Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Short Short Shortlist

Congrats to our own Amaruhizat who is one of the finalists in the first Nanotales competition for short short stories, co-sponsored by the Guardian and Ziji. 100 entries made it through out of 2187 stories submitted, and organizer Ziv Navoth says :
... in my humble opinion, we may have some of the world's best stories!
The winner is to be decided by public voting, rather than by the judges, a decision that not all agree with, going by the comments on Ziv's blog page. I must say I like the idea that there is public participation which encourages the stories to be read and thought about, and which perhaps will in turn encourage others to try their hand at Nanotales.

Go visit Amaruhizat's page here and do drop by to leave him some comments about his story and rate it. But do read the rest of the stories and judge all of them on merit!!!

10 comments:

Amir Muhammad said...

congrats!

i wonder if anyone remembers syed adam aljafri. he won many prizes back in the day when the nst (dread word!) had its short-story competition.

then he and the competition died, not sure in what order.

one of his better stories was about the same ... incident.

Anonymous said...

I wonder if anyone can ever claim originality over their work at all.

IMHO I don't think Humans are capable of creating, recreating what has been created boley. Creating is...impossible untuk makhluk kudus kerana itu hak Maha Pencipta?

Anonymous said...

and thanks.

Amir Muhammad said...

i wasn't accusing you of copying lah. i just wanted to draw people's attention to a different story (by a local writer) they may have not read, which happened to be about the same major incident...but which was told in a wholly different way. so there!

btw, why did u use the word 'ambrosial' to describe air?

bibliobibuli said...

thanks amir - yes i remember the competition and reading the winners and runners up, but i'd forgotten the names of the writers

Anonymous said...

And I wasn't accusing you of accusing me of copying oso lah.

I am just saying that to point to another similar topic and talk about the evolution of works of arts or other creative endeavours, which is really an re-intepretation stimulated by earlier works, other artists or other sources.

How the works of artist are inspired by an earlier works or other artists's works. That's how arts evolve lah. So there!

I am actually glad you mention about Syed Adam al Jafri, I never read his work or know him. Would like to read about his depiction, his perspective how he view a major incident.


Why I used ambrosial?

I think it captured precisely the moment they had. The two couples in love, in their final moment, which they know was coming, were trying to savor the moment the best they could, and their attention and senses are so heightened due to the concetration, that the air itself seems touchable that they could taste it.

Actually the story is an allegory, how I view people at the start of being in a love relationship is. Everything seems so perfect and sweet, before the reality sets in, or in the two couple's case the bomb blew up.

I did wrote how the air tasted like cinnamons and buns, but I decided it sounded too corny to be taken seriously hahaha.

Anonymous said...

And thank you for the kind plug sharon. forgot to say it earlier.

My head seems to be everywhere today (on stark redbulls streak here) datelines, datelines datelines.

Unknown said...

how come you comments on my blog are always several times longer than your short short stories? haha

anyway the 9/11 stories are being written ... historical events that are felt by all of us will always produce common reference points

Argus Lou said...

Congratulations, Amaruhizat!
(I feel so excited whenever a Malaysian wins something international.) ^_^
Will be sure to check it out soon.

Anonymous said...

Sharon ~ haha isn't it? I think its because real life is more elaborate than fiction.

Argus Lou ~ Thank you so very much. :)