Month: August 2013
My Writing Realisation as a Beginning Writer
As a book enthusiast, a traveller and a ‘writer’, I have a lot of diversity in my life. Sometimes I’m on the road traveling and most of the times I’m in the bookshop (working). Many people have been asking me about my life, typically presuming that it’s boring and uninteresting. I do not see my life this way. As I always point out, I find solitude when I’m surrounded with books. My fascination with books also helped me discover my interest in writing. I do hope one of these days I can publish a book of my own. Traveling, on the other hand, also helped me extend my capacity as a writer and beat the writer’s block I often experience when I’m strained.
One time, I accompanied my sister Claudette to help her find a family car that offers a good personal car leasing deal. We could have saved time if she researched the company and the car online in advance before we actually went to the place. However, she’s not the tech savvy type so I had to endure the long hours of waiting for her to make up her mind. I hope she doesn’t read this. To cut the story short, while waiting for her, I was able to contemplate on what it really takes to become a good writer.
I realised that when you write a book, it is not directly done in one sitting. It doesn’t work that way. Writing is more than just a flash of inspiration and letting the creative juice flow. It requires good research practises. It can actually take months to come up with an outline or an idea that you repeatedly refine and articulate in your head. There’s definitely a process to it. One step that works for me is to integrate the idea I have in a sentence, in a paragraph, and then in a page. By doing this, it allows me to get more ideas on what I should be writing about and it serves as my guide along the way.
I am also able to visualise to whom I am writing for. It’s never about writing merely for your own self. Writing a book involves planning too. You need to plan for it that it will really take longer for the book to finish than expected. I know mine is still far from being finished but I like how things are going. Each writer has a different set of rules and tricks for him to finish a good book. I don’t expect all the things I shared above will work for you too but I do know that wanting to write is not nearly enough to complete your story. For a writer, writing does not come that easily.
Book Review on Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
As expected, I got interested on Gillian Flynn’s “Gone Girl”. Not only because I have read rave reviews in Amazon about the book like William Merrill’s statement,
“This is it — one of those rare novels that’s unique and totally engrossing, cleverly plotted so that each new development has me astounded and eager to find out what happens next.”
But also I am a big fan of crime/mystery novels. I have always been fascinated with mystery novel books which I find hard to resist once I start reading them. The book did not disappoint me. It is an incredibly compelling story that you would never know what will happen next. In short, it is full of twists and surprises and at the end you will be contemplating on the unconventional truth about love and marriage.
Here’s a quick run-through on the story without giving spoilers. The story revolves around Nick and his wife Amy who had been married for five years. In the first half of the novel, it is essentially about interventions on a relationship linked with a mystery. It depicts a weakening marriage, an ill-fated husband who lost his job and a man who feels that his self-sufficiently rich wife doubts him. Then, Amy mysteriously disappears. The first half reveals two perspectives. By this time, you would be perplexed on who to believe or what really happened. You’d be asking who really the real provocative agent is. The second part is most comparable to a psychological crime thriller which I would not go into detail.
I would have to say that the end part, in my opinion, is a little bit of a disappointment. My advice is not to expect too much about the story and just have fun reading its ‘unpredictable’ plot. Books like this novel are a fairly good read. I’d say it is a perfect holiday book. I can just imagine myself spending my time in the beaches of Cornwall. I’d bring the book with me on the beach and just spend my time basking in the sun while reading it. But be warned it’s not the type of book that is easy to put down and picked up later. You’ll get hooked and once you start reading you’d realise you could not put it down.