Saying goodbye...

... Something I hadn't meant to do. I can't upload images anymore because there is a 1GB storage limit. It would be boring to just have words so this blog of mine and my photo-blog have come to an untimely end. I have, however, started a Facebook page to highlight my writing work etc, so please click here and 'like' it.

I hope you've enjoyed travelling down the reading and writing path with me on this blog. I hope to see you on my Facebook page 'Zuraidah Omar - Working With Words'.

A writer on writing

I love buying biographies of writers or their autobiographies and enjoy reading about their lives. While these books reveal quite a bit about the writers' psyche and what drives them to write, the books don't of course delve into the mechanics of writing. In other words, how they write. For this, one will need to get books by writers specifically on writing - and I have two of these on my shelf.

One is Stephen King's On Writing - A Memoir of the Craft (click on this link for a comprehensive review and summary). I have to admit that I haven't read any of his books but he is a prolific writer and a successful one at that, with more than thirty international bestsellers. As such, even if his genre is not my cup of tea, it doesn't mean that I can't learn from him.

In this book, King writes as if he's talking to the reader. He is rather modest in his First Foreword (there are three, albeit short ones), asking himself, "Why did I want to write about writing? What made me think I had anything worth saying?" And then he gives his answer, "... someone who has sold as many books of fiction as I have must have something worthwhile to say about writing it, but the easy answer isn't always the truth. Colonel Sanders sold a hell of a lot of fried chicken, but I'm not sure anyone wants to know how he made it." Nonetheless, he asserts that he does "care passionately about the art and craft of telling stories on paper. What follows is an attempt to put down, briefly and simply, how I came to the craft, what I know about it now, and how it's done." 

Raised by his single-parent mother, after his father deserted the family when King was just two years old and his brother four, he led a rather disjointed life. He had a lively imagination as a child and loved to write from a young age. When he was thirteen, he sent a story to a science fiction magazine but it was rejected. The first story that was published, I Was a Teenage Grave-robber, appeared in a horror fanzine. But this didn't happen too often then. He says, "By the time I was fourteen... the nail in my wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it. I replaced the nail with a spike and went on writing. By the time I was sixteen I'd begun to get rejection slips with handwritten notes a little more encouraging than the advice to stop using staples and start using paperclips." Yes, King's book is rather humorous, making it an easy and fast read.

The first part of the book is autobiographical but it gives us an idea of King's love for writing from a young age. He even edited his high school newsletter and produced his own four-sheet The Village Vomit. As the latter contained fictional, but not necessarily kind, stories about the faculty, it got him into trouble. The upside was that it led to the counselor getting him a stint with the town's weekly newspaper "to turn 'my restless pen' into more constructive channels." This was where he learnt his first lesson from the paper's editor: "When you write a story, you're telling yourself the story. When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story." It wasn't an easy road to success but he persevered. 

In the second part, King explores what writing is and he begins with this: "It's writing, damn it, not washing the car or putting on eyeliner. It you can take it seriously, we can do business. It you can't or won't. it's time for you to close the book and do something else." He then shares his 'toolbox' with the reader. 

The most important tool is vocabulary - "the bread of writing". You shouldn't, he advises, be "looking for long words because you're maybe a little bit ashamed of your short ones. This is like dressing up a household pet in evening clothes... Make yourself a solemn promise right now that you'll never use 'emolument' when you mean 'tip'." The next important one is grammar: "One either absorbs the grammatical principles of one's native language in conversation and reading or one does not... if you don't know, it's too late. And those incapable of grasping grammar... will have little or no use for a book like this, anyway." After that come elements of style (he cites Strunk and White's book, about which I have posted on this blog, many times). These tools must be mastered for good writing. 

According to King, "while it is impossible to make a competent writer out of a bad writer, and while it is equally impossible to make a great writer out of a good one, it is possible, with lots of hard work, dedication, and timely help, to make a good writer out of a merely competent one." How? "... read a lot and write a lot", he says. "There's no way around these two things that I'm aware of, no shortcut." He goes on, "If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that." 

Then there is the actual writing. It's good to be disciplined about this. King works to a schedule: "Mornings belong to whatever is new - the current composition. Afternoons are for naps and letters. Evenings are for reading, family, Red Sox games on TV, and any revisions that just cannot wait. Basically, mornings are my prime writing time." And he writes every day if he's on a project, feeling that if he doesn't, "the characters begin to stale off in my mind... the tale's narrative cutting edge starts to rust and I begin to lose my hold on the story's plot and pace. Worst of all, the excitement of spinning something new begins to fade." He is driven to write, saying that "for me, not working is the real work." 

He sets an objective when he writes: "I like to get ten pages a day, which amounts to 2,000 words. That's 180,000 words over a three-month span, a goodish length for a book - something in which the reader can get happily lost, if the tale is done well and stays fresh... only under dire circumstances do I allow myself to shut down before I get my 2,000 words." 

It's also important to the writing process to have a definite place to write. "Until you get one," King asserts, "you'll find your new resolution to write a lot hard to take seriously... The space can be humble... and it needs only one thing: a door which you are willing to shut. The closed door is your way of telling the world and yourself that you mean business... If possible, there should be no telephone in your writing room, certainly no TV or videogames for you to fool around with. If there's a window, draw the curtains or pull down the shades unless it looks out at a blank wall." 

King's other nuggets of advice:

• Write what you like,  then imbue it with life and make it unique. 
• Don't be too worked up about the story's plot because that can take away spontaneity.
• The situation comes first and the characters come after that. Let the characters do things their way.
• Good description is essential but it's a learned skill that comes from reading and writing a lot.
• Don't over-describe: "Description begins in the writer's imagination, but should finish in the reader's... locale and texture are much more important to the reader's sense of actually being in the story than any physical description of the players."
• Well-crafted dialogue is crucial in defining characters and the key to writing good dialogue is honesty about the words coming out of the characters' mouths. 
• Characters shouldn't be one-dimensional.

As he gives out his advice, King draws upon his own works and that of others as examples. Towards the end of the book, he points out that "writing isn't about making money, getting famous... it's about enriching the lives of those who will read your book, and enriching your own life, as well."

World's biggest book sale!

I'm in Prague now and thought I'd share a book event coming up - Big Bad Wolf's book sale coming up in December at the Mines Convention Centre - it seems that more than 3 million books will be up for sale! This is the time to stock up your home library as well as libraries of kindergartens and children's homes.

Books in the warehouse waiting to be sold.

In a tree and window

Excuse me for not posting on Monday, as I usually do. My reason? I'm on holiday! Nonetheless, I'd like to share two book-related photos I took.

This Book Tree in Berlin is in my sis Noni's (in photo) neighbourhood. 

Pre-loved books are put there for others to take. 

Old books are used creatively in this shop window in Berlin.

The journey of a lifetime

On the Muslim date of 8 Zulhijjah 1433H, which will coincide with Wednesday 24 October 2012, Muslim pilgrims from all over the world will be in Makkah, Saudi Arabia, to begin the Hajj, a religious duty required of those who are able once in their lifetime. Hubby and I had been privileged to be amongst the guests of Allah in 2010, during which my good friend Yasmin Gan Abdullah and her husband also performed their pilgrimage. After returning home, Yasmin and I collaborated to produce a book of our experiences. By Allah's grace, another good friend, Noorshin Ng Abdullah, and her son Kamil are in the Holy Land at this moment. Alhamdulillah.

I have always been fascinated by personal Hajj stories, particularly of people who converted to Islam, and have a number of books on my shelves.

Michael Wolfe's book, The Hadj published in 1993, begins with how he came to Islam. He was born into an American Jewish-Christian family and, as a young man, had traveled a few times to Morocco. He was drawn to Islam and when he embarked on his Hajj, he began in that country. He stayed there for a month to prepare himself, a story that takes up the first ten chapters of the book. The following eleven chapters are of his Hajj,which to him "felt more like a starting point... I had been traveling through a religion as much as through a landscape. Now I was leaving my physical goal behind. The hadj at its best is a vivifying factor. Later I hoped to internalise its meanings."

Having written about his journey of a lifetime, Wolfe then edited a collection of "significant works by observant travel writers from the East and West over the last ten centuries." One Thousand Roads to Mecca, which came out in 1997, presents "distinct sides of a spirited conversation in which Mecca is the common destination and Islam the common subject of inquiry." This conversation goes as far back as the medieval period and into the twentieth century. I found the Hajj accounts of Australian Winifred Stegar (1927) and Lady Evelyn Cobbold from England (1933) particularly interesting.

The Road to Mecca by Muhammad Asad was first published in 1954 and is considered amongst the top 50 spiritual classics. He writes that his book is not "the story of a deliberate search for faith - for that faith came upon me, over the years, without any endeavour on my part to find it. My story is simply the story of a European's discovery of Islam and of his integration within the Muslim community." He had converted in 1926 after extensive travels throughout the Middle East. The book is a physical as well as spiritual travelogue. He describes his tawaf around the Kaaba: "And I, too, moved slowly forward and became part of the circular flow around the Kaaba... I walked on and on, the minutes passed, all that had been small and bitter in my heart began to leave my heart, I became part of a circular stream - oh, was this the meaning of what we were doing: to become aware that one is a part of a movement in an orbit? Was this, perhaps, all confusion's end? And the minutes dissolved, and time itself stood still, and this was the centre of the universe..." 

Two less formidable books, in terms of length, are Ali Shariati's Hajj (the Malaysian edition was published in 1987) and The Road to Peace by Liza Angela Milo Abdullah, published in 2000. An Iranian, Ali Shariati was a well known Islamic scholar who had suffered in the prisons of the Shah of Iran; he died in 1977 shortly after his release. His book guides the reader through the Hajj rites, interpreting them in the light of Islamic history and highlighting their social significance. 

Liza Angela Milo Abdullah is an Italian who became a Muslim in 1976 and performed her pilgrimage in 1996. In her book, she "narrates each day's events,... explains the significance of the rituals she performs. Interspersed within are other information such as the history behind them." She describes her elation as she sets out on her journey, "My heart is happy and I thank God, I am now ready to perform the journey with my body and with my soul. I tell my family to smile and be happy for me as I am fulfilling my vows as a Muslim." Three weeks later, as she waits in Jeddah to return home, she writes, "The journey is over - the most beautiful experience of my lifetime is over and yet it is not - for I carry it in my heart."

Getting the Best Out of Al-Hajj by Abu Muneer Ismail Davids is not a personal account, like the other books in this post, but I found it extremely useful and informative in my own preparation for the Hajj. With knowledge acquired after spending 15 years in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, about all aspects of Hajj from the Quran and Sunnah point of view, he published this book in 2000 (the second edition was published in 2006). The book provides "a good and plentiful source of information that helps the pilgrim to do the Hajj rites and rituals, from all sides and aspects that is solid and established in the Quran and Sunnah."

Mountains of Mecca - nasheed by Zain Bhikha