Endlessly waiting

That's what I'd been doing where my MA results are concerned. In a way, that irritates me greatly, because I'm not able to go away or make any concrete plans until then. All these uncertainty can sometimes be so galling, especially since I've been living with uncertainty for the past three and a half years. Never knowing what will happen every month. In fact, the most stable months I had was when I was doing my thesis, since I couldn't quite go anywhere. It was then a rather frustrating period, because I have to write but did not quite have anyone, other than occasionally my supervisor, to engage in depth discussion of the issue. Of course, I do know someone who was into the kind of stuff I was doing, but he was usually busy and his location was a little inaccessible to me, especially since I was at that time working far away from the rest of civilization. I longed for the kind of campus life of the mind, which I think I hardly ever get, even when I was doing my undergraduate degree. But I know that someday, real soon, I will achieve that.

On the other hand, things are going well creatively. When I started writing creatively again this year, after months of hiatus, I initially found the words stuck. Though I have had interesting ideas, I found myself unable to formulate them into interesting stories. It was as if I had this writer's block. But thank goodness I was able to ovecome it and had since written another short story. Not that I should since I've got two book reviews to complete. Egad! And I still need a lot of work in the technicalities of writing a story. I am beginning to read writer's guide, on top of the primary works themselves, just to get some tips on what constitute good structure. I have to be the journeyman before I can be the master and create my own form of story-telling. As to whether my stories are Malaysian, well, I'll let the readers decide. I believe that if one were to properly understand postcolonial theories, it works on the idea of subverting a particular narratorial hegemony to allow for the manifestations of greater possibilities and probabilities in the act of story telling. It is supposed to give voice to the subaltern and to remove the shroud of taboo from any subject or issue, especially issues that had made many people uncomfortable or afraid. It is not meant to create any sense of narrow nationalism, though I know some postcolonial theorists and literary academics are guilty of that.

This year I am aspiring to read more fiction, modern and classics, and so far I had succeeded, though in a smaller scale than I have hope. It is tough, especially since I've got loads of non-fiction and theoretical works to go through as well. I think it is about time that I take up less commitment in order to give my time freely to the few important commitments I need to prioritise for this year.