heartofashes: (dalmi)
2021-02-15 01:34 pm

wip dump: strange fits of passion; original fiction

 

Going through my old, extremely old wip drafts, today I stumbled upon a particularly special wip - a snippet from an original novel that I had once thought I’d write, but never quite ended up fully fleshing out. The idea had first come to me the summer after I finished high school - I was a complete nerd for modern Indian history, especially the nationalist anti-colonialism movement and the story I had envisioned was  of two best friends, Dhrubo and Borun, who become embroiled within the anti-colonial struggle in 1940s rural Bengal, and how the epic story of their love, romance, longing and coming-of-age plays out against the backdrop of the real historical events of the 1946 Calcutta riots, and the freedom struggle as a whole. 


I had conceived this as a historical romance novel in the vein of European wartime fiction like Sebastian Faulks’ Birdsong, or even Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, but of course, this comes nothing close to any of them. But I did write a couple of scenes that I was proud of, and I found this particular one which is one of my favourites, and I thought I’d dump it here anyway, since I don’t plan to continue writing this novel in the foreseeable future. Have fun reading (or not reading, lol)

heartofashes: (mingyu)
2021-02-14 11:07 pm

fic commentary: tonight, i'll send the glow of a firefly

 

I usually do not do this sort of thing: write about writing, lay bare the thought processes that go behind crafting each word and sentence. But there’s something about this particular work, this particular pairing that begs me to do so, and I can go on and on about it for hours. So here you are, being subjected to the same.

First, here's a link
 to the fic itself, for better context on what I'm about to talk about :)


heartofashes: (Default)
2021-01-23 12:54 pm
heartofashes: (mingyu)
2021-01-16 08:51 pm

wip dump: some jungyu angst idk what to do with

 This is something I had written back in September 2020, in the midst of a terrible depressive episode and dealing with feelings of intense burnout related to my own work and personal life. I posted the first chapter on ao3, then realised that it's too real, too vulnerable for me to post on a platform like ao3 and the thought made me spiral further. I hastily deleted the fic from ao3, but the doc has still been lying in my wip folders and idk what to do with it at all, I definitely don't want to keep looking at it day in and day out and feeling shitty about a) my writing b) my life c) about deleting something from ao3 that's written about two of my favourite boys in the world - mingyu and junhui. 

Hence, I'm just dumping it here. I'm glad nobody will truly notice that this is here while at the same time, I can get it away from my wip folder and never have to look at it again lool.

kiss like my heart is hitting the ground )
heartofashes: (Default)
2021-01-11 04:37 pm

new year, old me

At the beginning of every year, there is a brief, fleeting moment when there's a burst of optimism. It feels like things might change at last. It feels like, in this arbitrary juncture of time where one calendar is discarded and another is fished out for the purpose of my work-cum-dining table, maybe I'm going to finally do it. Maybe this will be my year. Maybe this is the year I will turn things around, get my shit together, cut off ties with my parents, get my mental health in order, figure out a concrete future career plan that finally involves moving far far away from here and starting anew. Last January, I was writing poetry after a six year poetry writing hiatus. Last January, I was meeting new people, going to the Delhi Book Fair two days in a row with said new people, going out for drinks with said new people, inviting friends over to this fledgling new apartment which is not quite new anymore but continues to feel like home in a way very few apartments have. Last January, I was sending out my poetry to magazines and journals, and even getting published in one. Last January, I was flesh and blood, a living breathing organism who didn't feel like their heart was beating against themself.


This January, though, is barely as optimistic. Perhaps, the reality check that usually comes a month into the new year has come on its second day itself. I have struggled to perfect a knitting pattern for more than a week now - imagine, struggling with knitting of all things. Knitting, the one thing that's proven to be a bright spot in this bleak, kafkaesque existence, and I can't even get that right anymore. I have ghosted someone who has been incredibly kind to me, purely because of my own insecurities and deep-rooted lack of self-esteem. I have let someone I genuinely like postpone a date, purely because I'm terrified of being perceived, I'm terrified of being scrutinised and parsed out until the other person reaches the inevitable conclusion that I'm not worth knowing after all. I am isolating myself again, terribly, terribly. Not answering calls or texts from old friends. Telling people I will meet them but chickening out at the last second. Promising myself I will make future plans, but going back on every promise. Everything feels like a cruel subversion of January 2020, like I'm on the other end of the mobius strip, stuck in an inverted loop of self destruction. I am terrified that I will be stuck forever.


Soon, my time will run out. Soon, I will be 30 and will have nothing to show for it. Soon, my parents will tell me to quit my barely respectable job and tell me to move back to my hometown permanently and I won't be able to refuse them because at the end of the day they're still my parents, and they raised me - no, conditioned me - to being physically unable of disobeying them. This post is getting more despondent by the second so I will stop writing, but I guess I needed to get it all out. Everyday feels like sisyphean cycle of waking up and self-sabotaging because I'm too scared of being not enough, of not doing enough (which I'm not, I'm not). Everyday feels like I can barely breathe, I don't know why I'm still alive.
But hey, at least it's the new year. At least there's a new calendar on my table. At least I can stare at its glossy, unsmeared pages and think, there's time, there's time
.