To be honest with myself, I don't really fancy romance. Really. The fact is, I just... hate it now. A story that mainly focuses on romance seems so boring to me. If romance is just on the sideline accompanying another main genre then I can consider reading it. But purely romance... no thanks. And the weird thing is, all the fics I write features romance.

Maybe it's because of what I'm going through now. The problem is, I've never fallen in love before. Maybe a few lingering crushes here and there but love, no. Which is why I don't really like romantic songs either. Wait, not romantic songs. Songs that feature broken love or anything about love between a man and a woman. Nope, that's not for me. I just don't feel the songs, which leads to me not liking the songs compared to others. I do like ballads, but I don't really like those that mainly focuses on relationships. I prefer ballads that is universal, that can be applied not only on relationships between a man and a woman but also family and friendship. Same goes for fics. I normally avoid fics with romance, which is the most common genre in AFF now, because I don't feel it. I don't like it. I used to fancy romance a year of two ago but now, it has disappeared. Poof. Well, coming from a Form 5 student facing the most important exam in my life in less than half a year, romance is the last thing I need. Stress is a common thing now for someone my age, not only because of exams but also of other factors. One of it is to think about what I want to pursue after I finish secondary school.

Instead of romance, I tend to be inclined towards friendship and action stories. First is because I'm going through an inner turmoil regarding my friends. I have 2 sets of friends, one my Malay friends and another my classmates from last year, two of which I am very fond of. I keep thinking how our fate as friends would turn out to be after school ends. Would we still be friends? Or would our relationship fade, the same way my close primary school friends faded? I treasure my friends so much, and I worry about the future. Second is because of, again, stress. Towards the end of last year, I was greatly stressed by a science competition that my friends and I eventually pulled out at last minute (I'm ashamed of that) and some other things that lasted till early this year. I was so stressed up my menstrual cycle was disrupted and I felt like punching someone. I don't remember how many times I've cried, trying to relieve that stress.

Anyway, my preferred genre has always been other than romance. I love a good mystery, thriller, fantasy, supernatural, historical and slice of life stories. But sadly, I've never written stories based on those genres except slice of life. The nearest I have to a story is a short paragraph I wrote last year about A Drop of Water, the silly Belgian Chocolate one I finished after planning the first part of the story with my teammates (which got chosen by the Belgian teacher. He actually saw it here on AFF in my blog and made me have a moment of self-embarrassment when he announced my username during assembly) and a short story/essay on vampire-like-creatures (I hate vampires, thus the derived version) which I wrote at the end of last year. I actually have had ideas on all those genres except mystery but didn't have the guts to expand them into a full-fledged story because all of those ideas seem shallow and full of flaws. No matter how much I tried to improvise, it just wouldn't turn out good. Probably because of my lack in story planning skills. Grr.

But my dream is to write in those genres. Currently, I have one idea on a historical story, featuring either ancient Chinese or Korean civilization. The idea came to me last year when I studied about the ancient civilizations of the world but was abandoned when I couldn't find a way to make it seem real and believable. I needed more information and research to do that, and last year I was extremely lazy because I couldn't find a conflict to begin with. But recently, I was inspired by something else that led me to reconsider the abandoned idea. Perhaps there really is hope for that idea to be developed into a story!

Besides that, I'm also considering rewriting the vampire-like-creatures essay into a full story. I never thought of making it into a story until one of my friends who read the story expressed his discontentment on the abrupt ending the essay had. Then, I thought, well why not remake it into a story? I was willing of course, but the thing is do I have time for it? Just planning for it takes time, but writing the whole thing up would take a lot of my time. Thinking about it is easy, but executing the idea is hard. One thing for sure is that I still have a lot to improve before writing that story up.

Anyway, besides those two ideas, I also had other ideas which also remained as thoughts. I think last year I had at least 6 lingering ideas on those genres that I didn't have the guts to write. I'm thinking of writing up the short ones, just as a start, and post it in Wattpad since I planned them to be normal fics. But the question of when I'm going to write it is something I have to brood about.

One thing's for sure, after I finish my current ongoing story, Ties of Friendship, I'm going to try to work on those ideas. After my exams are finished of course. And if I don't get enrolled in the national service programme, which is compulsary to go if you're chosen.