A Contracted Life is intended as a place to explore the negative spaces in life — the things a person don’t, shouldn’t, wouldn’t, can’t do. A reflection of regrets, remorse and the remembered omissions, stopgaps and stumbles – an attempt to live the ugly and dirty necessary to a full life.
Syar S. Alia is having a hard month. There’s only so much television, bad teen movies of the 2000s and copious amounts of YouTube and fanfiction can do, you know? Maybe say hi to her at her website, blog or twitter.
ISSUE Magazine 
“A shoebox of corners”,what an eerie and intriguing thing.
Oh Syar, such beautiful pain!
The screenshots remind me of how one’s workspace start to look, in the midst of fumbling around for that thing that could work, for that one beginning of a story/idea/epiphany that can evolve into something that can be believable and worth showing. Then there’s the video, and it was confusion in motion! It was sneaky, too – with the suggestions of promises, the secrets you reduced into ellipses so as to keep them anchored to yourself. The deleting of things! That was so exciting. I really enjoyed this, hopefully you feel much better about Comfort after producing such a confuzzled yet wonderful piece.
Thanks Dhi! I like that you found the deletion of things exciting. I was hoping to produce that sort of friction when I recorded the process of writing that, like all the readers were just peeking over my shoulder, saying “You could have used a better word!” or “Oh my goodness, what’s she about to say?” Haha!
Reblogged this on smart enough to wish I was more kind and commented:
In my second column for ISSUE Magazine, I recreate the frustration and fear that happens when a writer is faced with blank screens, and through a video try to recreate the nervewracking process of minute decisions that happens when you can’t write. This column deviates from the last two things I wrote for ISSUE in that it involves pictures and video.