Stick's vote

Of course I'd vote for that. That's what I (and you) wanted to do all along! Motion passed!



Haha, so now we do free verse. By ‘free verse' do you mean only poems like ‘A bird'? Or just any form like short stories? In any language? (We only know two anyway…plus what little French and Greek and Latin we could scramble together between us…hahaha) I am on for absolutely anything, anyway.



I am flipping through my old scrapbook, looking for tidbits of inspiration for a short story or something…and it strikes me how long since I last actually held a pen and wrote an entry. I am tempted to make just one, though probably inevitably silly, New Year's Resolution—keep a diary like VW did, who left 26 big volumes of diary after her, which she wrote with in mind the future pleasure of a 50 year-old VW slowly burning them in a fireplace, which she eventually didn't, and 50 a threshold she never lived to cross. WHY are we so obsessed with VW?! She's great, a true artist no doubt; still the obsession could be something worthy of several long notes of explanation from ourselves.



Ah, now I come across a hastily scribbled paragraph, standing all by itself. Ha! See if it's continuable!



Mr. P slowly articulated his arguments from between his teeth and his glassy blue eyes gazed down at me with a look of triumph. I was not sure I knew what was behind that look—“rebut me?' or “dare you to?” or “now nod and say yes”. Would have blurted out something were I in another place, but I was in Singapore, the Embarrassing Island, which possessed all the embarrassments of a former colony. Not wholly British; not Chinese, or Malay or Indian in that case; it's caught in the middle and can't make up its mind which way to go, therefore a ‘culture meltpot'. Meltpot my ass. I pulled myself back from raging thoughts and said, “Yes sir, I get your point.”



Hoho I guess that was written after some particularly frustrating conversation with Mr Purvis the Pervert, still remember him? Never mind what the argument was about, I don't remember it anyway. If you think it's possible to go on, go on anyway you like. First person or third, new characters, out of Singapore and into space, time travel, whatever. We are in a blindly-write-and-exchange game! And I think it best to first draw material from familiar experience for starting writers, and life in Singapore definitely falls in that range, ain't it? And if you think it's best to leave the rather 没头没尾的 paragraph alone, throw something else over!



And now I've come to the end of my grey scrapbook that lasted me from July 2002 to November 2003, and reread my own novel project that aborted after some dense three pages. Maybe I SHALL pick it up and bring it out of oblivion! My New Year's Resolution number 2!! With any luck, you'll get to read it ten years later.