Local Writers' Manifesto?

Trawling through the Sun online the other day for the feature on Kee Thuan Chye, I realised that there were some other excellent interviews with local writers archived. Beth Yahp talks about the writer's life, how her first novel The Crocodile Fury came to be published overseas but found a long time to make it to these shores ... and about the local literary scene.

I agree wholeheartedly with what she says about where the Malaysian creative writing scene is headed:

I think just from readings that I’ve gone to and the classes that I’ve run that there’s some interesting work being done here. Real interesting work.

And I think there’s also an energy here, an enthusiasm. And it would be good to see that kind of energy and enthusiasm and the kind of work that is already being done, kind of, harnessed and see it result in something… I’m not sure what that thing is, actually.

I mean, we can’t help talking about markets and publishing, but I’ve just been encouraging everybody to self-publish. Coz, like last night, we were talking about outlets for people writing fiction — there are not that many in Malaysia for writing in English. And yet, the students have a lot of energy and are keen to write and keen for their work to be heard or read. And, so for me, you know, it’s like, ‘Okay, if you’re keen on getting read, just do something about it.’ I mean, that’s how movements get created, when people have the energy to actually start things and keep it going.

And now, with the means of production [that we have], producing is actually much easier because you can practically do it all with your little iBook. Distribution is still a problem, but there are various means of getting around that.

I think there’s a lot of potential. I think people are probably not so sure about how to go about things. And again, my comments are based on [a] very narrow experience; I haven’t actually looked at the literary scene as a whole.

But, I have a sense that the idea of writing and being a writer, and kind of leading a writing life, is so new here to most people. Most people here are at a stage where it’s a dream, you have a dream of being a writer but you really don’t know what the steps are that need to be taken to get there. And so, what we probably need is a sharing of information. And also a kind of sharing of possibilities.

And what I’m really comparing this to is when I was a student and learning the craft of writing but also kind of learning how the writing scene and the publishing scene and the small magazines scene worked. And so, we were doing things like producing work ourselves and writing stuff, and then sending it off to small magazines. And there were a lot of small magazines around. And that’s the thing that I’m asking myself. Where are the small magazines here which are run by students? You know, because they are really the training ground for new writers and also they are the means by which new writers get their work seen. Where are all the readings with open mike sections where the new writers can go up and listen to established writers and read and be heard on the same platform? Because we used to do that. Famous writers or people who were more experienced would be reading on the official list and there would always be an open mike section where students could go up. And then you have the experience of reading your stuff in public and then you get to talk to the more established writers and a connection gets made. And then you go and listen to authors speaking, um, you do writing workshops, you send your stuff out. So, there’s quite a lot of turnover with all this stuff happening…

It’s not just like kind of dreaming about it, sitting in your room by yourself, in isolation. That’s very hard! I mean, I think that’s very, very hard, to begin writing, in isolation. So, that’s the kind of stuff I would love to see happening here.

I'd love that too. We gotta get off our bums and make some of these things happen!