Jealousy of Alternate Persona

Nuh-huh, I am misleading you with this title. I am now meditating, returning to Pooh corner or finding tranquil place to finish what I started: the story of Great Indonesia. So much for nothing if I don’t dig enough information on the subject. Yet, on how to finish the subject, too. Too anxious to start and finish this, I got so uneasy. But then again, I redirected my anger towards great reading and thinking further.

Now I am listing and checking on the crazy Kurt Vonnegut’s advise:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted. CHECKED!
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for. CHECKED!
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water. CHECKED!
4. Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action. CHECKED!
5. Start as close to the end as possible. CHECKED! Hmm, tough though…
6. Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them-in order that the reader may see what they are made of. CHECKED!
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia. CHECKED!
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages. CHECKED! Haha, love the sarcasm!

Or John Steinbeck’s?

1. Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised.
2. Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on. It also interferes with flow and rhythm which can only come from a kind of unconscious association with the material.
3. Forget your generalized audience. In the first place, the nameless, faceless audience will scare you to death and in the second place, unlike the theater, it doesn’t exist. In writing, your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person—a real person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one.
4. If a scene or a section gets the better of you and you still think you want it—bypass it and go on. When you have finished the whole you can come back to it and then you may find that the reason it gave trouble is because it didn’t belong there.
5. Beware of a scene that becomes too dear to you, dearer than the rest. It will usually be found that it is out of drawing.
6. If you are using dialogue—say it aloud as you write it. Only then will it have the sound of speech.

Whatever! #LacakArtefak is more than physical but also mind-blowing stuff, OK? Waste no time on jealousy.