Suffice to say that I'm 22 years old, writing as a side hobby. I have eclectic tastes in stories, but generally I like stories with good characterisation and a lot of emotion. Stories that wring your heart out and leave it to dry, or stories that make you fall off your chair with laughter. I'm a reader. I only happen to write occasionally. And I hardly ever review, because I don't know what to say, or say too much. I can only offer tribute to the writers that I think deserve recognition, for both their soul as well as their skills.

There are two parts to a writer:

The Soul - that part which knows instinctively what makes a good story, that part which feels the story and characters in the writer's heart, that part which gives you the power to draw emotions from your readers, that part which wakes you up at 2 in the morning because you just have to write out the story in your mind or you'll never be able to sleep.

The Skills - that part which helps you play true to the vision of the story and structure it well, that part that senses what's wrong with the story and tells you how to fix it, that part which disciplines you to write consistently, day after day.

I have a Soul, albeit a tiny one. I wish I had better Skills.

Nevertheless, I write.

Even though I am a fan of many different series, and often read fanfiction about them, I do not write for those. Not because I don't want to, but because I don't think I have the talent to do justice to the quality of the original work. My thoughts on the stories I've written:

Five Pins: A one-shot masterpiece. It's what happens when Soul and Skills mix together in the perfect combination. I actually got up at 2 in the morning because I couldn't sleep until I had written this story. Being my first completed story, it's going to be hard to top. Feel the pressure... (Five Pins has also been translated into Chinese and Spanish)

The Will of Fire: Actually, this was the first fanfic I was planning to write, but it's a long series. That's the trouble when you try to describe the entire village instead of just focusing on a few characters. Although I've got the plot sketched out, I don't know if I have the dramatic skill to pull it off successfully. Maybe I should just go slow with this one... Put on hold indefinitely

Twenty Valentines: This idea has been banging around in my head for a long time. It just took shape tonight. I did consider a whole lot of other pairings, but I decided the NaruHina one was the best to work with. Offhand, I'd say that this story, although not as good as Five Pins, is still creditable. I know that I was "in the flow" during the last part. It's the middle that I'm worried about. Upon re-reading this story, I realised that there are a lot of weaknesses in it that I should have worked out before posting. (Told you my Skills were weak...) But oh well, since I haven't received any bad reviews so far, I guess I don't have to change it.

So They Said: Just a flash of inspiration, and something to take a laugh at. I've been writing too many death and tragedy fics lately - have to balance it every now and then with a chuckle or two. Took me forever to write, as I predicted. But it turned out to be the first multi-chaptered fic that I've actually finished, and I'm even moderately proud of it.

Sitting in a Tree: I wrote this story and posted it up. Then I took it down. Now I'm posting it up again. Ah well. It's not my best, and yet... I have a strange compulsion to post it. It doesn't measure up to Five Pins, but I believe Sitting in a Tree is equally important. Five Pins was bittersweet, Sitting in a Tree is unfulfilled, and if I can write the last one-shot to round it all off, it would be the happy-ending, fluffy NejiTen. Just searching for an idea at the moment...

Broken Cage: Looks like I found that idea. But somehow, my writing skills have deteriorated over the long break I took from writing fanfiction. I really don't think this one is as good as my previous NejiTen fics, but it serves. There are only a few really powerful emotional moments in anyone's life - birth, death, and marriage. If you haven't figured it out by now, I always use at least one of them in every story I write. But I really REALLY think I could have done a better job with this one.

Forbidden: This particular plot bunny has been jumping around in my head for the last two months or so, but I've been too busy or not confident enough to write it until now. Even now, I still think the one-shot could have been improved a lot if it had been made into a multi-chapter romance. But it suffices.

Tears of the Warrior: Strangely enough, I got the title for this from a Cowboy Bebop episode, then tried to fit a story into it from one of the fandoms that I'm part of. Kenpachi (from Bleach) just struck me as the right one, though Kakashi (from Naruto) was a close second. But once I got Kenpachi, I knew what his problem was, and a rather unique (I hope) solution to it appeared to me. But I have very little skill in writing in-depth drama, so I'm not sure if I have enough resources to pull it off successfully. Forgive me if I botch it up, or am too slow to update. I really want this to be well done, and that means a lot of time spent prepping. put on hold indefinitely

Let Me Hear You: I was at a point in time where I really wanted to write another rhythmic, symbolic piece like Five Pins, Sitting in a Tree and Forbidden, and School Rumble being the number one series on my fandom list at the moment, I started writing for that. Yakumo's oddity of hearing only some of the time struck me as the perfect vehicle, and I wanted to encapsulate the essence of her relationship with Harima as that of someone she could trust as a platonic friend, but always with the undercurrent of something more... if only she could be sure it was reciprocated. Hence, the last lines of waiting and longing for the moment that "he would no longer be silent". Endlessly waiting for the time that love could blossom.

The Man in My Life: Having written an Onigiri Harima x Yakumo fic even though I fully supported Flag Harima x Eri, I felt disloyal to the faction, so I had to write something to make up for it. I always loved the little umbrella scene with Eri in the rain, as it truly marked the beginning of Flag, and was the first foreshadowing of the relationship that everyone is most interested in. I wanted to write something that showed the "beginning of a beautiful relationship", and the best way to do that was to end another. Drawing from the mood of the scene and Eri's self-effacing relationship with her father, it only made sense for Harima to become the next most important "man in her life".

Pass the Ball: I wrote this in a fit of inspiration. Nothing more, nothing less. It was not premeditated, and yet I believe it is probably the best School Rumble fic I've written to date. Simply because the level of symbolism and hidden meaning in this piece is much higher than in other SR writings, it remains my favourite. Satsuki's self-sacrifice catches at me and I can fully emphathise with her, so I was able to write it in a way that drew from real-life experience.

Belief: I found this lying around my computer's harddrive. I think I wrote it some time ago, and posted it in a collection of drabbles that I later deleted. Since it was the only unpublished completed drabble I had left of that collection (the rest of which were used for So They Said), I thought I might as well publish it as a short piece for the NaruHina fans.

My Mother: I had initially gotten this idea immediately after writing Broken Cage. But it was to be nearly one and a half years before it came to be written. I had writer's block, and I forgot about it, but suddenly, when I finally received a review that did complete justice to Five Pins, it was as if a dam had broken and I was able to pour out everything into writing a NejiTen fic again. It is probably technically worse than Five Pins, but I consider My Mother to be my magnum opus nevertheless, if only because of the sheer amount of Soul I put into it. It is the story I had always wished to write. And I have finally done it.

Possibilities: So. I ran out of nice NejiTen ideas. So I started to write ones which dealt with the not-so-nice parts of their relationship. Not every tale has a happy ending. This was a natural progression from the bitter enforced separation in My Mother to self-decided separation due to incompatible personalities. But I just really wanted to write a story using the POV style I learned from Sunfreak's piece.

A Hero in My Bed: Most likely, none of my regular readers will understand the poignancy and beauty of this piece. That's because H2's artwork is considered outdated by people used to reading modern shounen action/adventures like Naruto or Bleach. What they don't realise is that the storytelling power of the old-style mangakas are legendary compared to the new ones. H2 is a classic example of what happens when sports drama, a web of relationships, and hidden subtleties mix together to form a perfect blend that will make anyone who actually bothers to read it fall in love with it. And, of course, like most fans of H2, I really love the Hiro x Hikari pairing. This was just something I had to write after reading through that bedside scene again for the fifth time or so.