what a relief! an article in the sunday times on 8 december, 2002, by paul jansen called for more singaporeans to cast off their fears of writing and start "put[ting] pen to paper or finger to keyboard, [lest] we are going to lose a little bit more of our history, our sense of identity, or place in the world."
He articulated what i had been suffering from for a long time: "The Singapore Writers' Block is due to a far bigger problem than modesty: Fear."
"Fear of exposing their soft underbelly. Fear of crossing someone. Fear of failing."
He cites William Faulkner who received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1950: "He, the writer, must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of his heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed - love and honour and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice."
Publisher Alex Chacko was also quoted as saying that there were some good stories to be told and not necessarily by the great and the good only.
"A pity...The more others see that writing can be a satisfying and rewarding profession or activity, the greater the encouragement for them to join in."
"And there's no reason to think our talent pool is too small to produce either good writers or interesting works. Haldor Laxness, who won the Nobel Prize for literature, sprang from Iceland, a country with only 279,000 people."
"You never know how well your tale will travel...You may think you have nothing to say that's worth pinning down for posterity. But you could be terribly wrong. In which case, your story will be irrevocably lost when you depart this life because no one can tell it like you can."
STEP #4 TO BECOMING A GREAT WRITER: Constantly draw inspiration from the world around you
when i was in kobe, japan, recently with my husband, i sat in a cafe with a book in hand and steaming hot mocha in the other, staring out the window watching people go by - many with little children by their sides or fluffy pets on a leash...although it was freezing cold outside, the sights and smells instantly made me warm all over inside!
all the greatest writers of our century like jane austen, victor hugo and leo tolstoy were influenced by the people, sights and sounds they grew up with and experienced daily. i had known this for a fact for a long time but never realised how true it would be for me as well. for example, when i was trying to get into the mind of a nine-year-old girl, i found that reading through my old childhood diaries helped me to remember how a nine-year-old felt, thought and reasoned.
STEP #3 TO BECOMING A GREAT WRITER: Don't be afraid to follow your dreams
in a sickeningly stifling climate like singapore's, i found this to be my greatest hurdle. many people (i shall just affectionately refer to them as sheep - a euphemism for uncreative minds obsessed with stereotyping and pigeon-holing) just could not grasp the concept that someone with a law degree, straight 'a' school and eca record and a lucrative corporate job at raffles place would give up all this to get married, stay at home and become a full-time writer. like annoying salesmen, they could only produce condescending responses such as:
sheep #1: how's the tai-tai lifestyle treating ya?
sheep #2: have you found a job yet?
sheep #3: your friends are all doctors and lawyers? so what happened to you?
my response to sheep #1: unfortunately, i'm not exactly ace tai-tai material. if any of my tycoon relatives are yardsticks to measure by, i certainly do not get to be chauffeured around in a jaguar, shop at tiffany's and chanel everyday, have my face plastered all over the pages of singapore tatler and the peak and spend leisurely afternoons sipping tea and playing mahjong with my well-endowed girlfriends (mostly divorcees or mistresses).
to sheep #2: duh. did i mention i had quite a hard time convincing my previous 2 employers to let me go and that i had made a calculated choice to give up a corporate lifestyle to settle down as a full-time writer after my wedding last july? nope, i did not get retrenched; nope, i did not fail to get hired (like the other 19,000 jobless graduates in our country); and nope, i did not do this to become a tai-tai. i did this because i believe this is my destiny, that i was called by God to serve him while working on my writing projects and because this would ultimately be the best for my marriage and family :)
to sheep #3: you see, this is the kind of question you only get asked in a country like singapore. so until you go out there and see the world my friend, you can stuff it cos i have finally found true and lasting happiness while you probably still haven't!
STEP #2 TO BECOMING A GREAT WRITER: Connect with other great writers
of course, this not only means hanging out with gurus like siuyo and tan hwee hwee. having not touched a novel properly for at least 6 years since i last wrote a paper on thomas hardy for my 'a' levels, i found i had forgotten what a novel looked, smelled and tasted like. initially i thought of signing up for one of those courses run by the christian writers' guild (jerry jenkins, the author of the 'left behind' series, is its president), but later decided subscribing to the writer's digest would be much easier on my pocket and probably more relevant to my day-to-day learning needs too.
in addition to hanging out at the library @orchard once a week, i bought a few good novels for myself to read (sylvia plath's the bell jar is crap, alice sebold's the lovely bones is excellent) and started bookmarking as many noteworthy websites and blogsites as i could...
STEP #1 TO BECOMING A GREAT WRITER: Get funky tech gear to help you get started
okay, my puny sony vaio (which being ultra-lite was great for my hostel-hopping uni days) hasn't been breathing for the past many months, and my husband's laptop has been suffering a bad bout of crashinthemidofsthgimptitis, so when i brought up the idea of getting a new monitor to help me get started on the many days and nights of typing ahead of me, hung suggested we go for the full works - i.e. cpu, hard drive, dvd writer, speakers and all. thanks to resourceful siuyo who recommended hewlett packard for their great customer service we managed to find what we wanted after weeks of scavenging through the twisted alleys of suntec city, funan and sim lim square.
after deciding that investing in a good 17" lcd monitor would be better for my writing career in the long run, we settled for the hp744d at challenger (6th floor funan centre) who were willing to sell the bundle to us without the monitor for about $300 less. brilliant!
choosing the lcd monitor was much more difficult than initially anticipated. we couldn't decide between samsung (supposedly #1 in korea), sharp (supposedly #1 in japan), viewsonic (supposedly #1 in taiwan) and philips (supposedly #1 in singapore). although i liked the images in sharp the most (they were very, well, sharp) and the specs in samsung, i decided to go for the philips one in the end as it seemed to be the least taxing on the eyes and moreover, gave the best value for money.
so all in all, we spent about $3000...a much easier investment to make than plonking down $100,000 for a burger franchise i believe! (the citibank interest-free installment plan didn't hurt either!)
siuyo and i were partners-in-crime/rhyme/slime back in our secondary school days (if you are lucky to know someone from singapore or ARE someone from singapore, you might have heard of this poor insignificant little school called raffles girls' school)...and for some strange reason continue to be so to this day. during chemistry classes it was cheesy poems scribbled on fluorescent yellow post-its passed under the desks; in jc it was sneaking me into the hcjc lecture theatre dressed in one of bernie's brown uniforms and later at university (yours truly was freezing in london while siuyo was having fun in nus) it was a matter of trying to outdo each other in sending bigger and bigger surprises through the post or globe-trotting friends.....
siuyo is now a full time design engineer, part time actress and aspires to be singapore's next stephanie sun.
bluepooch is now an ex-company lawyer, an ex-management consultant and hopes to win the booker prize for literature someday.
