Left the Malaysian corporate world after 20 years for a more flexible life as a freelance writer/editor. It has been 12 years since, a good time as any to share why I write, how I write, and what I write. Along the way, I'll also touch on what I read, my family, friends and who's who in the writing world. And et cetera.
Wouldn't it be nice if there's a bookshop where the people there can remember your name? Of course, it wouldn't be at a Borders or an MPH store; perhaps at Silverfish if you go there often enough. In Paris, there is one bookshop, where not only will they remember your name but they will also give you a bed to sleep on if you're in dire straits. The story of this one-of-a-kind place is told by Jeremy Mercer in Books, Baguettes & Bedbugs.
A few words about 'Shakespeare and Company', regarded as one of the world's most famous bookshops. It was opened by a woman called Sylvia Beach in 1919, and soon became a favourite gathering place of literary greats such as F Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and James Joyce. It was forced to close down in 1941 when Beach refused to sell the last copy of Finnegans Wake to a Nazi officer. Ten years later, another bookshop was opened on the Left Bank. Called 'Le Mistral', it was run in a free-spirited manner and even provided beds for the literary-inclined who were down on their luck. The shop was renamed 'Shakespeare and Company' in 1964 and was a regular meeting place for Beatnik poets. The shop's ethos has remained and writers, such as Canadian crime reporter Jeremy Mercer, find their way to this sanctuary.
A book that I picked up at a recent Big Bad Wolfs' sale is The Camel Bookmobileby Masha Hamilton - it was a bargain at just RM8.00! A foreign correspondent, Hamilton served in Africa in 2006, where she was inspired by the Kenyan Camel Mobile Library to write this novel.
Although fictional, the book draws on the real-life efforts of a group of librarians who dedicate themselves to reducing the illiteracy rate of more than 80% of the bush people. Camels are used to bring boxes of books to the nomads, wherever they may be.
While the book above is about the basic need to read, Used and Rare by Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone brings us to the other end of the spectrum - that of the collector of vintage books. It is a delightful account of the writers' 'travels in the book world', of how they stumbled into book-collecting when Nancy was looking for a hard-cover edition of War and Peace to buy for Lawrence's birthday. At the end of the day, the Goldstones concluded, "It had been all too easy to catch the... 'First Edition Fever'. To think that a book had no value unless it was a pristine first edition of a book that everyone else wanted... The more we thought about it, the more we came back to our original view. You don't really need first editions at all. They are just affectations, excuses for dealers to run up the price on you, charge you a lot of money for something that doesn't read any better than any other edition."
To know how astronomically expensive a rare book can be, John James Audubon's The Birds of America, published in 1827, was sold at auction in January 2012 for US$7.9 million!
... and a bore, I'm going to slow down my posting from twice to once a week. God willing, I'll put up a new post every Monday, which gives me the weekend before to put together what I want to write about.
I'm no financial guru but thanks to a collaboration with one, I co-wrote a little book on financial management. This partnership is yet another example of how important it is to have integrity in your work and to do it well. My involvement with this project came about through word-of-mouth. She needed someone to help her with the book and I was recommended to her. She called, we met and clicked, and a friendship was formed.
First, about the book:
We wrote this book for the Credit Counselling and Debt Management Agency. The book, launched in 2008, is aimed at young adults to help them manage their money. The Agency felt it necessary to produce such a book because more than 50% of those seeking its help were below the age of 40. These people got into financial trouble due to their low basic financial literacy. Written in simple English, the book guides the reader in understanding the value of money, setting financial goals and budgeting. It also provides tips on building wealth, planning for uncertainties and implementing real-life financial strategies.
About my co-writer: she is Carol Yip, a certified financial coach who now travels the world giving presentations at financial conferences and running related training programmes. You could say that she's Malaysia's Suze Orman. Carol has other money management books to her credit, one of which is Money Rules. She gave me a signed copy with a very nice message.
To young people out there, it really pays to get started on your financial plan the moment you start working. Heard of the concept 'pay yourself first'? Basically, it is about saving a percentage of your weekly or monthly salary regularly, without fail, before you pay your bills or spend it on other things. And don't touch those savings! Through the power of compound interest, i.e. additional interest earned on top of the original saving amount plus the interest received, you will see your money grow. You are actually paying yourself first now for your future financial freedom.
I wish I had such advice when I was starting out in my career. I could have really retired by now.
How short is a short novel? One website defines it as being no more than 80,000 words or not exceeding 250 pages. A short novel, also called a novella, is not a short story as it can stand on its own in book-form. It features fewer conflicts and sub-plots than a novel but allows for greater characterisation and development of theme than a short story. I think it takes a lot of discipline to write a short novel - there's no waffling about and the writing has to be spare and economical.
I have a number of short novels on my bookshelves. One of them was bought when I was a university student in Wellington, 'New Zealand's Capital of Cool', in the 1970s. The book is A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, first published in 1962. The small Penguin publication is only 138 pages long. It was adapted into a terrifying film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick. The lead character Alex was played by Malcolm McDowell.
Set in a near-future England, the teenager Alex and his gang of friends speak in a slang, called Nadsat, made up by Burgess based on the Russian language. Alex is a complex character; a sociopath who is intelligent and quick-witted with a love for classical music, especially Beethoven. It is a dark story of the state's use of Pavlovian conditioning to alter behaviour.
Another short novel also bought in Wellington was Alexander Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. It was first published in the Soviet Union in 1962 and the Penguin version that I have runs into 143 pages.
It is a "spare, stark description of life in a Siberian labour camp", a fate that was shared by millions of Russians when the Soviet Union was under the dictatorship of Stalin. The book, which "shook Russia and shocked the world when it first appeared", led to Solzhenitsyn being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970.
Love, or its darker side, can also be explored in less than 250 pages. Graham Greene's The End of the Affair, first published in 1951, is an intense account of the aftermath of a love affair; my Penguin edition takes up 192 pages.
It is a story about obsessive love and is said to be based on Greene's own affair with a titled lady. Religion is also woven into the plot, a reflection of the author's Catholic faith.
Francoise Sagan's Bonjour Tristesse is 108 pages long (Penguin edition) and it was first published in 1954. When she wrote this book, Sagan was only eighteen years old and, interestingly, it is a story about a young girl's jealousy of the woman her father intends to marry and her devious plan to separate them. She succeeds but at a tragic cost.
Beauty and Sadness is another story of love and jealousy, this one written by Yasunari Kawabata. First published in 1961, it is the author's last work before he committed suicide in 1972. Kawabata was the first Japanese to have won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968. Like Greene's book above, Beauty and Sadness, which is 152 pages long, is about a middle-aged writer and his mistress of many years earlier. There is a twist here in that the mistress of long ago, now a recluse artist, has a female protege who is also her lover.
My favourite short novel, which at 245 pages is longer than the rest mentioned here, is The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. He was only six years old when his family moved to live in England in 1960 and is a British citizen. In this particular book, which came out in 1989, he delves into the professional dignity that defines an English butler, a dedication that sadly results in missed opportunities in his personal life. The character of the butler, Stevens, was brought out very well by Sir Anthony Hopkins in the film adaptation of the book, ably supported by Emma Thompson as the housekeeper, Miss Kenton, to whom Stevens just could not say the words 'I love you'.
Short novels like these are apparently not economically viable for publishers. Such books don't cost that much less than longer ones in the shops, and many customers prefer to get more book for their bucks. Which is a shame, really, because it is in short novels that you can truly see the skills of the consummate writer.
An idea just popped into my head... well, maybe more of a dream. To open a shop that sells... not books... but bookish things. One of the things that I would sell would be this:
It's a laptop case that looks like a book. On a related note, if I were to have an iPhone, I would want to have this case:
I like British humour. Not Mr Bean, though, who I find a bit silly; I prefer Fawlty Towers anytime. British humour appeals to me because it's subtle and ironic, not at all obvious. As far as books are concerned, when it comes to those that make me laugh, I absolutely enjoy the ones written by Sir John Mortimer (21 April 1923 - 16 January 2009).
Mortimer, an author and playwright, was also a barrister by profession. This legal experience became useful when he created the character that he is best remembered for - Horace Rumpole, who features in a series of very funny books. The first, Rumpole of the Bailey, introduces us to this aging defender of the downtrodden:
"I, Horace Rumpole, barrister-at-law, 68 next birthday, Old Bailey Hack, husband to Mrs Hilda Rumpole (known to me only as She Who Must Be Obeyed) and father to Nicholas Rumpole (lecturer in social studies at the University of Baltimore, I have always been extremely proud of Nick); I, who have a mind full of old murders, legal anecdotes and memorable fragments of the Oxford Book of English Verse (Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch's edition) together with a dependable knowledge of bloodstains, blood groups, fingerprints, and forgery by typewriter; I, who am now the oldest member of my Chambers, take up my pen at this advanced age during a lull in business (there's not much crime about, all the best villains seem to be off on holiday in the Costa Brava), in order to write my reconstructions of some of my recent triumphs (including a number of recent disasters) in the Courts of Law, hoping thereby to turn a bob or two which won't be immediately grabbed by the taxman, or my clerk Henry, or by She Who Must Be Obeyed, and perhaps give some sort of entertainment to those who, like myself, have found in British justice a life-long subject of harmless fun."
I have a collection of the Rumpole series in two books on my shelves - The First Rumpole Omnibus (Rumpole of the Bailey, The Trials of Rumpole, and Rumpole's Return) and The Third Rumpole Omnibus (Rumpole and the Age of Miracles, Rumpole a la Carte, and Rumpole and the Angel of Death). You can probably tell that I just can't get enough of this character.
Mortimer's dry wit comes into play in his non-fiction as well. His Murderers and Other Friends - Another Part of Life, first published in 1994, is full of hilarious anecdotes of his life, including his childhood. He writes about his producer/director friend Tony Richardson: "Tony was a tall, angular man whose long limbs were curiously uncoordinated; but he was resolutely, if not always successfully, athletic. He only learnt to swim in middle life and, although he spent more hours practising on the tennis court than Nastase before Wimbledon, he was easily beaten by a one-armed player who had to throw the ball into the air and then grab his racket from between his legs when he served." Of his own attitude towards sports, Mortimer says, "An English middle-class education has made me allergic to sport and my only interest, when forced to take part in any sort of game, is to lose it as quickly as possible in order that it may be over."
In the book, he gives a glimpse of his courtroom tactics: "Boredom is a weapon you can use in court; given sufficient endurance you can bore a judge into submission by going on until he's in real danger of missing his train to Hayward's Heath and is ready to submit." As a barrister, Mortimer had the opportunity to travel to Singapore in the 1970s to defend opposition leader Ben Jeyaretnam in a libel suit issued against him by none other than the Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew. He describes the city-state: "... that Reader's Digest of a city, linked by a causeway to the wilder shores of Malaysia, where they discuss making chewing-gum illegal, where Chinese families burn paper Mercedes, paper TV sets and paper video tapes to placate the spirits of the dead, and where Mr Lee Kuan Yew, who was allergic to opposition politicians, was prime minister for many years and thought that the words law and order were in the wrong position. Order has always seemed more important to Mr Lee than law." The outcome of the trial was predictable, of which Jeyaretnam wrote, "Mr John Mortimer's oratory at the trial won the admiration of many Singaporeans, but did not win my case."
Published in 1986, Character Parts is a book of Mortimer's interviews with famous men and women, including Christine Keeler, Sir Alec Guinness, Boy George and Raquel Welch. Of his meeting with Boy George, he writes: "After a lifetime acquaintance with some fairly dotty Judges, not a few lunatic lawyers, a smattering of eccentric businessmen and pop-eyed politicians, it was refreshing to take a cup of morning coffee with a chap who is articulate, reasonable and possessed of a robust common sense. That fact that the chap in question appeared to be got up as Madam Butterfly at eleven o'clock in the morning came as no particular surprise to me. After all, I have been used to carrying on conversations across crowded court rooms with elderly men in scarlet, fur-trimmed frocks and white curly wigs."
Raquel Welch, he tells us, "has written a book. It is the sort... that is likely to go straight to the head of every best-seller list. It consists of many photographs of Miss Welch in various yoga positions, and much cheerful advice of how to achieve physical perfection and enjoy life. It will no doubt be read by countless Americans as they munch through their generous helpings of ground beef on a bun and apple pies, as they absorb their French fries and Pepsi-Colas, and wonder why is it they don't look like Miss Welch." His interview was over dinner in a restaurant, during which he "found her to be quite small, extraordinarily pretty, and wearing a black dress that seemed to have been clawed in front by some giant cat so that more of the undoubted perfection of Raquel Welch might meet the eye."
Mortimer's The Summer of a Dormouse - A Year of Growing Old Disgracefully came out in 2000. It is a humorous account of a year in his life, no doubt inspired by the fact that, to the young and middle-aged, "the day will most probably dawn when your pale foot will wander through the air, incapable of hitting the narrow opening of a suspended sock."
He writes, "The ageing process is not gradual or gentle. It rushes up, pushes you over and runs off laughing. No one should grow old who isn't ready to appear ridiculous." Thus the tone of the book is set. There are some privileges for the aged, for example, when in a wheelchair at airports: "Claiming a wheelchair on account of the leg and a blind eye has improved my experience of airports 100 per cent. I have been pushed by retired businessmen eking out their pensions, students in their gap year or, occasionally, beautiful girls in uniform."
In the book's last chapter, he approaches the subject of death: "The trouble is that you have no idea what it's going to be like, and there is no one to tell you... The worst thing would be a death which is a sort of joke. When we were in the South of France one year, there were widespread forest fires and small planes were used to scoop up water from the sea and, flying inland, dump it on the blazing pines. An innocent tourist was snorkelling harmlessly and happily watching the fish. He was scooped up by a plane, flown inland and dropped, from a great height, on to the forest fire. He became the subject of a law suit with an insurance company as no one could decide whether he had been killed by fire or water."
And if Mortimer's books haven't made you a fan of British humour, perhaps this will:
Having recently initiated my photo-blog in February, the Photo-breaks in this blog have become redundant. So to simplify my life, I'll be posting my photos on 'Moments in Time' only while 'Writing Away' will focus on anything to do with books and writing.
Here's one for the road:
Sunset, as seen from a bedroom at the back of the house.
Projects that come my way are of three types. The short-term ones are articles for magazines and other publications, and these take about three to five days to do, depending on the amount of research needed. I wrote a lot of these at the start of my writing life. Understandably, you can't expect to be paid much for this type of work. But if you do a lot of it, the fees can add up.
Medium-term projects would include manuals, reports as well as editorial content for annual reports. I've written quite a number of annual reports over the years. These come at a certain part of the year as companies need to complete them in time for their annual general meetings. The work is quite stressful due to the tight deadlines, more so when clients take their time to revert with their comments on the drafts. But the fees that such clients are willing to pay make up for the worry lines.
Then there are the long-term projects - coffee-table books that would usually take about six to eight months, and corporate histories that can stretch up to two years to complete. I've yet to be commissioned to write biographies. There's good money in this type of work but it requires a lot of commitment to undertake.
Whatever the project, the process is the same. In the first place, it is critical to have a dedicated workplace in the house so as not to be distracted by whatever else that may be going on with the family. And it's also important to have a trusty workmate; I got myself a new one this year - an ultralight Acer Aspire. I've learned to appreciate the need for such a notebook after lugging my previous one about to meetings and interviews.
My new workmate in my home office.
And yes, there will be meetings to fine-tune what the client wants. For a book, the project brief forms the basis to conceptualise its structure and contents, and guide the research needed. The latter will cover document research, i.e. whatever publications, reports, newsletters and materials pertaining to the client's organisation; internet research on the industry and global as well as national economy for the period in question; and interviews of people who can provide stories and inside information. For the books that I wrote for UMW and Commerce Asset, I had to also delve into the country's history.
It pays to be organised at the research stage of a project. Otherwise, the writing will be a nightmare. I would already have the book's outline at the outset, so it would be a matter of putting the data that I've gathered in the right 'compartments'. The reading process needs to be systematic as well, marking parts that would be useful for the book.
Post-it notes on these annual reports and newsletters help me find the information I need.
After the research is completed, which may take a few months, the writing begins. The first line is always the most difficult because it will set the tone and style for the rest of the book. In fact, I would take days just to get the first paragraph right. But once that's done, the rest of the writing will flow easily (this is only if I had been meticulous in organising my research notes). Because there will be moments when I would be stumped for just the right word, I have a lot of reference books to get me through. Not just on language, but also on history, economics and other areas.
My language helpers; my books on history, society, economics and finance are on other shelves.
For a book, the writing process for the first draft takes about four months. I do a great deal of self-editing, at least a couple of rounds, during which I would go over my draft, changing words, tightening paragraphs and rearranging content. Once completed, of course to a given deadline, the first draft would be submitted to the client for review, after which the draft will be revised to cover any meaningful feedback. The final draft is then approved; my part is over and an editor then will peruse the draft for overall consistency and correctness. Thereafter, the book proceeds to the design, layout and production stage.
Writing a book can be a drain on the brain; it's actually rather mentally tiring. Which is why when I'm writing, I'm also drinking a lot of this...
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