Just doing my thing

I think I would like to adopt that school of thought. Of just doing my thing. Whatever the hell is the trend nowadays, whatever it is that people love to read these days, whatever the subject matter that mattered currently, I am just gonna do my thing.

"You should write stories about married life. It's the trend nowadays."
Nope. I will just do my thing.

"You should try e-book or e-novel..."
Nope. I will just do my thing.

"Don't you think this whole thing is a mess?"
I don't know. I just wanna do my thing.

"Indie. That's the way to go."
Thanks, but I'll just do my thing.

"Try literature. Write for Dewan Bahasa for example."
I'll just do my thing.

This is not me not being ambitious. But yesterday, as I was trying to write, albeit frustratingly with all the other stuff - like the situation with the community nowadays, with people keep saying that this book is better than that book or this theme is better than that theme, and that I should do this kind of project or that kind of project, while people around going "Malay books are shit", "I only read indie books", "Love stories are crap, thriller is the coolest", "I can't understand her mundane writing..."... - I realised that I wanted to return to who I was in 2007, when I was writing PLAIN JANE - a story about mediocrity.

Back then, there was no 'who writes better and who gets the most royalty'. Everybody's the same. We applaud those who got it good and in return, they advertise our books for us. I was "that writer who writes about normal things and normal situations". We were writers, not celebrities. There were only few of us and we keep it tight.

The first few writers that I met was Kak Shahriah Abdullah, Kak Dyza Ainun, Kak Ramlah Rashid, Kak Kamsiah Abu, Kak Siti Rosmizah, Kak Indah Hairani, Kak Ebriza Aminuddin, back when Buku Prima was an unknown entity and people go "Buku Prima? You mean Media Prima?" when you said that you write for Buku Prima.

But I liked it then. I was one of the younger writers. And we all just "doing our thing". We were not competing to write faster so that we can get in line and our book can be published that year or squeezing our brains off to write what people want so that we can be a bestseller. Our readers are people who love what we wrote from our hearts, not what we wrote for the sake of them.

I love those days and I want to return to those days.

I wanna just do my thing.

Nak letak gambar ramai2 tapi ada yang masih belum bertudung masa tu...