'Hati' and A Personal Struggle

"Hati" in BH Ahad, 15 September 2019
Alhamdulillah.
Relief. 
That is the best emotion to describe my feeling upon finishing writing 'Hati' a few weeks ago. For the past two, three years, particularly after writing Rumah Kopi (yikes that's four years ago!), I just spiraled towards a black hole where I struggled artistically on a daily basis. 
Nothing I wrote was satisfactory - I wanted to tell so much but couldn't find the right way to do it. I tried reading previous works that used to be effortless to write and even attempted to finish a few that after breezy first three to four pages, I couldn't quite find how the plots could progress. Yet theye were all to no avail.
So I turned to other form of writing that were no as taxing - travel writing. My rationale was that I needed to keep the dexterity intact, and who knew, the change might lead me to new expressions I was craving for.
Travel writing opened a whole new world to me, I definitely liked the financial benefits but at the back of my mind, I always reminded myself that I needed to return to my true vocation - literature. Oh wait - travel writing, when done right, is literature too - I love Bruce Chatwin's 'The Songlines', an epitome of travel writing that would always be the beacon in my personal quest at being a better travel writer - so the right term is fiction. I needed to return to fiction.
Wrote a few along the way despite my heart not being fully in them. It's okay, I tried to convince myself, efforts do count to something, right? I knew that if I kept trying, the misses would eventually turned into hits.
In the meantime, I channeled my energy more vigorously into other things that I'd always been doing - reading, running and traveling. They left me exhausted sometimes, and took much of my free time that I started questioning if I wasn't destined to write anymore. It crossed my mind that maybe, just maybe, I didn't have what it took to be a writer anyway, and now I had been found out.
Yep, I had reached that point of existentialist's crisis.
Yet since reading, running and traveling were going so well and rewarded me almost instantly, I decided to just keep going. My rationale was that these things I enjoyed were resources, somehow, they would gave me spaces to observe, perceive and think more objectively, away from my ultimate vocation - writing. 
So when a few weeks ago, the idea for 'Hati' culminated, I decided not to rush. I was scared. I was afraid if it was another false alarm that wouldn't go anywhere. Rejection hurts, even if it was from your own writing. So I think I slept on it first. Then when it lingered and words kept forming in my head I thought what the heck, let's just start it and see how it goes. I just wrote one phrase in my note book - 'anak angkat' - then I started typing.
The story flowed, smoothly. Too smooth that it scare the hell out of me. There were instances that I was afraid, so I steppe back; I postponed writing for two days at one stretch, citing tiredness from running as the reason. Yet deep down I knew it was something else.
Pretty much, I knew how the first half of the story would unfold, but I wasn't sure on how it would end. Also, I was initially worried about the accuracy of each 'symbol' with what they were supposed to represent. Then I decided to relax - this was a fiction I'm writing; it was about facts, but I didn't need to be spot on 100%. 
As for how I arrived at the ending, I was reminded by the foreword in my last book on the roles of protagonist and antagonist in a work of fiction. After all, we were all imperfect.
I must say there was this satisfaction at having completed 'Hati.' No, not the kind of satisfaction of having had written your masterpiece from herewith you could rest your pen and retire happily. It was a satisfaction derived from knowing that I had put my heart into it.
While I toyed with the idea of stepping away from this kind of subject matter and (in jest) write more on domestic subjects, I guess this was, is, where my heart truly is.
Happy reading, and Selamat Hari Malaysia!