Murky Clarity

All Thieves, "Turn and Turn Again"

 

 

Lyrics:

Worn from walking this far
So worn from talking this much
And what we found and what we've seen
As the road curves down
And the lights come up to meet us
Silent for the evening
We enter this town like new born creatures
Those I know I see anew
And the space between us is reduced
For I am human
And you are human, too

So turn and turn again
We are calling in all the ships
Every traveller please come home
And tell us all that you have seen
Break every lock to every door
Return every gun to every draw
So we can turn, and turn again

Only priests and pounds can save us now
Only a sign from God
Or a hurricane can bring about
The change we all want
And we've done it again
This trick we have
Of turning love to pain
And peace to war
We're just ash in a jar

So turn and turn again
We are calling in all the ships
Every traveller please come home
And tell us all that you have seen
Break every lock to every door
Return every gun to every draw
So we can turn, and turn again

(instrument)

So turn and turn again
We are calling in all the ships
Every traveller please come home
And tell us all that you have seen

Break every lock to every door
Return every gun to every draw
So we can turn, and turn again

 

I thank Kasha for this. She follows "Grey's Anatomy", and makes me listen to tracks she loves from the show. I do the same to her with "Vampire Diaries" and "Stargate: Universe". All these shows have amazing soundtracks, by the way.

Not only is this song hauntingly beautiful, its lyrics are poignant; both components give the song resonance. To me, "Turn and Turn Again" is about forgiveness, how it bridges estranged loved ones. My family has recently been shaken by a catastrophic turn of event. Even though physically no one was hurt, the emotional turmoil is just as painful. Maybe one day I'll learn to forgive, and talk about it, but for the moment, I'm doing my best to surface good memories.

It's a start.

For I am human, and you are human, too.

For All the Mothers Out There

Most of the time I take this for granted, but I am truly blessed to be working where I am. Sure, the long hours, the lack of sleep, the constant worry that I'll screw up and kill somebody have taken their toll on me, but I also get to see miracles. Miracles of life, miracles of death, miracles of recovery when the prognosis is bleak. Above all these, however, is the miracle of mothers who love their children unconditionally.

 

I have conducted deliveries before, and I have performed Cesarean Sections. Not many people can say the same. Even so, I cannot even imagine, much less comprehend the agony a mother goes through during childbirth. But it doesn't stop there. A mother willingly sacrifices a part of herself to raise her children, to protect them, to nurture them, to prepare them for a brighter future than what she has.

 

So what brought about this sudden appreciation to mothers? Almost a month ago I operated on a young lady who was a road-traffic accident victim. Her brain injury was severe, and I didn't think she'd ever wake up, much less function normally again. Her mother was hovering by her side, tears threatening to escape her eyes, gaze darting about when not focusing on her daughter.  Before we wheeled the patient in, we let the mother kiss her. She needed to do it. She kept on whispering the same words over again, like a chant. A mantra. And her voice broke; she cried. Then she looked at me, her eyes sharp. "Selamatkan anak saya, doktor," she pleaded. Save my daughter, doctor.

 

I ended up doing two surgeries on the patient, the latter a major life-saving procedure. Every single day after the first encounter, the mother would run up to me whenever she saw me, asking how her daughter was. I even had to use a different route to get to the ICU because I had nothing new to tell her, and that was breaking my heart.

 

Four days later, the patient woke up. She was unable to speak, but she obeyed commands. When I found this out, both the parents were by the patient's bedside, and they thanked me profusely. I still don't know why they did; I only did my part, my job, standard surgeries for head-injury patients. The patient woke up all by herself, with the help of her mother, who stayed by her side every chance she got, who held her hands and whispered words only a mother and her daughter would understand, who in her eyes, a grown woman had become her newborn baby once again.

 

That afternoon I sat back and watched as the mother showed the patient family photos, cooed her to lift an arm, coaxed her to sip from a straw. She used gentle words, kind words, words a mother typically use to persuade a toddler to take his medicine. And every day after that, she approached me to inform me how her daughter was recuperating.

 

Then there was another instance last night. I was reviewing a patient who was waiting for surgery when I overheard a lady instructing the nurse to do this and that for her son. The nurse, a new(ish) staff, was at a loss. After reviewing my patient, I took a quick look at the other patient, whose mother was making a fuss. He was one of my patients when he had been in the ICU, a teenager, another road-traffic accident victim. The collar he wore was three sizes too big, and for his injury, it was as good as not wearing a collar at all. I asked the nurse to get one of a proper size from the ICU. When the mother saw me instructing the nurse, she bombarded me with questions and demands. I wasn't in a hurry, so I stood opposite her, with the semi-conscious patient between us, and answered her questions the best I could.

 

After a few minutes, her voice quavered, and she struggled to keep herself from crying. While caressing the boy's face, she told me that she had never gone through this before. She left the sentence hanging, open-ended. I knew what her silence indicated. She was afraid, she was worried sick, she wanted for her son to wake up again. That moment, she stopped becoming a demanding family member, and revealed herself as a mother who felt helpless for not being able to do anything for her son. I didn't have the heart to confirm her fears; part of me is still wishing he will wake up soon.

 

Throughout my short years in Neurosurgery, I bore witness to mothers taking care of their comatose children. I even published a story along this line. They don't seem to care if their children will never wake up, so long as they get to care for them. Among my most heart-wrenching experiences: telling a mother that her son or daughter had just passed away. It never gets easier. In fact, the more I learn in this field, the harder it gets. What if our best wasn't good enough?

 

To top it off, whenever I go through such instances, I think about my own mother, how lost I will be if I ever lose her. I get angry when she complains of new pains and aches; those are signs of aging, and she's not supposed to age. She's supposed to be here for all eternity. She's always wistful when she talks about wanting high pillars at the porch, but what she doesn't realize is that she already is one, the single strong pillar in my life, in the lives of my siblings.

 

For all the times I've broken her heart, for all the times I've made her cry, I hope my mother knows how blessed Kasha, Faiz and I are to have her.

 

For making me what I am today, I love you, Mama.

A thousand words a day -- is it for you?

More often than not, when you come across writing resources, you will come across this advice: write every day. Set a goal of 500/1000/2000 words per day, but it is imperative that you write. Every. Friggin. Day.

Sage advice. Almost at the level of 'if you want to be a writer, read'. Almost, but not quite there. While it is true that you have to read and read aplenty before you can even dream of becoming a published writer, the 1000-words-per-day advice does not -- and more importantly, cannot -- apply to everyone.

Dispensers of this particular advice claim that by writing every day, you exercise your 'writerly' muscles, regardless whether the output is brilliant or full of shit. Just write. If you produce 1000 words per day, you'll have a complete 60 000-word novel by the end of 2 months, which you can then beat and bully into something presentable -- as opposed to taking a year or ten to write one short story.

Here comes the question of quantity versus quality. Sure, there are NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month -- you have to write at least 50 000 words between November 1 and November 30 to win this challenge) products that make the sale. Some even make the NYT Bestsellers list. Case in point: Sara Gruen's "Water for Elephants" and "Ape House". But how many others out there are non-publishable? Thousands? Tens of thousands?

This is my argument: writing, just like any other form of visual and/or applied Arts, is a creative process (insert right brain vs left brain comments here). You improve through inspiration and discovery, not through practice. There are no muscles for you to train, unlike performing arts. Let me illustrate some examples using other forms of visual arts:

1. Photography. People can buy the most expensive gears and still snap bleh pictures even though they snap every day. You know this. Amateur wedding photographers are cropping up like mushrooms after a shower. How many of them make you go, "Damn, where was this photographer when I got married?!" or "Can I afford this photographer for my wedding day?" Great photographers have an excellent eye for composition (not to mention luck for perfect moments), but they improve not by snapping pictures on a regular basis, but by studying other great photographers, analyzing breathtaking pictures, and discover new angles (usually by accident) as they take pictures.

2. Drawing. Well, you have to have the talent for this. If you can't even draw a decent stick figure, forget about it. I'm not being mean, but a fact's a fact. Before you can argue about this example, I'll admit that we can easily see examples of vast improvements in illustrations throughout the years with artists who post on DeviantART and GFXArtist. Funny thing about drawing is that it uses physical muscles, so it is actually part performing art. The more you draw, the better your control over fine movements of the fingers. Sure, some people doodle every day; they can't help it. This is my point exactly: some, not all. Speaking from personal experience, I don't draw that often. I still have illustrations I made back when I was in Primary and Secondary schools, and yes, my drawings have vastly improved since then. But improvements (in terms of shading, expressions, proportions) happen when I 'discover' through imitating great works, reading up on particular techniques, and people-watching.  Not from drawing on a regular basis.

 

You get the picture (pun intended). The only muscles you train by writing every day are those of your fingers. You'll definitely type faster (if you use the computer. If you actually write write, you may just end up with cramps and ink smudges). Most people won't improve from writing every day. Some may, but most won't.

Why am I adamant enough about this that I've written a complete post? Most of us aren't full-time writers. We have day-jobs and/or night-jobs. We have studying to do. We have children we have to feed/send to school/tutor/monitor/shop for. We have pets who demand our constant attention. We have a sick relative we need to care for. We are everyday people with everyday chores. If you set a daily goal for writing, it becomes another chore, and doing this sucks out all the joy from writing, draining your creativity dry. Writing stories is and will always be a creative process. Never ever drown this. Never ever forget this.

And get this: the writing process doesn't only mean physically writing. You can watch a movie or read a comic and still be writing. You can sit back against the plastic chair at Starbucks and watch people pass you by and still be writing. You observe, you learn, you dissect, you analyze, you discover, and you invite inspiration to sit beside you. You can even snuggle under a down blanket and sleep the whole day away and still dream of worlds you will one day write about.

Do not feel guilty for being away from the keyboard for extended periods, so long as you consciously learn from life and from everything around you, and take note, be it mentally or physically (some people like to have a pocket notebook and a pencil handy). Do not feel guilty for being away from your novel-in-progress. The more time you spend away, the more objective your views become. Don't be surprised if out of the blue you come up with the perfect plot/scene to get the novel moving.

I'm the kind of person who writes the best possible first draft I can come up with. Any editing after that is to correct typos, and occasionally to wipe out a character who doesn't contribute to the story. I don't like re-writing. It feels like I'm forcing my characters to do something they don't want to. I'm mildly schizophrenic that way. My characters are real people, and I cannot just rewind and recreate/repair things to make me feel better. The characters get offended, you see. "Act of Faith" (COSMOS Australia, Dec 2010) is a mildly edited first draft. "Flight of the Ibis" (The Aether Age: Helios) is a first draft. "Hospitality of a Goddess" (Poe Little Thing) is a first draft. "Blood Debt" (2nd place, 9th Annual SFReader Short Story Competition) is a first draft.

Then there are heavily edited stories. "A Long Sigh Goodnight" (Black and Whites and Other New Short Stories From Malaysia, CCC Press) underwent multiple editing to shift scenes here and there, add descriptions, delete whole segments. In "Shadow of Phrixos" (The Aether Age: Helios) I removed a child character who -- to my beta readers -- seemed no more than a prop, and in doing so, I had to rewrite a big chunk of the story. I had to scrape off the whole idea on how snow falls in Kuala Lumpur in "Equatorial Snow" (Crossed Genres, Characters of Color). The then-fiction editor of COSMOS, Damien Broderick, rejected the story with this note:

This is very frustrating. I like your writing, and the touches of (for an Australian readership) exoticism. But the "science" at the core of the story is utterly absurd, and the human tale might as easily be set in any contemporary post-conflict landscape. So I have to decline it, sorry. But please do feel encouraged to submit something built around a strong scientifically-supportable idea.

Damien Broderick

And this, my friends, was how I improved my Science Fiction writing. From a rejection mail. I sat back and changed my whole view on Science Fiction. It's not just about futuristic stuff. It's about scientifically plausible arguments. I then thought about how a drastic climate change can happen. I learned about global cooling and geoengineering. I learned about how a large volume of volcanic ash can contribute to a drop in global temperature. Then I applied this new knowledge in my writing. And the editors at Crossed Genres loved the story enough to publish it.

Ah, but here's a caveat: if writing pays your bills, you have no choice but to write every day even if it kills you. It's no longer about the creative process; it's your job. If you've committed you soul, and that of your immediate family members to writing full-time, you cannot afford to procrastinate even if you can only come up with a steaming pile of shit on that particular day. This doesn't mean you're selling out on Art and creativity. You do what you have to do to put food on the table and a roof over your head.

If you still haven't quit your day-job, or you're not on sabbatical leave to write, then don't get stressed if you don't write a thousand words every day. Move at your own pace, dance to your own rhythm, find that center where you can tap your well of creativity without draining it dry.

Just. Don't. Be. DELUSIONAL. If you're a writer who's on Twitter, you must already know about a particular author's meltdown after receiving a critical review. Learn the rules of grammar and of writing. Accept critiques with grace and dignity, and strive to improve.

But hey, this is another topic altogether. For a different time, perhaps.

 

Cheers.