Friday, September 15, 2006

Sharing Nugget #28

#28: A blog is a conversation.

I received feedback that people reading “the story of J” might misinterpret that some of the characters are depicting them. Well,

“The story of J” is fictitious.

The characters do not depict any real life persons. Rather, most of these characters are inspired by them – meaning that real personalities serves as a starting point, and the rest comes from my imagination. For J, she is a character I built by melting a few people I know, general behavior traits, and my own struggles when I was a president of two student bodies.

Admittedly, I adopted some of the scenes that happened in real life (which I believe is the source of this misunderstanding). Such powerful experience makes for great story telling. Thus, I borrowed and weaved them into the story. They make up the scenes. And that’s that.

But anyway, therein lays the fun in reading stories. They are meant to be interpreted. An author may want it vague – so as to spark off a discussion with the reader. Readers might grasp the message, or readers might misinterpret it. In Wikipedia’s article on Ernest Hemingway’s “The old man and the sea”, critics are torn over the debate of Hemingway’s real message. What if he doesn’t really have a message? What if all he wants is to tell a beautiful story?

The story of J is vague. There are messages. And different people will interpret it differently. It means something to me - it contains many lessons I do not want to forget. Thus, not to bore myself, and using this space to practice my writing, I decide to write a story instead of a reflection entry.

Today, I experience the dichotomy of blogging - the dichotomy of fact versus fiction, private versus public, and reflection versus prediction.

Some people might become angry and try to get back at me.

Some people might reflect and learn from it.

Some people think I am attacking some people.

Some people think I am attacking myself.

Some people think I am depicting imagination.

Some people think I am depicting life.

What a conversation.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home