Dear younger Maya, you keep buying Moleskines with the word "novel" whispered in the shop aisle. You think length equals importance. You are wrong, but not tragically.
You imagine a hardcover on a shelf at Kinokuniya, spine facing out. You have not yet learned that most shelves face inward, toward the writer, for years before anyone else sees them.
You will not write the Great Singapore Novel. You will write about hawker queues and borrowed umbrellas. About your mother's cooking and the lift that smells like rain. Some pieces will fit in a reader's pocket on a difficult Tuesday — and that will matter more than a hardcover spine.
The magazines you edit now are training, not delay. You are learning what sentences survive an deadline and which ones need room to breathe. Keep both lessons.
Keep the ambition. Just aim it at accuracy, not size. The city is already epic — HDB corridors, MRT transfers, the botanic garden bench that stays cool until nine. You only need to notice the bakery door chime.
When you are my age you will still want the novel. You will also know that the journal saved you first. Start there. The novel can wait without being forgotten.