The Epic Journey of A Writer WannaBe

Yesterday, when I was collecting my old works, I decided to publish them online. I think it wouldn't be bad to have them published online so that my new friends (by this I mean those who did not know me on the time I wrote them) can read them as well. I'll also publish some never-read-before writings.

Let me give you a little insight about writing and me. It began with my love of reading so I'll start with that first.

I've been a keen reader since a time I can't remember. My father thought that fictions are unimportant so he was only willing to buy me non-fiction books. Fortunately, he bought me Bobo, a Dutch-origin children magazine which was popular in Indonesia. I would say that Bobo saved my childhood, but that's another story.

When I was in fifth grade, I began to read Indonesian literature from my school library. my parents were still against that because they're fictions. On the same academic year, I wrote my first work, which is a children novel entitled "Hari-Hari" (Indonesian word for "Days"). I wrote them chapter by chapter and let my classmates read every chapter done. I would say they liked it. I did not finish it, though. I stopped after about 7 short chapters. Anyway, that was the beginning of my epic journey.

The journey continues during my years of Junior High School (JHS). I was still in love with reading and writing. On my first year, I started reading teenlit (teen literature) which was then newly popular in Indonesia. I read quite a lot of them. I secretly bought some with my own money. Actually, most of the teenlits were for girls because most of the writers and readers are female teens. I planned to write teenlits a few times during JHS but I found that I did not have enough motivation to finish a whole novel. I did several short stories. By the way, I brought the EYD book (a book for all the rules in Bahasa Indonesia from punctuations to spellings) everyday for the first two years of JHS to be read in my spare times in school.

On my second year of JHS, I discovered a novel buku fiksi non fiksi (novel, fiction and non-fiction books) thread in a discussion forum called Forum Indosiar (Indosiar is a TV channel in Indonesia). There are many writers there, pros and newbies, who shared tips, infos, and comments. I joined the forum. Due to the large number of writers there, the administrator had a new place for us called Pulau Penulis (Writer's Island) in Lautan Indonesia (Indonesian Sea, the forum's new name in order to have no more relation to Indosiar). I was the one who made the abbreviation PulPen for it (pulpen literally means ballpoint pen). PulPen was successful and has a great number of writers in it. It was my main source of information, tips, comments, and motivation.

My JHS actually has a regular school magazine that's published to each teacher and student every three months. I did not want to submit my works because I knew that they have few writers (and even fewer good ones, obviously) so they would definitely accept my work (I was not being arrogant). Most people would do the same if they were the ones in charge.

During my third year of JHS, my Indonesian Language and Literature teacher happened to be the head of the school magazine. He did say that he would choose the best writings from the tasks and projects from my class and other classes he taught to be included in school magazine. I thought this'd be better because if my work would be chosen, it was not because there's no one else to write but it was really because of the quality.

In short, he liked almost all, if not all, of my writings, fictions and non-fictions on that year so most of them were in different editions of school magazine. He once said in class that my choice of word was good, which I thought was the main reason why he often chose my works. I once shamelessly submitted a short story for the school magazine which he accepted.

Since I graduated, I almost stopped writing at all except for a few scripts which I may publish later. I won't be writing much in 2009 and maybe the years ahead, either. I'd say that I can't write as good as these works here anymore.

Well, for the non-Indonesian readers here, I apologize because many of my works are written in Bahasa Indonesia. I don't want to translate them because I think that may spoil them. But if the any of Indonesian readers here are willing to translate them into English, I'd happily publish them here.

Feel free to comment on my works. But please be a good critic. I don't want simple "It's good" and "It sucks". Please try your best to explain what you think and feel about them. I have to admit that most of them are amateurish so feel free to slay me with your sharp comments.

I hope you can enjoy. Thank you very much.