My two stories are inspired by an event I experienced as a child (Drive) and of my attempt to write about something that I have never done so before but has been on my mind for a while (Baby Blues). They focus on the main characters’ internal conflicts with themselves or something outside of their body, such as relationships with a loved one. The three poems have a basis on religion and space – two subjects that have intrigued me since I was a child.
In Drive, I draw upon an incident when I was younger as inspiration for the story. It is written in the first person present narrative so it can be an in-the-moment scene to further emphasize the problems in which the main character Judith is going through. However, I choose to let the story come close to breaking the fourth wall to show the dim line between her maladaptive daydreaming and reality. By letting Judith speak to the reader, it’s to show her inability to cling to anything else, and her loneliness in this trip despite her mom being there physically. The relationship between her and her mother is one of the main reasons why Judith ‘talks’ to the reader. The reader will not judge her or scold her, and they are silent listeners. Furthermore, Judith’s anxiety issues exacerbate the concept of reality and force Judith to use daydreaming as a coping mechanism from that anxiety. Many people in real life use their own version of coping to help with their problems, and daydreaming has always been a prevalent mechanism for most people – usually those with creative minds.
Baby Blue delves more into relationships and the concept of self-preservation. I use a lot of internal monologs and flashbacks to build up to the ending of the story. In the middle, I wish for a tenseness from the internal struggles of the main character Lydia as she tries to find a reason to stay and a reason to not stay. I place them in the same setting, their house, to emphasize an isolated atmosphere; particularly for Lydia to perhaps increase the stress and tension upon both her and the story.
In To The Stargazers, I like to utilize real world information and the fantastical to create a concept of god-like space phenomenon. The inspiration comes from the idea that black holes are like the angels of the real world. They are untouchable, vast, yet they hold such an unimportant existence to the majority of our minds. Therefore, I gave the black holes a voice as a collective where they talk to us humans in a style that is to mirror their ‘greater’ height of existence.