TODAY was my final work appraisal before confirmation. At first I was going to drag that out a bit, build some suspense, but I figured to best write it the way it happened.

“Clarissa, do you have 30 minutes?” Ian asked.

I was emailing Jane from Le Cordon Bleu some of our Food Fight photos. “Uh…hang on.”

“Okay. I was thinking we could get your last work appraisal done by today.” That was how he announced it. How he did most things, really. Level three. Now.

Then Ian left to book a meeting room while I finished up.

The first thing he said once I got there and which kind of set the tone of the appraisal was this:

“So this is how I’m going to grade you,” he said. In his hand was the appraisal form with a line chart at the bottom that followed my progression from the two previous appraisals. The line rose steadily but not steeply. “I’m going to mark you 29, which is saying a lot because it’s the highest I’ve ever given anyone. So,” he paused,” your work from now should reflect that.”

It was kind of like that moment you read about or see in films when the gruff and aloof father puts his hand on his son’s shoulder and says ‘Good job son’. Even though Ian is neither gruff nor aloof, I keep getting this feeling like I’m letting him down, or like I’m not doing enough. So I told him as much.

“It's good you feel like that,” he said. “But you handled the Food Fight project quite well, considering you’re still so new.” Oh.

“But that just means it’s so speculative,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“That means the high scores are, like, just based on my inexperience and not actual merit. ‘Considering you’re so young’, ‘considering you’re so new’, you know?”

What I did not say was, what if I didn’t live up to the hype? What if those numbers and his impression born from my “potential” never materialized?

I was happy, sure, but it felt a lot like celebrating on the edge of a cliff. You didn’t want to get too excited.

Ian said something about how in reality, you had to take these things into consideration, and, and something else. I wasn’t listening. Like I said, I was happy.

Then came the patty of my compliment–constructive criticism–compliment burger. He went over the breakdown of my marks, writing down the justification for why he gave the marks as high, or low, as he did, in the remarks section.

“The one thing you’re struggling with right now is your writing skill,” he said.

Did I see this coming? I saw this coming. Of course I did. Most of what I’ve been churning out for Food Fight came from a place of rushed complacency. Still, it stung to hear him say it, of course it did.

He went on, “You’ve gotten a lot wore than when you were writing as an intern. Back then, the one thing I could be sure of was your writing. The other stuff…” he paused, “you were kind of flighty.”

He continued with how he knew it was probably because all my recent articles were about Food Fight. How he knew it wasn’t easy, that I was lacking in context and thought.

It was all true. Every painful word of it. They say you don’t remember everything a person has done for you but you will always remember how they made you feel. I knew right then that I had made him feel disappointed, even if he didn’t remember what exactly it was I had written to make him feel that way.

Having to write story after story of sponsored content wore me down to the point where I was just writing for the sake of submitting my text.

The good moments – those times when I’d pen down a line and go “Hey, that sounds pretty good” and have no idea where it came from – got less and less. They felt like a puzzle piece clicking into place.  They weren’t there anymore. I knew what Ian meant, but I didn’t know what to do about it.

I realize that this thing – the fishing in your word well until you come up with an amazing spot of clarity – that’s something you can’t learn.

Jerrie once told me that as a photographer, he has to take a hundred “meh” photos to get a perfect one. But his taking 90% unusable pictures doesn’t mean that he’s bad. It just means he put in as much effort as his talent deserved.

So if you’re still reading, take this away with you, if nothing else: Write down a thousand words, then remove 800 of them. The remaining 200 should be your final copy. If you submit all of what you wrote in your first draft, it just means you could have done better but you didn’t. I didn’t.

That was my problem. I could have done better. Don’t be like me.

Food Fight is R.AGE's search for the next Malaysian food celebrity.
You can find out more about it here: rage.com.my/foodfight

I am frustrated with myself.

I know this fact before I even consciously acknowledge it, because my face is covered in angry red welts – a sign of the compulsive picking that takes over whenever I get stressed.

You know that feeling when you know you can do more, but end up not. Not doing better, not living up to expectations, not performing, just not.

The worst thing is when I see it in Ian’s face, or hear it in Ian’s tone, and I know he doesn’t mean to make me feel like the biggest failure ever whenever I forget to email the contestants about something important, or when I end up drafting some really bad copy, but he does. And I do. Feel like the world’s biggest failure.

 It was my second month at The Star when he passed me my first project: R.AGE Food Fight – the search for Malaysia’s next food celebrity. I don’t know why he passed the project to me – whether it was because I was new and had less on my plate than anyone else, or if it was because he honestly thought that I’d be up for the task – and maybe I’ll never know. But I know that I’m not.

I am, at best, a decent secretary, who occasionally forgets to do things like update our social media accounts, or keep everyone in the loop about a new update. So okay, I’m a shit secretary.

I am, I thought, an okay writer. All along I’d been hard pressed to live up to Ian’s standards, and all along I thought that I’d been doing okay. He tells me when I write up to par, and even when I impress him. Ever since I rejoined R.AGE, I haven’t heard a peep.

I feel like a girl who’s been told all her life that she’s pretty, so much that it becomes an addiction. 

My writing is my only source of validation; my only indicator of value. And just typing this down 

makes me feel sick. I always told myself that I’d never become that girl. But here we are: different shades, same color.

The project is drawing to a close, and to that I feel equal parts relieved and mortified. I tell myself that everything that’s been done has been done, and that all I can do is do my best not to make the same mistakes again.

Will I get the project next year when we go to ASEAN? Probably not. And it’s probably for the best.  But for now I’m using this disappointment in myself as fuel for whatever I’m working on now. It’ll burn dirty, sure, but it’ll burn.

I’m not consciously trying to end this on a happy note here. It just happens to be one of those days where I’ve somehow found it in me to not collapse under the angst. I tell myself “I can do this” again and again, until I’ve done everything. And even then, everything’s not enough.

I’ve written down a list of the things that I should or shouldn’t do:

1. Don’t be complacent, Clarissa. That’s what got you to this slump remember? Complacency. Think you wrote a good story? Double check it. Get your friends to proofread it. I mean come on, it could be so much better, why are you getting lazy?
2. CC everyone. You learned this the hard way. I can’t believe no one taught you how to do that in high school.
3. Don’t blindly follow Ian’s suggestions just because you’ve put him on a pedestal and can’t get him down. That’s your problem. Always ask yourself if you can do better – do more. I mean seriously, do you want to end up rotting away your brain at 21?
4. Make your work your life. I know you thought you could excel without doing it, but some people can and some people can’t. You can’t. And anyway, is it really that torturous to write, come up with ideas, and interview people for a living? It isn’t. Stop playing video games all the time.
5. More like 4.1 but anyway, write even when it’s not for work. I shouldn’t have to tell you this. You’re better than that.

It’s been close to two weeks since I started work back at The Star, so I figured that if I don’t haul ass and get to this post, I never will.

Those who read my previous stories probably know of the one-year-ish depression I faced whilst taking a writing hiatus to dabble in real estate.

I left KL and returned to Penang, moved back in with my brother, signed up with a real estate agency and went to work brokering for the firm.

It sucked.

For two reasons:

1. I was entering the market just as it had started to slow, so as a newcomer I had virtually NO luck getting any exclusive listings.
2. As a 21 year old Chinese female, 8 out of 10 owners/buyers/lawyers/bankers would either try to buy me a drink or talk me down, which I wouldn’t really have minded if it wasn’t due solely to my demographic and not my work experience/qualification/ a hundred other VALID reasons to excuse me as a negotiator. But,
3. That’s the world works, and evidently I’m supposed to “put up with it”

Disclaimer: To anyone currently reading this, I want to emphasize that that may be how SOME parts of the world work, and worse, but it doesn’t have to be.

• It doesn’t have to be

I even put it up there ^ so you could read it again.

Thankfully, I had both

1. Past experience working in another field where people were of the more intellectual variety, more empathetic, and actually treated their female co-workers like, you know, people, and
2. A waiting opportunity to return (thanks, Ian)

So I came back.

I traded in lanes shadowed by branches and leaves, for highways where a wrong turn cost you an extra half-hour, beaches for storm drains, and street food for Maggie. But for the first time in a long while, I’m…actually happy. Well, not happy, more like content. And I have Alvin to thank for that.

He gave up his awful job at Maybank to follow me down. We packed up his dad’s Alza to the brim and took to the road for one last time (after driving up and down a previous 4 times to canvas for rent, jobs, etc.).

We packed up everything and sent the rest via lorry, courtesy of my parents’ guilt and renewed dedication to being better caregivers. Thanks mami, thanks papa. Despite everything that’s happened, I love you. And despite everything that’s happened, I know you really love me.

The new apartment belongs to my aunt, Dee Dee. (There’s a story behind that name that I can’t bother going through. Just know that it stands for “little brother” in Mandarin.) She struck up a deal with my parents: The apartment had ZERO fixtures, so, no fan, no lights, nada. If they could pass her RM10,000, she’d do the required renovations and count the 10k as our one year’s rent, which tallies up to, oh… Rm833 per month.

Considering that the average rent in the same building is RM1.5-Rm1.6k, we told her we’d look around for other offers and let her know if nothing turned up.

I’m totally bullshitting – we shat our pants at the proposal.

Literally. I’m guessing my parents’ response went something like this:

“Caaaaaaaaaaaan. No need to paiseh, we all family only mah *squirms as a visibly brown stain starts spreading*”

I’ll put up some pictures of the place down below, but first,

A little backstory:

Before KL, I was living in Puncak Erskine, on a sofa bed, in the living room. It was a low cost government project, so the rent was crazy cheap, but so was the construction and planning. Our halls looked like the backdrop of a Singaporean ghost movie, the living room as cast in eternal darkness because all the sunlight had been taken up by the two fan-less bedrooms, and our sink was an aluminium tub. All in all, the apartment took up roughly 500 square feet of space and was generally liveable most of the time, except when it wasn’t.

Nothing makes a girl realize how spoiled she is, more than crappy living conditions.

Then we moved in to this, which in comparison looks like my vision of heaven:

WINDOWS. IN THE
LIVING ROOM. WHAT IS THIS

AN ACTUAL STOVE TOP. AND DRAWERS. WHATTTT

THERE IS A HEATER. IN. MY. SHOWER.

I HAVE AIR CONDITIONING (???)

So now I bring you to the present. But this story does not have a happy ending. In between the move, and Alvin’s resignation, and my re-entrance into The Star, someone very dear to me was left behind.

At the very last second, and after a half-dozen contingency plans, my brother finally decided to stay put in Penang to work as a chef. This worries me to no end because

1. He is clinically bipolar and needs hugs and kisses and a human punching bag to shout insults at every day
2. The house is now bare of a lot of things, seeing as we had moved it all out in anticipation of terminating our contract with the landlady, and I get hives thinking about him alone in it
3. He is not the best at tidying up

So, if you know who said brother is, please send good vibes. Drop a message. I’m looking at you, Jake.

After writing that last post, it came to me - slowly then all at once - that all my male friends share the same set of characteristics. The generic Friend of Clarissa goes like this: he's smart, intellectual, a bit of an asshole, may be rough around the edges, socially awkward, but witty.

Justin from the previous post matched up with all those characteristics, and yet so did (I realized later) another friend of mine, Jake.

"Wow," he said after I showed him Justin's comments. "They sure forgot the filter when they made this one. Imagine when someone's dog dies. 'Have you owned a dog before? No? Well I'm not surprised.'"

For the first time that night, I laughed. Alvin is the best, kindest, most patient boyfriend I could ever ask for, but he has a tendency to match his emotions to mine. If I get angry at someone, so does he, and whilst I appreciate the pure empathy that he has to give to the world, this time the laugh cred goes to Jake.

But seriously, why is it so hard for smart people to be kind?

We've romanticized this idea of the sarcastic/mean genius, and frankly, it's pissing me off. Think Sheldon from Big Bang Theory, the title characters from House and Bones, Sherlock from both the British and American series, the list goes on, really.

Intelligence, much like commerce, is a valuable commodity. And yet we don't let rich jerks get away with being complete assholes. In fiction and the media, they're painted as the bad guys, whilst the mean, albeit gifted protagonist is the hero. Why is that?

Being knowledgeable about something shouldn't give people a free get out of jail card when it comes to treating other people like, well, human beings. I mean, its 2015.

It's been months, I know. But I finally got back to my laptop and started re-writing the entire story.

This time the main protagonist is a 30 years-old single man, who works as a journalist for the Star. I modeled him slightly after my editor and oh my god I hope he doesn't read this.

I'm finally back to where I left off, at the 10k mark where I previously dropped everything in the face of a sudden and crippling case of The Block. So here we are.

Three nights ago, the big B hit me again, only this time it was more like a debilitating illness that slowly immobilized me over the short span of three days. It's not like I didn't see it coming, I recognized the symptoms as soon as they showed up - the decreasing interest in my story and characters, the drop in my daily word count - but it was like the worse I felt, the less inclined I was to actually do something about it.

D'you know what I mean? Normally when I type, I get into this rhythm, like I find a flow in my head and I space out for a while until something falls - and I don't know where - but now and again this beautiful line shows up in my head and I have to type it down. That's my crack. Only lately, I've been feeling like whatever comes out of my fingers sounds rehearsed. Nothing shows up, everything's cliche, and I'm a farce. Whatever drove me to think I was remotely good at doing this?

Then in a brief flash of insanity, I sent my six chapters over to an acquaintance for editing.

A word about this friend: he's brilliant. He's a genius with the rules and ways of the English word, so maybe it wasn't insanity that I was feeling, but a misguided sort of trust. That's the way the world works right? If we meet, I'm going to assume that we have an unspoken understanding: you'll be kind to me, and I'll be kind to you, and that we both would be, if required, as honest as tact allowed. Anyway I'll get on to that in a moment.

We met at our college's internet lab, back when we were still studying (him, A-levels, and me, mass comm). I was working on a speech; he was sitting beside me. Before that, we'd only spoken briefly and rarely, having had shared a near-forgotten encounter at YMCA camp when I was 12. Other than that, I knew close to nothing about him.

But our previous encounters had always been amicable.  I thought he was witty, if a little awkward, so I sent him a Facebook message. Wanna help beta-read a couple chapters of my WIP?

He consented. I uploaded the file. Then I waited.

The next day I received this message from him:

Him: I just reached the halfway point. And I must say, I am very disappointed.

Me: That's why I passed it to you. Do you have the edits?

Him: I'm only three-quarters through. Did you proofread it first?

Me: No

Him: That explains a lot.

I should have just shut it down then. But I thought, hey, at least he's being honest. The more critique, the more constructive, right? I figured if I wanted to be a better writer, I couldn't afford to be precious. It got a bit worse before I decided that I didn't want to end my day crying into a pillow.

I decided that we had to be professional, so I ignored the barbs.

Me: What I need most is for you to take apart redundant lines with a scalpel. The line editing I can do on my own. Logic errors, inconsistencies, poor style. OH and characterization. I'm a real chump at writing characters.

Him: That's very evident.

For a girl that shouts "Fight me" at every chance I get, I sure do a lot of crying. 

So yeah, Justin, this one's for you.

You're a brilliant proofreader, and everything I wrote got so much better after all the changes. But if I could go back in time, I'd rather not have come to you at all. A good editor attacks the writing, not the writer. He corrects flaws instead of mocking them. You were mean, cynical, sarcastic and intentionally (not to mention unnecessarily) hurtful, and I still have no idea why.

Do you think this makes you better? Or stronger? I get that you're going through a hard time right now, with your depression and all, but surprise! So am I. This isn't a pissing contest. It's me saying that every interaction is a choice we make and boy did you make them. 

If there's anyone who can relate to how cutting words are just as good as cutting arms, it's me. Just ask Alvin, we got into a huge fight because I couldn't tell him what was digging into my flesh. Bless that man, seriously. He spent the next five minutes holding me as I sobbed, then the following ten holding up a pillow to I could throw some punches (because boy did I need to hit something) 

The worst kind of pain is the kind that is so completely unwarranted. If I could be honest with you, I'd march up to your door, rip it off of its hinges, and shout in your face

WHAT THE FUCK DID I EVER DO TO YOU, MAN?

But I'm a coward. So I bit my tongue and took it all in and spent the next two days thinking that I was total crap. 

I don't know if I can keep going with this story now that you've insulted everything inside. I don't eve know if its worth going on.

Funny how some throwaway comments for you could be so soul crushing to someone else.

IT's the 9th day, and we are at 10,356 words!

I feel like I've reached some form of milestone, both tangibly and intangibly.

Now that I’m counting words by the ten-thousands, my novel is starting to look more and more plausible.

Writing isn't as strenuous as it was for the first week, and I realized that I bang my head against the keyboard a lot less often now that I've got a handle on my characters.

So many things about them surprise me. Like, I was writing this string of dialogue between the protagonist and another major character (also female), and as their conversations progressed I was like

Wait

Hang on a second

Are you-

Are you flirting?

And that just gives me the butterflies every time I think about it, because YES she is ALIVEEeee.

Clarissa’s tip #1

If you’re still stuck with your characters, even after having made character sheets, and random lengths of unrelated prose, and everything else you’re tod to do, either dump that character (you’re obviously not feeling it), or keep going. Books are like water pumps, give enough thrusts and they’ll give just as much back, and more. Keep going, even if it feels wrong.

What I did in some chapters, was pause every time I felt like something was a bit off, highlight and delete whatever I felt wasn’t right, and went at it again. It’s tedious, yes, but that feeling, when you really, really hit the sweet spot, like everything is right, is what keeps me going.

Some people might advise you to keep going regardless (the NaNoWriMo process) and that’s not wrong either. But it doesn't work for me. I end up feeling so disappointed and dissatisfied with a wonky paragraph that I end up canning the whole thing because I can’t shake that feeling off.

Realizing this bit about myself was a turnaround of sorts.

I guess, if you wanted to be exact about things, you have to know yourself to know what works for you, and your characters. The clearer you see yourself, the clearer you see the people in your head.

BUT 

Now I've got another problem. My protagonist is a Malay Muslim female, something that I've been adamant on sticking to from the start. But with some risqué scenes in mind, coupled with the light flirtation (that I might possibly expand upon), I’m not so sure anymore.

On one hand, that’s the exact reason I wanted to push the female Malay Muslim caricature. To develop her as a person instead of her race or religion, but how much is too much? Nana's helping me with the cultural and religious aspects, but I don’t want to rely too much on her either.

Are culture and religious sensitivities a deterrent for me? Or are they the exact reason I should push forward?

If you’re reading this, comment below. I could really use it.

It's Day 8 and we're  now at 8,635 words.

I can't brag with those numbers, but they're not making me feel depressingly hopeless either. Progress comes, softly and steadily, and what am I kidding.

Today I've diagnosed myself with a horrible affliction - cafe writer syndrome - one of the most costly.

It hit me when I was buying 2 hours of wifi with a Grande Americano at the Burma Lane Starbucks, that I was in trouble.

I cannot write, long and well, unless I'm in an expensive cafe.

One of the drawbacks to selling property in Penang is that although the hours are great and the pay Eh, okay, I can't write in the company office. Okay, I can write there, but the shared cubicles are numbingly depressing and everyone else is over 30, super cina, and judgmental in a way only the rich can afford.

Huh. It's almost as if I'm writing this novel as a means of escape, but THAT CAN'T BE IT.

I also made the mistake of checking my reader stats today. I couldn't help myself. I'm so ashamed. I can already feel myself falling into the narcissistic-coffee-splurging-YA-writer stereotype, but there you have it.

50 hits in the span of 12 hours - that's more than I can say for my Penang property blog.  But then I found out that most of my readers came from America and now I can't even. type another word. Please, ang moh people, I don't want to second guess every adverb or semi-colon I type. Please be kind.