Over the next few weekends, I’m going to be publishing excerpts from one of my past works called Beyond the Cover. This was first created in 2011 for my Modern Chinese Writers course as my final project; inspired by books, articles, and short stories we read in class. A few of which are: the book FireWife by Tinling Choong, Red is Not the Only Color by Patricia Angela Sieber, Li Ang’s The Butcher’s Wife, Amy Chua’s article of Why Chinese Mothers are Superior, and a documentary called Slaying the Dragon. Later, I revised one of my excerpts titled “Fly Free” for my Creative Writing course in 2013.
I have been putting off sharing my creative writing to the world for far too long. I want to say it was because of my lack of courage or confidence in putting my works out there. Questions like: what would people think? Would they like my work? Would people be entertained? Am I just a wannabe? Could I potentially make this into a career? But what would people think? Self-doubt ran it’s course and flooded my mind. I’m tired of questioning my own actions. I’m tired of just gracing the surface and not extending my reach. I’m tired of just existing. I’m ready to live and to open up to the world the creatives that are desperate to shine. I have a deep desire flaming inside of me trying to get through to my logic mind that this is worth it and that writing is your calling, is something you are meant to be doing. I just can’t believe it took me 10 years to acknowledge it and to do something about it. (5 years since college graduation & being in the working world, 10 years since high school when I still had that burning desire to become a writer). I can’t believe it’s taking me so long to find my roots and be fully satisfied with where I’m at. P.S. It was only a few short months that I decided to run back to my roots of writing, so I’m still in the struggling phase of my writing career, but I am working on myself to the extreme, let’s hope I continue on this writing journey of mine.
Anyways, so . . .
Beyond the Cover hits very close to FireWife as far as theme and format goes. It’s been so long since I read the book, so I don’t recall everything and I may be mistaken as I carry on, but the book alternates between characters in every chapter. In short, you follow along the main character’s story, Nin’s journey as she travels around the world taking pictures of people. Every other chapter is a photo that she took and within that single chapter, she wrote their story – I don’t remember if it was the person in the picture’s true story or Nin’s take on their story from what she sees. I mean, everything is purely fictional. So with that being said, I based my creative project on her book, but instead of creating a fictional protagonist, it’s my truth. In between those chapters are three fictional pieces I wrote, pulling only two photos off the web and wrote my perception of what their story is. I’d like to remind you to keep in mind that I wrote my pieces in 2011, my truth then has matured over time, and a lot has happened in seven years. After all these years coming back to Beyond the Cover and reading this, then revising it to publish them in this blog, I found that I haven’t changed much as a person and in my thoughts, but I have grown as one would expect.
Tomorrow, I will post a poem that I wrote in 2013 for my Creative Writing course during my final year at University of Iowa. I’m not much of a poet, so I will only share one piece that is semi worthy, but I have to warn you it’s a bit on the morbid side.
Stay Tuned for the following excerpts:
Past (Saturday, February 10) – optional
Nuts for Coco (Sunday, February 11)
Present (Saturday, February 17) – optional
Escape (Sunday, February 18
Future (Saturday, February 24) – optional
Fly Free (Sunday, February 25)
happy reading, rebeccanne
rebeccanne's world 