When my sister told me that my ex-best friend was finishing a novel, the feeling came immediately, unexpectedly, like a sun shower of snow I experienced one time while driving on Mass Ave in Cambridge. It's sort of weird; cold snow and the warm sun. The feeling is mixed. I haven't thought about her much these years, and whenever my sister brings her up I am always a bit surprised, a bittersweet sort of surprise. We've always been academic competitors, from the most insignificant quizzes to the major entrance exams. But added to that is my latent anger that she stopped talking to me, stopped writing me back, and not even to tell me that we've stopped being friends.
So the competitive air and a desire to show my anger in the most creative way, competitive way, that is, I declared that I, too, would write a novel, and that I would publish before her, or, at least, publish one that would get on the top list before hers would. But she not only has a head-start in terms of writing the novel, but also in terms of writing experience. She has written, and read, much more than I have and started at a much earlier age. After all, technically, English is still my second language and I didn't start reading it until late adolescence. No one has ever read fairy tales to me in English (or in any language), no one asked me to read anything when I was a child. I grew up in a semi-peasant background and there was little for me to read besides Chinese characters that I would have to read and learn y rote. So she has a head start in that way.
But fear not. It's never too late. I will start writing now, each day, for at least two months before I start writing my novel. I am already thinking about how to structure the novel, what it is about, and how to make it interesting.
I've wanted to do this for a while, but no motivation awaited me. Instead life constantly diverted me away from this course either through discouragement or just the mundane topic of love. I am always involved in some drama with some woman, or at least since the start of college. Mind you, it doesn't mean I was in any real relationship, but better, drama that offered me no benefit of relationships but all the tears and anger and, right, drama, of unhealthy relationships. And all this time I was too busy with women to write the novel I've been wanting to write.
But hey, the more I postpone it, the more material I have. At least that's what I am telling myself. But now is the time because my ex-best friend who dumped me without even a word is about to do something she also always wanted, and my best way of thumbing in her nose is to show her that I, too, can write and publish a novel that's got better material than she can because, well, my life is just that much more interesting.
And what enthusiasm I am developing. Despite having to bike in today's dreadful icy rain, as the pellets of frozen droplets whipped my poor cheeks, I thought about writing about my life in New Haven. What an eventful seven years that in all likelihood will turn into eight (but oh God no more!). Then I started daydreaming about having that book in my hand, a book in the likeness and hopefully beauty of the magic of my literary hero, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but a lot funnier and ridiculous. If I could just have a whole stack of them next to me on a table at Barnes and Noble in front of a bee's line of fans waiting for my autograph. Maybe she will be there? Or maybe I will be lining up to have her autograph it so that she could be dumbstruck by my successful presence?
I've always had an active imagination, often working against me when it comes to one of those dramas in my life, but I knew that one day I would take advantage of it and use it for writing a novel. I have to start working; I have to catch up to all the native English writers in the world. I don't want to just write some sappy garbage whose value is only in the content but not in the style. I want to write a fiction, not an autobiography, that makes people laugh, think, and want to get to know me.
But for now, it's writing exercises everyday!
