Reading

Over the last 3 weeks, I’ve been reading 5 books at the same time: Karen Russell’s ‘St Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves’, Roberto Bolano’s ‘Last Evenings on Earth’, Tan Twan Eng’s ‘Garden of Evening Mists’, Roberto Bolano’s ‘2666’ and ‘True Notebooks’ by Mark Salzman. 

Initial thoughts:

St Lucy's -- quite a fun read. The same jaunty tone as 'Vampires in the Lemon Grove', with equally wacky characters. I think this would qualify for the YA shelf...

Last Evenings on Earth -- I'm enjoying this a lot. But there's something about the narrative arc of each story that I don't get.

2666 -- This reminds me of Dubliners. It's so meandering.

True Notebooks -- I've only gotten past a couple of pages, but it feels like 'Dangerous Minds' already.

Submissions 

I’ve also attempted to submit writing to some writing competitions/anthologies just to get ideas/keep the momentum going: 

1. The Elle short story competition 

I reduced my Summer Residency 2013 workshop piece to 800 words and changed the story from third to first person because the given starting line was in first person—this was a good exercise in perspective changing, I think – I had to cut out a lot of descriptions and think about the story from a completely different angle. (no email acknowledgement though -- wonder if it went through)

2. Proposal for the Botanic Gardens writing residency 

It was supposed to be a YA novella proposal, but on hindsight, it might not be that appropriate for YA. <Addendum: I later submitted a more YA-appropriate propsal after this post -- with the POV of a 10-year-old girl who stumbles on a secret garden that houses discarded hybrids of plants>

3. Flash fiction piece for anthology organised by Books Actually 

Wrote 240 words on ‘MSG’ – it was a food-themed anthology

Meta-writing 

The whole YA novella thing made me want to explore what YA fiction is. What I've learnt so far about YA fiction : protagonist is young, coming of age theme, fantasy element. I'm still not entirely sure what YA 'fantasy' is though. The Roald Dahl-esque/ Neil Gaiman/JRR Tolkein/CS Lewis sort of fantasy? 

I tried to use the web-based ‘Write or Die’ app to brainstorm some ideas for a YA fantasy set in the Singapore Botanic Gardens. Some possibilities – but the inner critic keeps saying that they are all hackeyed and clichéd. I do like the proposal I submitted in the end -- might write that up as a short piece to see if it could work, just for the heck of it.

Inspirations

I've been trying to look to other sources for inspiration: 

1. Eames exhibition at the Artscience museum

Charles & Ray Eames sought inspiration from toys, something I thought was very interesting. 

'Toys are not really as innocent as they look. Toys and games can be precursors to serious ideas.'-- Charles Eames

Maybe a toy-inspired story -- Traditional toys: five stones, chapteh, pick-up sticks (pick-up stories?) 

I guess it's like those choose your own adventure type stories -- a playful element

There was also a quote about how a work is never finished -- even if it an Eames chair.  

2. Exhibitions at the Art galleries at Gillman Barracks 

2a) 'Protagonists'  by Adeel uz Zafar

Pakistani artist who scratched painted of gauze bandages wrapped around stuffed animals. 

Some interesting quotes from the exhibition catalogue: 

On opting for the more challenging path, instead of a simpler one, he says, 'There's a voice in my head that keeps reminding me that I must raise the bar for myself. It would have been simpler to use a pencil or marker and create a similar effect. But why make it easier if you can make it harder?'

Quote from Mark Rotho on his own expansive works: '..I want to be very intimate and human. To paint a small picture is to place yourself outside your experience, to look upon an experience as a stereopticon view or with a reducing glass. However, when you paint the larger picture, you are in it. It isn't something you command.'

This is possibly why I cannot fathom writing a novel as yet -- it seems terribly uncontrollable. 

 

 

2b) 'Birth and Death Bridge'  by Keiichi Tanaami

I mistakenly called this the 'Japanese cartoon one' at the Fost gallery, where the Adeel uz Zafar exhibition was being shown at, and the lady in charge of that exhibition was quite aghast. Pop art, apparently, the term is. Not comics. And definitely not cartoons.  The girl at Tanaami exhibition (what are these people called?) was talking about the artist, and about how he likes to insert Mickey Mouse ears in his paintings because they represented him. She mentioned something about how he saw/painted a picture of Mickey Mouse looking at Bridget Bardot and thereafter identified with the Mouse. This made me think how my short stories all seem to sound alike. It's the Mickey Mouse factor.

2c) Korean artists (all red, squares, flora and cartoons)

Moon Kyungwon 'Operant Conditioning' series

Seahyun Lee 'Between Red' series

Hyungmin Moon by numbers series: Art in America 2008, 2009

I thought the Korean artists were all very good, but I didn't understand exactly what they were doing. One used plants and cartoon princesses, another painted landscapes of the DMZ in red, another painted small blocks of colour. A lot of the accompanying explanations were lost in translation, unfortunately.

3. The Mystery of Picasso's Creative Process 

   

 

Went for this in July actually. I thought how ironic it was that his last piece looked like it should have been his starting piece. This made me think of the editing process -- in the process of editing and editing and reworking and reworking, does the end product get so reduced that the effort that went into its creation is almost obliterated?