Watership Down

Watership Down has been at the bottom of my to-read list for quite some time. I finally picked it up at my local library a few weeks ago but still, I was unsure whether I would have time to read it.

I am so glad that I did. 

Watership Down is a well-beloved story about Rabbits, so going into it that is exactly what I expected: a loveable and entertaining adventure. But this book was so much more. 

Let me rant about Watership Down for a while. 

The fact that this is considered a children's book, and the fact that it is a story about rabbits, gives this book a certain image that is entirely misleading.

But let me tell you, this is no ordinary rabbit adventure, and these are no ordinary rabbits. While this adventure through the countryside is at times charming and perhaps even a little delightful, it is so in the least childish way imaginable. Rarely have I read a book that was so heartfelt and yet so heartwrenchingly twisted! This book is heartening simply because it is so brutal, it is gruesome, and it is so powerful!
These rabbits are not your ordinary cute and timid bunnies. These rabbits are fierce and they are ferocious! These rabbits are fighters, and it is their fight against the cruelties of a world gone savage that makes this book so empowering! 
  To say that this book was life-changing or eyeopening might be overselling it a bit. But before I began reading it I read somewhere online that after reading this book you will never look at a countryside or a meadow the same way again. And it is in this sense that I can honestly say that, yes, this book was life-changing and it was eye-opening. This book has made countrysides and prairies, not into peaceful meadows, but battlefields where life must fight with all its vigor to survive.

"Your people cannot rule the world, for I will not have it so. All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and when they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you."

~Frith to El-ahrairah 

Watership Down, by Richard Adams  

Thanks again Dad for taking these pictures for me. It really means a lot that you make the time to support me. 
Check out more of his pictures here.   

Editing Madness

I've been back home for a while now, but between work and late night writing/editing I haven't gotten to updating my blog. 
But I thought tonight would be the perfect time.

Tomorrow is a big day because tomorrow is the day I intend to finish editing part one of my book.

The editing process has been slow and at times downright idle. But one thing has kept me going through all this; through all the inconveniences and the frustrations; through all the times when I felt like life was against me and it just didn't work. 

I come home at the end of the day and I wish I could just crash. I wish I could go to bed, or read a book, or waste away in front of the T.V. 

It's so much easier to feel sorry for myself and make excuses. But then I realized something: This is my purpose. It doesn't matter if it's inconvenient or hard. It doesn't matter if I have to stay up late night after night or write and rewrite scenes till I go mad. It doesn't matter, because in the end, all this, all the late nights and the long days, are just a means to an end. 

Because this, all that I'm working for, this is gonna be so worth it!

Anyhow, it's getting late, and I have a big day in front of me.
Goodnight. 

A Series of Choices

Although I haven't posted in a while, I have opened my blog quite often lately. I have started writing post after post and not finished any of them. This is not because they were something that should not be shared but simply because I did not know how to share them.
I will finish this one. Not because I know how, but because it's been too long.

When you run from one place to another, completing task upon task, life gets away from you all too quickly. I have been very busy lately. And although I often drift away during class and reminisce about stories, the ones I will write and the one I am currently living, most of the time I am too distracted and overworked to ponder any such things.
I wanted to take a moment to sit down and ponder again; a moment in which I do not let life distract me and I can forget about the things I have to do this week.
 Life is, after all, a series of tasks, of struggles and storms; of little fights that become bigger fights all of which are a part of the bigger battle. 
I have been so wrapped up in the little tasks that I often forget the big task. And, when I lose sight of the big task, the big battle, and what I am fighting for, this abundance of little fights, this repetive series of tasks, it drains the life out of me.  

I sit in class and I lose myself sometimes. I write the names of characters in between my notes and I wander through the landscapes I have built in my imagination. I read my textbooks and sometimes it makes me sad because I would so much rather be writing my stories. I would so much rather be writing, because it's been so long and my characters are waiting.
 
I made a choice to pursue my love for stories. I chose this path a long time ago, but that does not mean that I am no longer choosing it now. I choose this path every day. I choose it when I get out of bed in the morning and when I study late into the night. I choose it when I go to classes and when I go to work. I choose it again and again. I make this choice every day when I choose to work and to fight instead of taking the easy ride.
I did not just choose this when I first turned down the bend in the road, I am choosing it with every step I take. 
Every day is a choice. 
I make this choice today, and I will make this choice tomorrow, and I will choose it every day after that. 

And the names of my characters, the worlds I have built inside my head, the stories I love and the feelings I've savoured, the ones that only stories can give me, they are all there to remind me why I am here. 

Heinrich Nikel Photography

"All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us."

~ Gandalf