On 27th May 2007,
I posted the first chapter on a story I wrote on my blog and threads in some forums.
There were quite a few good reviews from the forum as well as the readers that came to my blog. A few of them tagged on my tag board and said many good comments about my good writing skills.
5 months later, I had completed 3 love stories with the longest of them close to over 50,000 words. There were more readers and ‘supporters’ as they tried to add me through msn.
We chatted over the story plots and the main characters build up.
“Hey Anntonii, I think you are a great writer!”
“Have you considered publishing your stories on a book?”
I was asked a few times when by those who’ve read my work.
“Wow, surely that must be a wonderful feeling to have a book with has my name on it”
That was really my first thought as I to lay my first bricks on my sandcastle.
“I wonder will I become a celebrity because of my stories.”
Second thought and I laid my second brick.
All these good comments beamed self confidence as I began to seek more opinion on the web.
I post my work on more platforms and of different level of readers.
Reality sink in as rational comments was put up on the various threads that I’ve posted.
“I think your English is really bad! I felt terrible and had to stop instantly”
“Did you realize that your grammar and English sentence structure is somewhat funny?”
“Oh my god… did you failed your English in school?”
You would have imagined how it felt.
It’s like a person with self confidence with thoughts of ascending to heavens being brought to the depths of hell, Ditto many times.
I flipped through my secondary school report card one day and realized that person was right; I did fail my English in school. To top it all, I only barely passed my English for the final exams before I left school.
I surf the web to look at writer forums and society and looked at the way they expressed themselves. Really remarkable, there are many words and phrases I’ve never seen before let alone knowing what they mean all together.
My confidence was crushed and diminished through the thin air.
My hopes of becoming a writer were certainly never going to happen.
It took me a long time to write my current story and so many times I had to stop writing due to the negative thoughts within me.
Humans are generally looked at the things on the surface.
When someone with a lousy command of language tries to write a story, it’s as if oversized women trying her luck at ballet.
“If you don’t have the quality, don’t even try to reach for something beyond your means”
That’s what the old folks would advise.
If anyone asked me about writing and publishing a book ten years ago, I would probably laugh at them and myself.
But now, I would still want to print my own book.
It’s a form of commemorate my ability to finish writing a story.
Not to print a huge quantity but just a couple hundreds of books.
So that I can tell people I was once a writer, I had some genuine supporters who really tear and shared their beliefs in my story.
So that I can tell people who failed their language, it’s not really the end. If you have a good story base and plot, you too can become a writer.
There will always be people who appreciate your work and people who don’t.
You just need to find them…
