Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Silverfish Writers' Forums

Good for Raman for taking the initiative with this. (It's very badly needed.) :
After repeated requests, Silverfish Books is organising a writers' forum. The intention is for it to become a monthly meeting for aspiring creative writers in English to read their works, request feedback, network, form their own splinter writers' groups, and to share their stories with others having similar interests. We have been pondering this for a while. The original intention was to make it exclusive to Silverfish Writing Programme participants. But after discussing this with others we have decided to open it to all (including writers from Singapore if any want to make the trip). No fee will be charged.

It is proposed that this free forum be held on the first Saturday of each month ( as long as interest lasts) and the first event will be on
Date: Saturday, 5th July 2008
Time: 2.30 to 4.30pm
Venue: Silverfish Books, 58-1, Jalan Telawi, Bangsar Baru

This session is ideal for you if:

1. You write short fiction, biography or travelogues
2. You have unpublished short stories, biographies or travelogues of around 2000-3000 words to share
3. You crave constructive criticism on your writing to help you improve
4. You want to continue writing till you die
5. You are willing to work hard to improve your writing
6. You are passionate about writing
7. You intend to write enough stories for a whole book (not a one-story-in-ten-years writer)
8. You are thick-skinned and resilient and not afraid of criticism

This session may be a waste of time for you if:

1. You want to write mainly to make money
2. You only want to be a writer but you are not interested in the hard work (or you merely want to be famous for being famous)
3. You are not open to criticism of your writing
4. You are not willing to share your stories.
5. You are not interested in reading various genres and authors
6. You think writing is all about glamour
7. You think your writing is already perfect
8. You have a weak heart
9. You like to dominate events by not allowing anyone else to speak (or present their stuff)
10. It's all about you, you and you.
Great list too!

11 comments:

Ellen Whyte said...

Guess that's me out: I make my living by writing!

bibliobibuli said...

i make a fair bit of mine that way too! but hey, there's always other writers to help along ...

Anonymous said...

Hey Sharon, is this just for writers who haven't sold anything at all or is it ok for writers who have sold one or two or more of their writings as well?

Amir Muhammad said...

If you appeared in one of the later Silverfish anthologies, that pretty much counts as "not exactly sold your writing" lah.

And I am on the lookout for good biographers myself! The two that I were willing to commission bailed out on me.

Anonymous said...

"If you appeared in one of the later Silverfish anthologies, that pretty much counts as "not exactly sold your writing" lah."

Ouch.

And hey Amir, I saw your book in the remainder bin with a big discount sticker on it :)

Amir Muhammad said...

Tidak!! Hahaha.

bibliobibuli said...

julya - really only raman can answer that but i reckon there really won't be any prohibition against the already published taking part - after all writers want to improve and also other writers need helping.

whose biog amir?

Amir Muhammad said...

I've always been interested in a Botak Chin bio. For obvious reasons the writer needs to be able to converse in Chinese dialects. I have two other, uh, personalities in mind too.

Anonymous said...

When I was a child my family used to call me Botak Chin. Does that count?

-- PS

bibliobibuli said...

haha preeta!

Amir Muhammad said...

I hope this forum will help new writers weed out redundancies in their prose.

Purely for hypothetical reasons, take a look at the two lists in this post.

In the first list, #3 and #8 could easily have been conflated. Also #4 and #6.

In the second list, #2 and #6 are arguably the same. Also, #3 and #7. And even #9 and #10.

:-)