Mood:  a-ok

I've copied from Dictionary.reference.com and wilkipedia the following new terminology which I've come across in writing.

Onomatopoeia (occasionally spelled onomatopœia) is a word or a grouping of words that imitates the sound it is describing, suggesting its source object, such as "click," "buzz," or "bluuuh," or animal noises such as "oink", "quack", or "meow". The word is a synthesis of the Greek words "onoma" (name) and "poio" (verb meaning "to create") thus it essentially means "name creation".

Uses of onomatopoeia

Some other very common English-language examples include hiccup, bang, beep, and splash. Machines and their sounds are also often described with onomatopoeia, as in honk or beep-beep for the horn of an automobile, and vroom or brum for the engine. Science fiction laser weapons' sound is often described like zap. For animal sounds, words like quack (duck), roar (lion) and meow (cat) are typically used in English. Some of these words are used both as nouns and as verbs.

Ellipsis (plural ellipses) in printing and writing refers to the row of three full stops (... or . . . ) or asterisks (***) indicating an intentional omission. This punctuation mark is also called a suspension point, points of ellipsis, periods of ellipsis, or colloquially, dot-dot-dot. An ellipsis is sometimes used to indicate a pause in speech, an unfinished thought or, at the end of a sentence, a trailing off into silence (aposiopesis).

Ellipsis in writing

The use of ellipses can either mislead or clarify, and the reader must rely on the good intentions of the writer who uses it. An example of this ambiguity is ‘She went to…school.’ In this sentence, ‘…’ might represent the word ‘elementary’, or the word ‘no’. Omission of part of a quoted sentence without indication by an ellipsis (or bracketed text) (i.e., ‘She went to school.’ as opposed to ‘She went to [Broadmoor Elementary] school.’) is considered misleading. An ellipsis at the end of the sentence which ends with a period (or such a period followed by an ellipsis), appears, therefore, as four dots.

Em dash 

 The em dash (—), also known as the em rule, indicates a sudden break in thought—a parenthetical statement like this one—or an open range (such as "John Doe, 1987—"). Its name derives from its defined width of one em, which is the length, expressed in points, by which font sizes are typically specified. Thus in 9-point type, an em is 9 points wide, while the em of 24-point type is 24 points wide, and so on. (By comparison, the en dash, with its 1-en width, is 1/2 em wide in any font.)

The em dash is used in much the way a colon or set of parentheses is used: it can show an abrupt change in thought or be used where a full stop (or "period") is too strong and a comma too weak. Em dashes are sometimes used in lists or definitions, but that is a style guide issue; a colon should be used instead.

Posted by gentlecloud at 9:53 AM EDT

Updated: Tuesday, 9 October 2007 10:24 AM EDT

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Mood:  happy

This evening, I went on my own to one of the  Pre-Writers Festival events, the book launch of author David Gibbin, just to have a view to how book launches are conducted and what the authors speak about. The one hour was well invested, so much so that I actually bought one of the books he wrote, as a show of support. 

The book launch was organized by NAC together with Penguin, the Asian distributor for Headlines, a publisher in UK. As expected, the turnout was not great, being a Friday night and all. The audience were mostly aspiring writers, out to learn a tip or two from a published author. To beef up the numbers, NAC staff joined in to make it look more well-attended. Such is the fear of an organizer. I should know for we count registrants for events like they were gold coins :)

Anyway, back to the book launch. After a quick introduction by the organizer, David started off by reading the start of his prologue. It was not a genre which intrigued me, perhaps, so the reading seemed a tad long. After which he went into a brief introduction about his background, why he started writing and his writing regime.

It is quite rigorous. He lives on a farm with about 10 or was it 100 acres of land, with a lot of vegetation. He writes in a little cabin deep within the vegetation, secluded from civilisation. He starts at 6 am in the morning and puts in between 5 to 7 hours before breaking for lunch. After which, he spends the rest of the time either reviewing his writing or researching.

He currently churns out one book a year. He has a 8 year old girl and an ex-wife and lives practically alone. That piece of information made me wonder which came first, the breakup and therefore, the time and need to write, or the passion to write so all-consuming that his marriage suffered. At the back of my mind, Catherine Lim's words about her three sacrifices in her writing careeer: commitment, religion and career. Does writing take such a toll on all authors? How sad.

While I mulled over the sharing, he read the end of his prologue which contained a bit of gore.  Listening to it, I kept wondering why he chose those passages to read. It did not move me to want to read on. Perhaps it was his reading voice, a bit expressionless and not melodious.

However, when he shared more about his writing experience, I started to warm up to him. He was modest about his success, and very earnest to share. Here are some of the key learnings which I found useful:

1)  always bolster your own confidence in your book during the writing of it. It helps to drive you on. Believe that you've got a best seller and write it so that it can be a best-seller. Many lose steam and even give up mid-way simply because they could not bolster enough faith in their work. So, the mindset is very important.

2) when writing to an agent, remember that it is all a business to them. A typical agent receives on average about 300 books a WEEK. From these, they have to place their bets on a few to recruit as their clients so as to more easily earn their 15% which is the normal commission fee they charge. How do they select these precious few people who would pay for their homes, their cars, their baby's milkpowder etc etc? Here are the little nuggets of wisdom.

a) keep the proposal letter only one page. Give the gist of your story in two to three lines at the start.

b) mention that a few other books are lined up as well. It would sweeten the proposal when they know there is future revenue streams as well as the first. Nobody wants to work hard on a - nastily put - one night stand. They want their time well invested in an author who would ride from wave to wave.

c) impress upon him your passion and show how ambitious you are to make the book a success. They like nothing better than someone who is prepared to drop everything and invest their time to do book launches, speeches and other marketing/publicity stints sometimes over protracted periods of time. A tall order, I would say, for part-time authors, but there it is. It is a business investment they are making. They are investing their time. There is opportunity cost in that. So they want full cooperation from their client. In this instance, David had a good story, for he really resigned from his full-time job and buried himself in his writing.

Normally a stingy poker, I actually bought a book by the author at that session. $15 was not a high price to pay for such learnings, I feel. And on top of that, I got myself a present for my hubby (hope he likes it though) and better still, it was personally autographed by the author himself with my name on it. Cool!

Last little observation on this last aspect. If you feel compelled to buy a book there, go for the latest one. You would have thought that $15 is $15 whichever book you bought. But that's where you (or me in this case) are wrong. The book launch is a vehicle for the author to drive sales of his latest book. His older books are already proven. The attention is on the number of copies sold for the new book. He needs these numbers to be high for the new book as a form of assurance to the publisher that his new books are making it so that they will continue to publish his future books. 

Sigh. I arrived at this conclusion after reading his body language and facial expression when he signed the others' books as opposed to mine. Or am I being sensitive.

Nope, I don't think so.   

Su Yin

http://gentlecloud.googlepages.com

http://gentlecloud.tripod.com

Posted by gentlecloud at 9:53 AM EDT

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Mood:  a-ok

Excerpts from Sunday Times article by Janadas Devan, dated 28th Jan 07 gave the following writing timetable of famous authors:

Charles Dickens puts in four hours each day, normally between breakfast and lunch, after which he would go for two-hour long brisk walks through the streets of London, observing and absorbing.

Graham Greene wrote for only two hours each day. In those two hours, he would write seven to nine hundred words. At 9am, he would stop. This, coming from a writer who produced twenty-six novels, not counting numerous short stories, plays etc.

Aldous Huxley puts in a bit more. Like Dickens, he did two hours between breakfast and lunch, but also added another two hours between tea and dinner. He averaged about five hundred words a day and yet produced about forty-four books, not including countless pieces of journalism and film scripts.

Virgnia Woolf's schedule was similar to Huxley's except that the afternoon was devoted to revisitng her morning's work.

Anthony Trollope and T.S.Eliot both had day jobs, like a lot of us, but yet they managed to carve out three hours a day writing.

Two observations from reading this.

1) Well-known authors set aside the same time each day to writing and sticks to it. This is the writer's discipline we all hear about.

2) They spend only a few hours each day writing. The rest of the time was spent observing, experiencing and reading which formed the ingredients of their writing. They have to take in in order to put out words and ideas on paper.

Reading this article makes me reflect on the need to go out more and see the real world. Only then can our writing be knowledgable, realistic and more powerful. Imagine witnessing a street brawl. The direct experience of your heart pumping, the speed with which the brawl erupted and the simultaneous reactions of people around them cannot be the same as reading or watching it.

Similarly, going on a ghost-hunt adds a new dimension to your senses which no reading or hearing about it could substitute. Jodi Piccoult is one believer of seeing and experiencing things first before she writes. She'd joined ghost-hunting trips, went to prison, worked at a check-out counter etc so as to get that first-hand experience which lends originality and credibility to her writing.

So, nett of the message here for writers is to go out of your shell and live life, not just your normal daily life, but venture into new territory. Go to a bar, go to a police station, visit an asylum, an old folk's home. Travel. Observe and learn. Doesn't sound like work, does it? Yet, it is, if you want to be a writer.

Su Yin

http://gentlecloud.tripod.com

Posted by gentlecloud at 9:29 AM EDT

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Mood:  chatty

My book, Through The Storm, was born on 23rd Jan 2005, on a direct flight from Singapore to LA, enroute to Orlando. With fifteen hours and having finished a book I've bought, I penned my first two chapters and the flight turned out to be a breeze.

I finished Through The Storm in four months. It took me another twenty to get it to print. Hence lies the first of my learning points.

Writing is all about rewriting. How much rewriting depends on how skilled you are in writing. It is inversely correlated.  The more you know how to write, the less rewriting you need to do. In my case, I wrote using what I later learned as an omniscient POV (point of view). After such nudges from reviewers, I rewrote using third-party POV. The reading experience is more involved and intense if the third-party POV is well-handled. To know more about this, grab a good book on writing and learn what it is. It can save you some time in rewriting.

Among other things, you'll learn to 'show', not 'tell'. Again, this was learned after some kind reviewers pointed out the weakness in 'telling'.  If you study your own reaction when you read a book, you will find that you feel more satisfied when you arrive at a conclusion 'yourself'. You don't like to be spoonfed i.e. told that this man is sad. You want to 'see' his face, his body and his actions and conclude for yourself that he is sad.  eg. Sighing. Head bowed. Shoulders slumped etc.

Okay, second learning point.

Join a writing site to get objective reviews.  If you write in isolation, you will never know how your story is received by readers. Friends can be your reviewers. But, they are often too kind to be good for you. So, join a site for writers and over time, cultivate writing buddies who will be able to help you and you return the favor likewise.

Third learning point

Get plugged in to the writers' circle. It is good exposure. You never know who you will meet. It is good exposure. I met someone who does audio stories for children as a result of posting something on a writers' forum. If you have not done so, join BookCouncil as a member. Their website is http://www.bookcouncil.sg  A lot of useful information is there, including printers and publishers and bookshops. They also organize book readings, writers' meetings and writing classes. Very good for aspiring writers.

Finally, read a lot. Read books with a view to learning their writing styles, what works and what doesn't.

Posted by gentlecloud at 2:25 AM EST

Updated: Sunday, 1 April 2007 9:28 AM EDT

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Mood:  chatty

Sunday Times today had a very cute article written by Janadas Devan. Titled "Bada-bing! Looky-loo, it's in the dictionary", it introduces new words which I've never heard before. Here are two cute neologisms i.e. newly coined words, worth mentioning:

bouncebackability - able to come back after a setback. Thought to be first coined by a football club manager

bada-bing - an American slang suggesting something happening suddenly, emphatically,or easily and predictably, 'just like that', 'Presto!'.  Example from the movie 'Godfather', "You've gotta get up close like this and bada-bing! you blow their brains all over your nice shirt." LOL

bling-bling - diamonds, of course

The above is just for fun. On a more serious note, I feel that grasping not just the rudiments of English but mastering it differentiate the good authors from the rest.

When I met successful local writers like Catherine Lim and Shirley Geok-Lin, I felt so inadequate and exposed. Not just were they teachers or professors of Literature, their ability to speak eloguently helps them sell themselves and their work. How would non-entities in the literary world like me ever be like them? They're a different breed. They had too much of a headstart with their Arts doctorate and more compared to a mere Business Admin graduate like me!

After mentally wringing my hands at first, I now psyched myself to believe that what is lacking in form can be offset with substance. That's the part which all passionate writers can lean to if we are dreamers. For what feed dreams are our imagination and that is inborn and not nurtured. I've read books which are written beautifully with a normal storyline and others which are more minimalistic, spartan and yet have storylines that 'knocks your socks off'.

Anyway, I make it a practice nowadays to apply new words which I've come across in books. I challenge myself to use the new word in the latest chapter I'm writing. It works to increase my vocabulary and adds to the arsenal of words to tell a good story. Words like ichor, cathartic and flotsam are but a few of the new words I've added to my vocabulary this way. Try it.

Su Yin

http://gentlecloud.tripod.com

Posted by gentlecloud at 8:52 PM EST

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Last night, I attended a Book Club meeting at Earshot. They were covering Colin Cheong's book titled "Stolen Child".

His first book was published at the tender age of twenty-four, eight years after he started. Imagine. He began writing at sweet sixteen. Gee, the feeling this piece of information evoked is similar to that when I first stepped into a cyber-games joint, totally intrigued with this new fangled world and wanting to play but wishing I could unwind my own internal clock twenty years.

Before I wallow in regret and drag anyone under in the process, let it be said also that many start much later. The writers' site I haunt has many writers who are in their sixties. Wouldn't they be even more desolate in the knowledge that they have started so late? No. Definitely not. They will tell you this. There is a time and place for everything. Life's experiences do count for quite a lot and these senior folks have the luxury of time on their hands to pen down their own legacy.

Anyway, back to the tips from the guru, Colin Cheong, who has twenty books, both fiction and non-fiction, to his name:

1) Deep emotions, be it anger, despair, lust, love, regret, are the best drivers for writing, its outpour onto paper rendered more powerful and arresting even as it is cathartic to the soul.

2) When to stop writing the next page of the novel? When you know what is ahead. Strange though it sounded, the rationale is that it actually builds up that burning desire to go back and write and hence, fuel the drive and passion.

3) To help build characters in the story, use real people to act in the movie in your mind. That way, you only transcribe what you see and the characters are more believable and alive because of it.  

Su Yin

http://gentlecloud.tripod.com

Posted by gentlecloud at 7:34 AM EST

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