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.

IT's day 7. I couldn't start blogging from day 1 because I didn't start blogging from day 1, so 7 will have to do.

Alvin just left the house, meaning its me and Ella again. Alone. So fun.

Miracles of miracles, I've managed to get my Microsoft Word starting again. And by 'managed' I mean 'Have no idea what happened but one day it wasn't working and today it is'. So that means fareWELL Google Docs and hello, [SHIFT] F7, my good, good old friend.

Yesterday was a slump. I wrote about 700 words before re-reading everything and wanting to put a bullet through my skull. Everything sounded so uninspired, like I was filling the pages with words, waiting for a stroke of imaginative brilliance to hit me. To be fair, it's still a lot more productive than sitting around Tumbling and waiting for that to happen, but with each labored letter I can feel all those words - meaningless, meaningless - go down the drain.

The day before was a lot better, which may have been what catalyzed my literary sugar crash. I had a breakthrough with my main characters in terms of dialogue, and for the first time in 7 days, felt like what I wasn't writing wasn't generic word-fillers after all. Don't get me wrong, I'm in no delusions about how much I'm going to trash by the time all of this is over, but the less typed-out miscarriages that happen, the better. I don't know how much baby-text hemorrhaging I can take before my heart gives.

Here's an excerpt of that bit of dialogue I was so proud of:

“No!” Rain grabbed her phone back from Sandhya’s palm “You all say like this, is because you don’t want go find him. You all are selfish! 他随时都可能丧失性命，可是你们都不管.” She stomped off, back towards the bend where Adelia had found her. The girls watched as she marched away, a slowly disappearing figure sandwiched between hot sun and white sand.

 “Maybe I should go help her.” Adelia spoke up. “She’ll be back” Natasha glanced at her, then at the speck that was quickly becoming Rain’s silhouette. “Let her deal with this on her own.” “Is that the girl with the boyfriend?” Another girl, dressed up in all black with dark purple lipstick and eerily pale skin chimed in. She had a soft Singaporean accent. Adelia remembered her as the girl who sat across from her on the boat. A streak of olive green ran down the fringe portion of her hair, glowing in places where the sun hit it. “Fucking stupid lah,” A second Chinese girl added. She was fat, an even softer, fattier fat than Eza. “We’re all stranded here in god-knows-where and she’s getting so upset over a boy.” Goth girl looked at the chubby Chinese girl approvingly. “I know right?” Encouraged, she went on went on “All these Cina Cina types can be so fucking dumb lah, she’s going to starve to death also don’t care.” Despite having been shouted at by Rain seconds earlier, Sandhya looked miffed at the goth and fat Chinese girl.

 “Guys, I honestly don’t think that’s fair. Rain just lost someone who might have saved her life, we should respect that.” “True,” Natasha nodded thoughtfully at this. “But she would have survived even if she stayed on the boat. In case you haven’t noticed, we all did.” Goth girl eyed Sandhya apathetically “If anything, she probably killed him by jumping off the boat together.” “And then she can still blame us for not going to look for the boyfriend she killed.” Chubby Chinese girl jumped in with an enthusiastic zeal. Eza snapped at the girl “Wow you’re a special kind of stupid aren’t you?” “Hello, I’m just stating the truth, oKAY? Cannot tahan then just don’t listen.” Chubby Chinese girl snapped back

 “SHUT UP!” Adelia couldn’t stand this sort of bullshit any longer. She felt like head was going to explode. “SHUT UP ALL OF YOU. You fucking mangkuks lah, if the girl wants to cry, or look for her boyfriend, or dig her damn nose, let her lah.” She turned on Chubby Chinese girl. “No one’s hating on you for being a damn racist-” “Oi, I’m Chinese okay? I can-”

But Adelia completely ignored her. Her frustration was too strong to divert or ease. “We’ve been here for hours and the sun is going down and we have almost nothing to show for it. Where are we going to sleep? What are we going to eat? How long are we going to be here?” She counted off her fingers, feeling panic as the realization rooted itself deeper than she had originally thought - they were all screwed. “Rain went to look for her boyfriend because she had to, so let’s just shut up and do what we have to do before things get worse.” “Okay,” Natasha folded her arms and appraised her calmly. Her expression was unreadable “And how do you suggest we do that? Seeing as you seem to,” She waved her hand lazily “Know exactly what we have to do.” 

And that's it. Am I proud? Yes. But only because I'm personally getting a hold on my characters' personalities better. I wouldn't for the life of me publish this as is - there are way too many character introductions, the prose is flat and choppy, and the narrative still isn't as strong as I'd like. But is it a good start?

It is. It is a good start.

I won't type too much for my first blog, and I've got to get writing soon. So, seeya!