying to emulate the old...
But,
This is becoming an annoyingly long post, so I will chop it off right HERE.
By: Nippy | Friday, September 10, 2010 at 6:33 AM | |
OH MY God! I'm still trying to recover from a hunk sighting on the 28 today. I was on my way home, and ohhhh man, this delicious guy got on at San Francisco State University stop.... Nice broad shoulders, muscular chest, dark hair... and intense eyes, very kissable lips. Ok... I gotta keep a hold of myself.... I am serious, this guy is gorgeous, but it's not just his looks. It's the way he looked out the window. Something was on his mind, a little distracted but vulnerable. That was something strangely moving in this big strong guy and in the way he looked out at the rising fog. It was almost gentle.
But that's not why I think he is sexy. I couldn't take my eyes off his face. It is because of the deep scar that runs from the bottom of his lip across his cheek. It was just a shade paler than his olive skin and it drew a line across his jaw. There were thinner scars parallel on his neck. From where I sat, I can see it clearly in the light.
My sister always says I am terrible. I'm just terrible, ogling at guys like that. But I have no shame nor modesty. Come on now, who says handsome men cannot be objectified. The male gaze in feminist theory and all that bollocks is all but fine. I have no modesty when it comes to this. But well...I can't help it can't I? It's in my nature. I bet I'll still be like this at 80.
Big strong, macho, and vulnerable is quite a killer combo.
I still think my co-worker's line is the best: "I want to have that guy's babies!"
By: Nippy | Wednesday, September 08, 2010 at 12:34 PM | |
I'm so afraid. I have to remove my wisdom teeth, and they are located right above my nerve. Lee is right about me. I am a coward and I always leave things that I'm afraid of alone when I should be facing them bravely. I always have this fear that the worst would happen that my nerves may be damaged accidentally, that I may be paralyzed in my face. That's my problem, when I should be facing the problems, I run away. I wait until it gets critical then I am forced to face an even greater ordeal.
If there are stones I can eat that will give me more courage in life, I will eat them.
By: Nippy | Thursday, September 02, 2010 at 3:35 PM | |
