I kept telling myself that. But I do have one, one that made me really want to go back in time to change things.
I wish I had finish at least some of the stories I started. I started so many.
And yeah, I just reread some of them, and some were quite surprising. Both surprisingly bad, and surprisingly good. And it was pretty funny to notice for the first time how what I wrote revolved around the issues I was unconsciously dealing with in the corresponding periods of my life.
Or maybe I just didn't admit them to myself. The earlier pieces revolved a lot around having a super close-knit group of friends (it was, after all, Power Rangers), and then it was about exploring the what-ifs and sci-fi/fantasy worlds. In recent years, there was this story about the post-SPM months, and then one about the identity issues of someone who grew up in a border town. Even though I know people don't like authors making characters their mouthpiece, I seem to keep doing it.
Sifting through all those unfinished works brought back so many memories. But I wish I have a lot more to read. I finished them so fast.
Stories written for NaNoWriMo are the most surprising. I never finish one, and most drafts just sit untouched afterwards, and I won't even remember what I wrote. But they can be rather comforting. In the sense that if I read them in sequence, I would wince lesser and lesser as I progress. That's... progress.
Just for fun, here's a short recap:
2004 - Dragon Girl (wince) - Chapter 1
ALL her life Alanna had been really fond of dragons.
Once, sitting on her grandmother's lap, she was told, for the first time, the great legend of the Chinese Zodiacs. With the noisy old fan from her grandmother's room whining and shaking dangerously above them, she had listened with an intense concentration that no four year olds could have.
You are born in the year of dragon, dear, her grandmother told her, her fingers pointing at a dragon sewn on a piece of cloth. The mighty dragon!
Staring at the scaly creature for the first time, she had imagined how great the dragon must be, with its strong claws and mighty grip, and that she must be special, to be born in the year of dragon.
All her life Alanna had been really fond of dragons. And all her life she had thought it must have meant something.
The name is one I stole from a favorite character. And the entire paragraph is based on the opening paragraph I read sometime earlier. Blatant plagiarism.
2005 - Fanged Guardian (wince) - Chapter 2
No one was in sight. She scanned the whole area again slowly. Maybe her guardian was testing her. There could be something that she was supposed to notice... something out of place. Her eyes widen. The only thing that was out of place was her. And she wasn't attacked yet.
"Hello?” she called out, her voice squeaky and out of place in the silent night. If she wasn't attacked by now, there was a good chance that whatever vampires that were out there were already taken care of.
There was a sudden noise somewhere to her right, about ten meters away. Kayla's hand closed on the sword strapped behind her waist. She inched closer steadily. “Hello?”
Someone was there alright. She could see two balled fists reaching up behind a broken wall, as if the person was stretching, accompanied by the a loud yawn. She stopped, staring incredulously. That guy, who was more probably her guardian, was sleeping in a place like this? Is he nuts?
The shadow suddenly shot up to the sky, its bat-like wings opened wide and clear against the moonlit night. Kayla felt her heart almost stop.
The shadow took a sharp turn and was standing in front of her in an instant. Its wings folded itself. He was shirtless and only wearing a pair of dirty ripped jeans. The pale moonlight shone on his skin that was equally pale, bringing out the surprising blue of his eyes, hiding behind bangs of black hair. He cocked his head and stared at her. He looked about eighteen. Slowly, he grinned.
Pale, shirtless guys. Do you realize what this mean? If I had finish this, Edward Cullen would be a mere wannabe.
(Right)
2006 - Skyward - Chapter 2
“What has the world gotten into,” Edward began with an elaborate gesture using both arms, not knowing how comical he looked holding a stick with a dangling bottle, “when the warm, beating hearts of humans are cheaper than cold hard metals?”
The bottle struggled, and fell to the ground with a very undignified pluack. Aayla laughed. Silently, though, she quite agree with him. It was one of the many things that did not make sense, to her, at least.
“For one thing, they are much more efficient,” Heather pointed out. Edward stabbed the bottle. It squeaked one last time, before falling into the dark murky depths of the big black plastic bag with a dying sigh. “And they don't complain.”
"Undignified pluack". "...falling into the dark murky depths of the big black plastic bag with a dying sigh."
Must have been desperate.
2008 - Untitled - Prologue
If I could meet the author of the book 'The Little Prince', I would tell him that the Prince came to me that year, during those listless, misty months after the end of high school. Time changed the Prince, much like it does to all of us; he was not blond, nor did he ask for paintings of sheep or talks about his flower. His hair was a rich dark chocolate, and even though he reaches only until my elbow when he stands on his toes, his eyes sometimes betrays a certain wisdom that could only come at the expense of innocence, a kind of knowing that was earned in the course of heartbreak and in the face of the unflinching truth of life's realities.
The author – a guy called St. Ex something, if I'm not mistaken – would perhaps deny vehemently and tell everyone that I'm a liar and that I could not be trusted. But how wrong he is! All of us know the Little Prince, and we all know that it was neither his looks nor his insistence on drawings of sheep to protect his flower (however misguided the attempt) that made him who he is.
It was his wisdom, his laughter, his soul – whatever you call it, that made him who he is. It was the truth that he learned from the Fox – what is essential is invisible to the eye – that made him who he is. It was the way he looked at the world, and the way he changed us and everyone he touches, that made him who he is.
It was the way he made us see what is invisible that made him the Prince. The blond hair, the paintings, the boots, those are not the Prince. What makes the Prince himself was – much like what the Fox said – invisible to the eye. So who can say that the person who changed my world is not the same Prince who went back to the stars?
My Prince never did make it to the stars though – he went back to the future.
It sounded cool at that time. But there were serious logistical issues.
2009 - Untitled - Chapter 1
So back to being practical. May understands ideals. She wants world peace. She wants to stop global warming. She wants to eradicate poverty and believes that everyone can get along and live in peace (well, with a few bar fights in between. But surely, human beings simply must be possible to live without dropping bombs – or hiding bombs and threaten to drop them – on each other. Even if testosterone backed violence seemed unavoidable). She does.
She respects the people who gave up high-paying jobs to work at some non-profit organization of some good cause or another. She admires people who could donate cheques with five- or four- or even three-figures donations to people who need surgery. Someday she would be in the position to do so.
That is the key, though, isn't it? At nineteen, no longer fresh out of high school and with the SPM results a strange, distant memory, she, like so many other of her peers, understood something much more important, much more pertinent, than ideals. She understands the value of a particular piece of paper called a Bachelor's degree (why Bachelor's, she would love to know – just so she can perhaps create a Bachelorette's degree when she has the power; perhaps). She understands the value of a good university education, of having titles like 'President' or 'Chairperson' on her CV, of internships and the fight for a good one at a good, reputable enough company and, most important of all, the price tag that comes with all these supposed value.
Wince. This is... such a personal rant.
2010 - The 9 Names of May - Chapter 1: May
May was born in June, like a private joke that will only elicit weird eyebrow quirks.
Of course, she wasn’t called May then. She was referred to as ‘the baby’, ‘Da Jie’s daughter’, ‘Ah girl’; in that order, after she was born, by the nurse, her aunt and finally, her father. She’d like to imagine that great thought and consideration had gone into the selection of her name, and that somehow, somewhere, there was a very special reason why she ended up being called Mei Ling, a name so generic that it is the first choice of all nine year olds writing their very first story, with the politically correct trio of Ali, Muthu and Mei Ling.
May – the name, the dream, the proud tilt of her chin – came to being so stealthily and mysteriously that May herself could not put a finger to it. It must be some time after primary school, some time during those strange, lonely years where people all around her burst into chatter in different tongues – so different from what she was used to.
These days, it was that strange language of her early years, that naïve, innocent, tongue laden with the burden of five thousand years of broken hopes and dreams that she could not reconcile with. She treats it like some crying child that she did not know what to do with, while the rest of the world showered their love on the child. She should have been thinking in those shapes and tongues and sayings, she should have been much better in expressing her innermost thoughts in those sturdy, beautiful characters instead of letting her thoughts flow and take shape in this external, acquired thing.
It was as if Mei Ling died.
It's rather obvious what I was or am dealing with these days.
But really, what a journey it was.
This summer, I swear I will write something. I really miss it.
And I will finish what I started. I don't want to regret about them like I do with the above stories anymore.
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