The last time they required us to submit a fiction story, it took me almost to weeks just to come up with an idea to write.
And when I submitted my manuscript for workshop, the moderator almost suggested that I write a new one, if not for the good suggestions from the fictionist of our class, who deconstructed my whole piece completely, leaving only the basic thought of the story for me to work with.
With barely two days to finish my revisions, I am here again caught in the gridlock.
So why can't I write fiction, when I could almost certainly do a non-fiction in just one sitting?
Here are the reasons why:
1. I am a journalism and not a literature graduate. We were used to working with facts alone - even if those facts are the basic foundations of a good fiction.
2. I have never been a good story-teller ever since.
3. It's hard for me to invent settings, character, and plot that I don't have any connection with. For some reasons, I still equate fiction with lying and for the past five years of writing, I haven't written any lie yet - except my one and only April Fools Piece, which I also revealed to be a lie in the end.
4. I rarely read fiction books. I'd rather drink poetry instead.
5. I don't know fiction, that's why I can't write one.
And with so many odds against me and so little time to work with, I think it's alright to resort to desperation and submit a crappy piece for the final revision of my essays. But who knows? My muse might get an extra kick tonight and instead of writing another blog entry, I may finally pull myself together to come up with a food fiction - mediocre by standards, yet finest to someone who has never written a fiction before.
And when I submitted my manuscript for workshop, the moderator almost suggested that I write a new one, if not for the good suggestions from the fictionist of our class, who deconstructed my whole piece completely, leaving only the basic thought of the story for me to work with.
With barely two days to finish my revisions, I am here again caught in the gridlock.
So why can't I write fiction, when I could almost certainly do a non-fiction in just one sitting?
Here are the reasons why:
1. I am a journalism and not a literature graduate. We were used to working with facts alone - even if those facts are the basic foundations of a good fiction.
2. I have never been a good story-teller ever since.
3. It's hard for me to invent settings, character, and plot that I don't have any connection with. For some reasons, I still equate fiction with lying and for the past five years of writing, I haven't written any lie yet - except my one and only April Fools Piece, which I also revealed to be a lie in the end.
4. I rarely read fiction books. I'd rather drink poetry instead.
5. I don't know fiction, that's why I can't write one.
And with so many odds against me and so little time to work with, I think it's alright to resort to desperation and submit a crappy piece for the final revision of my essays. But who knows? My muse might get an extra kick tonight and instead of writing another blog entry, I may finally pull myself together to come up with a food fiction - mediocre by standards, yet finest to someone who has never written a fiction before.
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