Writer's Block stinks.

True story: When I was a lot younger, I had ambitions to be a writer. Not surprising considering I was probably the biggest bookworm in Bukit Gombak. Ideas keep floating in my head. Most of 'em pretty dumb, e.g. Earth on a collision course with asteroid THRICE it's size. I even envisioned myself as a secret agent, going to each continent to fight crime in all its forms. I planned a grand death scene for myself in Antartica. Heck, I even imagined the covers, with me posing ala James Bond. With horrible teeth and baby fat.

And how about this? A story about people who see an apparition, which looks like a ghostly circle. And the people who see that apparition would die in 7 days. And what did I give it as a title? "The Ring". Years before Sadako haunted movie screens everywhere. I swear on my handphone it's true.

Ah, those were the (very imaginative) days. What happened? Y'know, the reason I usually get such high marks in my essay writings back in secondary school was not just because of my grammar and vocab. In fact, I knew my command of both was excellent so I concentrated on trying to actually entertain the teacher marking the paper, making 'em laugh or cry. Good vocab, good grammar, and damn good story-telling. That's what I counted on to pass my essay writings. Oh, and lots of practise too, which I got in school. Ah, but no more. For three years now, I've let the story-teller in me lay dormant. And the result? You're looking at it. Periods of brightness but overall, a snoozefest. One huge reason for me getting a blog was to just plain and simply write. About anything really. But, well, I was never good at non-fictional stuff, was I? It's always fiction I excelled at.

I'm not saying I'm going to write The Great Singapore Novel and publish it or anything. I'm just going to doodle a bit and see what I can come up with. I might even tackle that very interesting sci-fi story my cousin told me. If she doesn't mind of course, it is her story after all.

To jumpstart my creative juices a bit (and kill the ever-increasing boredom enveloping me), I've given myself a personal challenge. Borrow Homer's The Iliad, William Thackeray's Vanity Fair and James Joyce's Ulysses from the library and finish them all in the three weeks I'm allowed to keep them. That's over 2000 pages.

Can I do it?

Probably not. But I'll have fun trying anyway.

As a final sidenote, I'm getting rid of the old Tagboard. Nothing wrong with it, but I just find myself preferring CBox nowadays. And I might as well start to actually reply to all your tags. It'll be rude not to.