Attend and be Enlightened

I received a message from Ng He Xiang (Hex) of 95% (The Writing Academy) is holding a free talk entitled About Writing in Malaysia and featuring authors Dina Zaman and David Byck this coming Monday 14th May from 8pm to 10pm.

The address is, 80A Wisma Dicklin, Jalan Bangsar. (Map below, click to enlarge.)

I'm not sure if you need to reserve a place or not, but you can call up Hex at 03-22876095/7095 or email hex@95percent.com.my

By the way, I never did find out why the organisation calls itself 95% ...

Publishing Your Story With MPH

Picked up the following ad from the mywordup egroup:

[Writers Circle] Publishing Your Story With MPH
Posted by: "Esther" estcl@yahoo.com estcl
Mon Oct 16, 2006 6:35 am (PST)

Some news off the press.

95% The Writers Academy is now working in partnership
with MPH Publishing to increase the pool of our local
talents. We are encouraging our writers to write their
stories. Aspiring writers out there, once you have
completed your stories with us, you stand a chance to
publish your stories.

Come for the talk on Wed 18 Oct and find out more. In
the meantime, here are the other details of this talk.

We will be featuring three speakers who will speak
about three different areas, namely:

• Juliah : The difference between writing a short
story and a novel

• David Byck : How difficult is it writing a fiction
as opposed to non-fiction

• Dzoff : Is there any money and glory in writing for
the screen, right here in Malaysia.

Fee : RM50
Date : 18th October, 8.30 pm – 10.00 pm.
Venue : 95% The Writers' Academy, Wisma Dicklin, 80A
Jalan Bangsar, 59200 Kuala Lumpur.

Call 03-2287 7095 or email to askme@95percent. com.my
to book your seats.

Esther

I am happy to see a commitment to publishing short fiction and developing writers and well done to MPH and 95% for collaborating.

I have been fortunate to be invited to 95%'s end of course presentations a couple of times and know that the speakers have been working hard on a novel and I'm sure they learned about themselves as writers from the course. David Byke is of course the author of It's a Long Way to the Floor, a book which I hear is now selling well (even in my local mamak newsagent!) and deserves to.

But at the risk of being considered a bit of a spoiler, may I ask why whether it is really ethical to charge RM50 for a session like this when the speakers are not really any better qualified to talk about their topics than many members of their audience may be?

If you are going to charge for a talk, surely it is better to get in writers with a respectable track record in the area they are expected to talk about?

MPH's credibility is also on the line here.

Pitching In

Razlina at 95% The Writer's Academy invited me to be a panellist for a most interesting event called "Pitching Night".

The three of us, filmmaker/activist Hishamuddin Rais, Dhojie (Why do I never seem to be able to escape these kutu guys?) and myself were asked to listen to and judge three students from the Story Writers in Progress course who were "pitching" their stories.

Now "pitching" is a term I'd never heard until recently and made friends with a copywriter. It means making a presentation to sell an idea to a potential client, I gather. Fine with a concept for an ad, but a strange thing to do with a story, I thought.

There were three students whose work was up for scrutiny. Each presented in turn with very nicely produced power point slides to underline their points. The first had the outline and first chapter of a self-help book cum novel. The other two were pitching film ideas. And we were three formidable judges, in a scenario reminiscent of Malaysian idol. Hishamuddin was the bad guy and gave the toughest feedback, though in every case it was spot on. And he stirred things up a bit too, much to the delight of the audience. ("Where's the sex? Come on, you must show us this guy's a wanker ...")

They all did pretty well with their presentations, though I felt that in every case they were trying to be terribly over-ambitious, with plots that were just way way too complex and not enough understanding that good stories must be primarily character driven.

The potential novelist had a good idea basic plot but I am not sure that she will be able to make her character's change of heart (on which the whole novel turns) convincing to the reader. I told her afterwards to fastwrite the whole thing and let the characters take charge of the story, because they would know better than her where to go with it.

Hishammudin spoke about hating stories with too obvious a moral purpose. ("I dislike all morality," he said. I've had a stomach full of it too, particularly after training teachers for schools here where every lesson has to have its laboured "moral value".) In fact there's no need to have novels which are overtly didactic - if the book is well written we will learn from it anyway!

The second presenter had a very nice idea for a film, I thought, with a character Hishamuddin called a Mat Rempik (a motorbike-riding excitement-seeking young Malay man, I gather). I liked his basic concept, the small guy (a pizza delivery boy) with big dreams who has to clear his name when he is wrongly accused of a murder.

The third presenter had a love story. Dhojie and Hishamuddin were quite right to keep stressing the fact that you couldn't write a film-script in a vacuum - you had to know the whole lineage of great films in that genre and understand how they work.

They pointed out too that a love-story couldn't work without some kind of obstacle to keep the lovers apart. (It was too easy for this well-heeled couple from Ampang, they didn't have to fight to win each other.) I didn't feel her characters deserved love at all, they were so anaemic and non-descript. "We have to care about them first, before we can ever believe that they might care for each other," I said.

(I think the word "love" is all too casually tossed around, anyway ... I think it should have a tax slapped on it to make people weigh its use more carefully. Miserable old cynic I've become.)

Anyway, it was a good evening with some important points about story-telling in the Malaysian context brought up for discussion.

Thanks for inviting me along, Raz. I was very happy to find out about other creative writing courses in the city and make contact with you all. And thanks for the gift of the writer's notebook.

Creative Writing Courses Investigated

Adriana Nordin Manan an intern with Malaysiakini called me up a few weeks ago to ask for an interview about the courses I'm teaching. We met for lunch and a chat, and I asked her to come and sit in on a session at Darling Muse. She did - and this is her report about the evening ...

Honing your skills in creative writing

Look around you nowadays - it seems like everybody wants to be a writer. You have all these creative writing classes being introduced. Who knows if they're any good my editor proclaimed to the jittery intern. I was in my first week in the office.

You should go find out more.

So off I went to have a look-see at the different creative writing classes found around town (two up and running and another in the pipeline, with yet another publicised but put on hold due to lack of response by the target audience).

In an art gallery somewhere around Bangsar, Class #1 was conducted by Sharon Bakar, one of the more experienced/well-known creative writing teachers in the area. On the walls were canvas paintings done in a clumsy and vivid manner, the outcome of a recent series of workshops for children. I could see myself buying one, if I had an extra RM1000. Heck, I didn't have enough money to pay for the full six-week course I was sitting in on that night, which was about a third of that.

There were seven women in the group, including the teacher. We began by listing different adjectives and nouns on two separate sheets of paper and later exchanging them among ourselves. Then we had to pen sentences using any adjective-noun combination.

Just write. Don't think at all. Just write whatever comes to mind. It doesn't have to make sense, we were told.

Daffodils paint the periphery.
The jackrabbit exposes its soul.
Cuttlefish color the corals.

We talked about self-censorship and the pesky little voice that tells you your writing is rubbish. We shared our stories. One that stayed with me was a personal recollection of living in a religiously overzealous university campus, herd mentality et al. Not forgetting of course the questions on your personal life which were, well, rude.

People used to always ask what race I belonged to. My stories changed every time and one of them was that my parents ran away from their respective homes to live somewhere far away, usually Siberia, where they met. And you know - they believed it!

Admittedly, it was tough to write without first formulating your thoughts. This is also why I suppose we were asked to write a lot on our own personal experiences, things that are easier to invoke. Nobody would chastise you for what you write about, growing up buck-toothed, for example.

As a slightly insecure person when it comes to writing, I felt very relieved and at ease with the supportive environment we had that evening, where everyone had a kind word to say about what you had scribbled down. So it wasn't so bad, this whole sharing your writing business. My initial nervousness overcome, I spent the next two hours writing, sharing and being delighted at what the others read out.

That night, I drove home resolute on writing a book or screenplay. Maybe, just maybe somebody might want to read what I have to say?.

Adriana also stops in at Ninety Five Percent Sdn Bhd:

... a brand-spanking new company in the Bangsar area, which advertised itself as a provider of specific writing skills training within a context of personal growth.

She concludes about the experience:

... the Dale Carnegie meets story writing course was a bit too hokey for me. Just like the global corporate training enterprise, the company had an approach that employed the ability to write as a means to market oneself better and I feared that this end could diminish the pleasure and fulfillment of writing in itself. ... I could see myself feeling shortchanged if I were coached by a person to write not to bring out the little voice within me, but to bring myself to fit the mold of ideal employee when I start job-hunting. I don't want my writing, something I consider very genuine and honest, to be bundled together with how I can appear more attractive as a job candidate ...

She goes on then interview various luminaries in the field about their thoughts on creative writing, including Raman (who has the usual axe to grind!), Ruhayat, Dhojee, and a couple of academics.

I was particularly interested in what Prof. Hazidi Abdul Hamid from The School of Media and Communications, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia had to say. He apparently is keen on seeing creative writing appear more frequently on students' academic schedule.

'I believe creative writing is a very valuable course to offer and to take even if you do not want to be a writer, what more a budding writer. In this increasingly maddening world these courses should be a must for all university students, but I know this is too much to ask. ... I believe that it should be taken as part of or in addition to normal academic work. Personally, I have found that being able to sit in front of the computer and knock out several pages of creative work helps me to think about my more academic work. If you concentrate too much on something you might lose it entirely but if you allow your mind to take its own course letting the left as well as right brain work, you will be far more productive and happier.

This pretty much echoes my own experience teaching undergraduate courses. And reaffirms my core belief - writing from the imagination, writing from the heart is just plain good for you ...

I am glad I've set up my courses. A few months ago I wasn't sure whether this idea would take off ... but things are going really well for me.

I thank from the bottom of my heart the dear friend who gave me the initial push; those who have had faith in me and supported me along the way (not everyone by any means - some sad surprises there); MPH for giving my course a home; and my course participants for being prepared to take risks and put their words out there.