Factual

Ahem, I may or may not have read far too many novels recently. How do I know this? I have now developed a slight crush on my academic rival in school. Goodness.

sometimes i read a phrase in a poem or a story or i see the clouds amble in the sky traced by sunlight or i hear a specific combination of notes on a piano and i just get so overwhelmed with a really specific feeling that i can't really name but i know that this feeling is so human and so tender at its core and that i am a tiny little part of a world so delightfully rich with sensations and i exist to experience this very feeling because it stems from the pure human love for coexistence with the world

current favourite words:

• esoteric: likely to be understood or enjoyed by only a few people with a special knowledge or interest

• hubris (greek tragedy): excessive pride towards or defiance of the gods, leading to nemesis

• trepidation: great worry or fear about something unpleasant that may happen

• hedonistic: based on the belief that pleasure is the most important thing in life

• decadence: moral or cultural decline as characterized by excessive indulgence in pleasure or luxury

• writhe: respond with great emotional or physical discomfort to (a violent or unpleasant feeling or thought)

• acerbic: (of a person or what they say) critical in a direct and rather cruel way

• sanguine: blood red

“She is loveliness itself.”

― Jane Austen, from “Emma.”

If I Don’t Love You

If I don’t love you,

then why,

darling,

explain to me why,

do you look so gorgeous?

Violet light,

weaving itself through strands

of golden hair.

If you don’t love me,

then why am I the first person you look at

when you walk into the room?

Some sort of something

in your eyes

as they dart away from mine.

I forget to breathe.

I see you walk out,

pretending not to notice you.

Pretending not to notice

how your eyes flick to me as you sit

carelessly

with the sun and the blue sky.

I caution a glance

as I walk away.

I don’t love you?

I don’t love you.

P.S. Yes, this one’s about the academic rival.

To learn that

one who speaks of

such that is different from their actions

is an idiot,

to entertain the notion

of facing you.

Why?

Who are you?

"To define is to limit," you say,

a smirk dancing on your lips.

It is because you know who you are, that you need someone to find out who that is.

For that is what it is

to be worthy of you.

Why are all the best things I write just flowers and vanilla and sunlight? Honestly, I’ve detected a distinct theme. I’m not sure if I’m complaining. I do like flowers and vanilla and sunlight, and I do enjoy writing different types of light, especially that honey-gold, early-morning sunlight. I just wish I could be that good at writing anything else.

Quotes from famous writers (on the process of creating)

1. "You don’t start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it’s good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it." - Octavia E. Butler

2. "Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it's the only way you can do anything really good." - William Faulkner

3. "If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it." - Toni Morrison

4. "I'm writing a first draft and reminding myself that I'm simply shoveling sand into a box so that later I can build castles." - Shannon Hale

5. "Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to offer." - Barbara Kingsolver

6. "It is perfectly okay to write garbage as long as you edit brilliantly." - C. J. Cherryh

7. "Write your first draft with your heart. Rewrite with your head." - Mike Rich

8. "If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn’t matter a damn how you write." - Somerset Maugham

9. "If the book is true, it will find an audience that is meant to read it." - Wally Lamb

11. "You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page. Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write." - Annie Proulx

12. "As a writer, you should not judge, you should understand." - Ernest Hemingway

13. ''One thing that helps is to give myself permission to write badly. I tell myself that I’m going to do my five or 10 pages no matter what, and that I can always tear them up the following morning if I want. I’ll have lost nothing—writing and tearing up five pages would leave me no further behind than if I took the day off.'' - Lawrence Block

14. ''Remember: Plot is no more than footprints left in the snow after your characters have run by on their way to incredible destinations.'' - Ray Bradbury

15. ''This is how you do it: You sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until it’s done. It’s that easy, and that hard.'' - Neil Gaiman

16. ''Read, read, read. Read everything – trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it’s good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out of the window.'' - William Faulkner

17. ''You reach deep down and bring up what feels absolutely authentic to you as you move along with the book, but you don’t know everything about it. You can’t.'' - Anne Rice

18. ''There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.'' - W. Somerset Maugham

19. ''I do not over-intellectualise the production process. I try to keep it simple: Tell the damned story.'' - Tom Clancy

20. ''People say, ‘What advice do you have for people who want to be writers?’ I say, they don’t really need advice, they know they want to be writers, and they’re gonna do it. Those people who know that they really want to do this and are cut out for it, they know it.'' - R.L. Stine

21. ''Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to offer.'' - Barbara Kingsolver

22. ''No person who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.'' - CS Lewis

Love should be easy, like sunshine on a summer day, like peeling oranges. It should be easy, but it isn't.

Some nights I still love the boy I loved when I was 13 even though I never think about him. He wrote me letters every time he missed me and played Panic at the Disco a little too loud. A girl I once held hands with all night told me that a full moon means the sun was happy that day and I still try to make the sun smile every time I look above. And it shouldn't have hurt when I told her I didn't love her anymore, I didn't. But some days I still do.

Love should be easy but it's old photographs, it's love letters that I still keep in a black box by my bedside table. It's puzzles whose pieces don't exist in my memory anymore. Love should be easy. It isn't.

-Ritika Jyala, excerpt from The world is a sphere of ice and our hands are made of fire