The
760 Pages
Novel Crafted by 13-year-old Me
Nurma Syelin Komala
©
Copyright 2023 by Nurma
Syelin
Komala
|
Photo courtesy of the author. |
Unfortunately,
this
is not a story about achievement as it probably sounds like one based
on what you've seen in the title. It was a memory I kept visiting
from the present time who crave the remaining dim light of myself.
Oh, I wish I knew about the things I should avoid as I enter
adulthood. But, is there any technology have successfully made a
machine to re-undo our mistakes? So, I keep traveling back-to-back to
hide this only illuminator of the exact past when I wrote my first
novel, The ChronitOosten.
The
story was not an
epiphany. I've never written anything nor considered myself a nerd
who would go to the library during school break time. I've tried to
read a book in Junior High School as a strategy to brew my love
potion for the boy who happened "eat" his lunch in the
library. Oh, it was a Titanic disaster. My hate for reading wreck the
love I thought for him.
But
still, I tried
to read a book again. This time the motivation was based on my
jealousy of seeing my best friend. She doesn't have a boyfriend, but
that must be love to laugh and cry at some pile of paper in her
hands. And they said people who are in love would forget the other
presence. Well, she often ignore my existence and said the chapter
shouldn't wait to be read at all costs. So, I tried to read by
grabbing the thinnest book on the library bookshelf, Lemony Snicket’s
A Series of Unfortunate Events ‘The Bad Begining’. As I
wrote this sentence, I was surprised at how the book title represents
the whole reading experience. I spent a full month between reading or
thinking about throwing THE ongoing torture. Anyway, I finished the
book with Leach as the main plot I could remember.
If
you happened to
be born in the year during President Bill's impeachment, the
13-year-old you were probably amidst in worldly pop culture
phenomenon where a Vampire portrait as an attractive creature, yes
I'm talking about Twilight. Well, it's the year of the movie Saga
"Breaking Dawn Part 2" about to end. It was truly a key to
introducing me to the Hollywood creative industry, a storytelling, a
movie. Yet I wasn't still able to profoundly read the world created
by Stephenie Meyer which was sometimes known as a book of
stupid-girl-reading. I had to hide my love for Twilight because the
majority of people thought it was a literary mistake. I remember
questioning myself about my option, but perhaps I wasn't that
critical or I might be just being a teenager, was I? You may have
some opinions based on the next paragraph I'm about to tell.
Henceforth,
Twilight
began to doctrines fantasy inside of my brain. A good one, I happen
to believe vampire is real and I felt they were about to extinct as
you probably know what kind of year was 2012. Oh, everyone was
panicking rather you're a non-believer or believer. I happened to be
the worst kind of believer. First, the date of the doomsday according
to 'our' view is unpredictable, but for sure is going to happen on
Friday. Well, do you want to pick guess when the cycle of the Mayan
calendar period ends?
Yup,
it's on
December 21, 2012. Solid Friday.
I
was preparing
myself to be a better human by following a guidebook to eschatology.
Basically just to be kind to all living creatures, especially to our
mother. I was collecting money for a couple of months to buy a
birthday present for my mom. Which was something I never did before.
It was one litter of palm cooking oil and 1 kilogram of wheat flour.
I don't have a particular reason besides that she looks constantly
needs those stuff. As now I wrote that sentence about the past event,
I am thinking about how I must use to be a low-empathetic person.
In
2012 also a year
when I heard the word global warming for the first time. My country,
Indonesia is naturally a tropical country with only 2 weather in a
year each lasts for 6 months of dry and rainy seasons. The dry
weather but extreme wind became quite a chit-chat as we entered 2012.
One day I played at my friend's house in the same neighborhood area.
It was a dense middle-class housing where the stack of roofing was
made from thin layers of zinc that has been eaten by corrosion. And
came the seven seconds soft breeze that somehow passed into probably
15 seconds of dreadful wind that made one of the zinc roofing piles
from one house collapse.
This
is it. The
world is coming to an end and we are all going to puff into an
invisible atom.
So
between the
pressure of human extinction, of my kind, and all the fictional
creatures I care deeply. Especially the good vegetarian clan of
vampires, werewolves, and Yeti. My imagination started to
grow…rapidly. Every minute of my time feels like I watched a
sudden ongoing scene. I lock myself up in my room and pretend I was
the character, talking to other characters I created. They were all
vampires. What if the city of Forks stops raining? What if the city
of Forks has the same humidity as Jacksonville?
I
definitely had no
idea how to write. No input of words. Only read a book…once.
There was this distinct feeling of wanting to be discovered. A dream
to be involved in something greater than the life I have. Perhaps,
the last thing I could do to essentially exist before memories were
erased in trembling gargantuan of the end of everything.
I
don't remember the
reason why I wasn't just letting the words out immediately. Is it
because I was too lazy by knowing how hard the process was? Or
because I just don't know how to write? But then, I started to write
after realizing my prayer hasn't been answered, which is asking God
to send a dream to Stephenie Meyer about my story. The worst thing
after that was I saw her outside of my house. She was wearing this
red blouse and started to look around how to open my aluminum green
fence that was its height under her chest. For a quiet second, I felt
exhilarating as if I was about to burst into a million butterflies.
But the alarm of consciousness has woken up before the time I was
setting up. My feet started to wobble and I drown into the salt water
of my tears.
I
don't have a
laptop. So, I grab my spare school notebook and started to write with
a black ink ballpoint. I might be thinking about success as the end
result but it was more to get out of this a non-human beast inside my
brain. I sat on the floor, bend over as I used my red-old floor tile
room as a table. The plot was not vividly clear or even the central
conflict, and certainly not what should I write on each of the next
pages.
I
wrote almost every
day. Especially, I had one friend who somehow read and was obsessed
with the story. It took approximately 2 weeks to write every one
notebook. And she was able to finish the read in less than a week,
even a day. I need to ask for many often about did she really love
the book. Did she even able to read my writing as it was in Longhand?
I could say it's worse than the doctor's handwriting.
I
always put some
date or situation in every time I write. Like when I watched
Transformers on the local TV and was so keen in love with Optimus
Prime. During a dreadful mid-term exam or when I put one slip of
feathers from my backyard chicken, greenish black, as a note for a
costume designer in case my story would be adapted to a movie screen.
It
was Sunday,
September 16th, 2012 when I first wrote my first chapter. Then, six
months later Sunday, March 17th, 2013 I was finally able to begin the
next chapter of my writing carrier.
Hmm,
well, it
was a wish. Perhaps, the writing process was not the hardest part of
being a writer.
It
was longhand
writing. I spent ten (10) blank notebooks, each containing 38 sheets
equal to 76 pages, and presumably, I used a total of 8 ballpoint
pens. So after I finished the book I tried to rewrite it again on my
brother's laptop. I wasn't just copying-paste everything on that as I
realize some of the sentences were terrible and inconsistent.
The
progress was
about 60 percent. And came the nightmare of some person who has no
idea what cloud storage was. The laptop was unable to turn on. My
cold sweats started to produce as I was discombobulated with the
whole situation. The thought of losing my novel was tremendously
dreadful, but the idea I had damaged my brother's laptop was a Grim
Reaper!
I
couldn't really
tell him about the laptop disaster, but a few days after that he
asked about why the laptop wouldn't start after he was pressing the
button. I answered with an innocent face as I committed the crime. It
turns out the virus has infected the whole system. I wasn't the one
who going to the service guy. But, I open the laptop while my brother
was still in school, there was nothing in there. A good fresh start
for the laptop, but a doomsday for me. Just left me with a blank
paper after it got fixed. And I think I failed. I did really think I
failed. There was no way I could be a writer. There was no way I
could tell Stephenie Meyer that vampires were about to extinct.
I
mean, in the end,
I overcome 2012 with a complete body. But, I stopped to write and
just thought the door has been shut down forever.
*****
Perhaps,
you have a
dream about something you are passionate about or a goal based on the
question "Where do you see yourself five years from now?"
Anything that motivates you to wake up every day. You must be
frightening, I know. The future itself is unknown so that is
inherently frightening. But, what is the most frightening between to
think to fail or to fail itself? The 13-year-old me have chosen the
first option, which is to think to fail was the most frightening for
me.
The
world still
continuously moving today. Precisely 11 years later, I'm now 24 years
old, well not that old, I guess yeah? But, I was feeling trapped in
our now society that somehow success has a due dateline. You will
meet people and they will start to ask about the lists of your
achievement as it is a normal question. Perhaps it is a normal
question for someone who already unlocks their goals, but it feels
like a shame, a disgrace of my existence for me who is trying to
learn how to walk again after a 100-meter tsunami swept away my
present existence somehow happened without an earthquake which is
supposed to be the trigger alert.
The
worst thing was
I failed to pursue my backup plan, a corporate kind of person.
Nothing wrong with that, but if your backup plan was gone totally
wrong, am I supposed to back to my main plan? A main plan whom I
buried alive, I guess. But, there is no way I could just come back to
my backup plan not after I was clinically diagnosed with depression
and psychosis. And saying that as I wrote the sentence, perhaps I
have to delete that. Not, it is what it is. Yeah,
but it felt
a disgusting thing to tell. Why I am bullying myself? Am I
too
broken to be alive?
I
will never
understand how life algorithms work. You know how Youtube work, you
watch one or two videos of the Bermuda Triangle conspiracy, and your
home page begins to recommend another conspiracy video. My Youtube
homepage is as if my life algorithms only popped one thing which is
to write again. Am I starting to become delusional?
Just
like I
mentioned in the first sentence of the first paragraph, this is not a
story about achievement. Perhaps, about the process of how I try to
overcome my fear, the fear to fail. The fear of being a failure. But,
it's a bit funny to be a failure when all I did was imagined that I
am going to fail.
The
truth is that
I’ve been haunted by this creature again. I couldn't stop
thinking about writing. I mean, when I look back on my life after I
sweep all that longhand writing notebook under the carpet, life has
been preparing me to be a writer. I might stop writing a book, but
later I taught myself to read a book by writing about what I had
read. Like making reviews.
It
was the end of
July 2022. I embrace the mistake I had, I mean I failed because I was
scared to fail. But, now I get to choose the second option, which is
this time I have to fail, perhaps by a hundred attempts. Well that
13-year-old me should try to write again even after the virus thing.
But, she stopped and thought that 6 months of writing the 760 pages
novel mean nothing.
I
refuse to write in
the same method as 13-year-old me. I open Google Docs and just start
to write. Sometimes it's only 500 words per day and on a very rare
day like that 2023 New Year's Eve, I forced myself to write more than
2,000 words so I get to celebrate 80,000 words. Finally, It was
February, 10th 2023 the words became 100,000 and I was hammered. The
ghost of becoming a failure haunted me and tried to conquer my
optimism. I might be destined to be an unpublished writer.
Perhaps
after all
writing, writer as a job is a very dangerous kind of job. In the most
truthful words, I’m haunted. But, I think, anyone should be
able to hug themselves with compassion. That being failed is an
ongoing process to peep our future. My future? I don't know. But, I
should not say that I tried. I mean, it's not even a year, almost.
“If
anyone on the verge of action should judge himself according to the
outcome, he would never begin.” It was Søren
Kierkegaard's word, a philosopher. Do you want to hear something
weird? He was the first philosopher who caught my attention (when I
was at the college back in 2018) not because of his philosophy, other
than it was refreshing to see a young and attractive philosopher
after an old sculpture of the top 3 ancient Greek philosophers, but
because he reminds me so much of Edward Cullen. For that, again and
again, I have to come back to the memory of my 760 Pages Novel. A
symbol of failure or perhaps a reminder to stand my feet up and
continue the journey to the pursuit of dreams.
I am from Jakarta, Indonesia and I
happened to start my writing journey. Continuing to be precise the
13-year-old me thought I was a failure after the novel document I
wrote on my brother's laptop was whipped out by a virus. I never
published anything, yet but I'm in the process to finish my book
called "The Anatomy of Final Exit". It was a book I wrote
after thinking I had failed to be a writer.
(Unless
you
type
the
author's name
in
the subject
line
of the message
we
won't know where to send it.)
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