I think I’ve holed myself up in a corner of disappointment and self-loathing over my writing. I’ve been staring at writing prompts and whenever I do, my brain freezes into a black hole of blankness. I imagine characters with no plots, and I’ve been writing short, bland pieces that’s never interesting enough to comment on. I just feel like I’m just really incredibly awful at writing fiction and I’m trying to make up for it by reading shoujo manga heroines that point me towards optimism and mental litanies of “I will work harder”, “never give up”, and “I will do my best”.

So rather than not writing at all, I’ve crawled back into this online blog of mine to ramble about my lack of progress, an absence of passion (since I’m not trying harder), and maybe a great deal of procrastination. What I’ve done most of, these past two weeks, was consumption.

To be honest, I haven’t actually read so much manga (and shoujo at that) in possibly the past three or four years as I have been these past couple of days. I’ve been reading on the train, in the toilet, during lunch breaks. I feel like I’ve forgotten what life felt like in high school and college and somehow believed I’d get some pointers from manga aimed at young girls. While most of them were a far cry from the complexities of characters in science fiction YA novels, there were girls that I identified with even at (gasp) this late age of almost-thirty. There were even a few gems that made me laugh, and stories with plots that kept me glued until two in the morning. Then I’d get up at seven, go to work, and force myself to bring myself down to my offline avatar persona.

Somewhere along the way I thought it’ll inspire me to write something, or figure out what I want to write exactly, but it hasn’t been the case. I mean, if anything I should probably continue to sit down and force myself to type anything even if the words don’t end up spinning any kind of story.

I’ve been thinking a little about this and also, why am I doing this again exactly? I need a short story written by March if I’m to remind myself of this quarter’s Key Result for Writing. For no other reason than a small desire to become a Light Novel author (maybe more like wishful thinking or imagination on my part. A shallow reflection of an alternate-universe me who took up writing as a career). It’s not really clear to me what this is for at the end of the day. Like, how would this ever benefit me or my career or my personal growth, I don’t know. Maybe I’m still hoping I’d eventually connect with someone through writing communities for as long as I keep trying. That one day I’d finally write something that would trigger any kind of response from a stranger. I don’t think I’m ever writing for the sake of telling a story, but rather I’m always looking to elicit a reaction, a reply, from somebody.

Most days though, it’s just silence and more silence much like this blog is bereft of conversation.