Going French—Via Borneo: The Serpentine Publishing Road of Lovers and Strangers Revisited

“You’re revising it?  I thought you just send them the book?” a fellow American writer in Borneo replied a year ago, when I mentioned that I would be busy the next two weeks revising all the stories for Lovers and Strangers Revisited.  I had just told him that it was confirmed that Éditions GOPE will be translating my collection of Malaysian-set stories into French.

       

“Yeah, you could do that,” I could’ve replied, but instead, I told him that I saw this as an opportunity to improve the stories for future markets.  I want the best French translation out there and the best English version, too.  Now that I’m getting the book into Europe, other readers might recommend it to other foreign-language publishers in nearby countries, especially those with an interest in or ties to Malaysia or Southeast Asia.

         

Writing from Borneo (or anywhere) is never a straight path to publication; it’s more serpen­tine like a meandering river through the lush tropical jungle, often invisible at times and then there it is.  Just as quickly it’s gone, elusive as a pesky mosquito that you have in your sights just as it’s about to draw blood.  You strike, positive you got it, but then, how in the world did you let that opportunity get away?  When it comes to writing, I’d rather not miss those opportunities, so I keep revising those stories.

         

Twenty-five years ago, I took my writing itch from Madison, Wisconsin to the tropical island of Penang, off the west coast of Malaysia.  “Mat Salleh”, a short story about meeting my non-English-speaking-in-laws in Malaysia that I wrote for a correspon­dence course quickly found a home in the New Straits Times.  I sold it again a few months later to My Weekly in the UK, for my second short story sale and second overseas publication.  I knew I was onto something. 

         

In addition to selling more short stories in Malaysia, I sold stories to literary journals and magazines in Singapore, Japan, France, Denmark, India, Australia and United States.  In 1993 I compiled 15 of my Malaysian-set short stories into a collection, Lovers and Strangers for a Singapore based publisher Heinemann Asia.  A few years later the publisher was bought out and then another publisher bought that one out and my collection was orphaned.  I con­tinued to revise my stories, selling them locally in Malaysia/Singapore as well as overseas, mostly in Australia and the UK. 

         

In 2005 a Malaysian professor contacted me about including the collection in his course on postcolonial writing, so I convinced Silverfish, a Malaysian publisher whom I had pre­vious­ly worked with as an editor for an anthology, to republish the stories—but first I wanted to overhaul them.  I knew I could make the stories better than merely revising them as I had been doing all along over the years. 

So I hired an American editor living in Malaysia to rip them apart, even though all but one had been published.  Many of the stories had been published several times in several countries.  It was a humbling process.  I then revisited each story—from the initial inspiration to some of the original settings—and renamed the collec­tion Lovers and Strangers Revisited. Then one of the stories "Neighbours" was taught throughout Malaysia in English Literature as part of the "sixth cycle".

After moving to Sarawak, the Malaysian part of Borneo, I encountered some distribu­tion problems getting the books to the Borneo bookstores, so I agreed to buy out the last of the old stock and switched publishers.  Thus began another round of self-editing before submit­ting the collection with an additional two more stories written around the same time to be published for the third time by MPH in 2008.

         

When someone blogged about the fact that I revised my published stories, several writers seemed to take offense.  One author from Australia said she would never do that with her collection, but after I clarified my reasons, she added that she sort of wished she had done the same because she knew she could’ve improved them.

         

For me, that first collection back in 1993 was the best version—at the time.  But after teaching creating writing and grammar for over a decade, plus revising all of my students work (and my own), I became a better writer.  Now it was merely applying what I was teach­ing and being honest with myself.  Is that the best you can do?  I felt vindicated when the collec­tion went on to win the 2009 Popular-Reader’s Choice Award for Fiction.

         

To help publicize the latest collection, I wrote a blog series The Story Behind the Story for all 17 stories, separating fact from fiction and noting the significant changes that led to their various publications.  While making comparisons between the first collection and the latest collec­tion, I was surprised by how much the stories had truly evolved.  It’s not just the details, the preciseness of language, but significant changes in the beginnings and endings; changes in points of view; and changes in verb tenses from past to present . . . . Some of the stories doubled in length; they had whole new scenes added on at the end, or back-stories weaved throughout the story to make them more complete.

         

The first blog on the story “On Fridays” has been even accepted for publication by The Writer (USA) as a future Writer-at-Work piece.  The revisited stories (and even the accompanying blogs) have been taught in secondary schools, universities and private colleges throughout Malaysia.  Several stories have since been published in online literary journals in Hong Kong and Turkey; and in the Literary Review, Thema, and Aim in the US and Descant in Canada—twenty years after I first wrote them.

         

So far those 17 short stories have now been published 81 times in twelve countries.

         

Then in 2011 the French publisher GOPE contacted me; after reading two of my stories online, the collection has now been translated into French as Trois autres Malaisie, which literally translates as "Three Other Malaysia".  Reviews are just starting to come in. 

This may never have happened had I not left the wintry (and freezing) Wisconsin for the tropical (and humid) Malaysia.  I figured, even if I never published a story, I wouldn’t be shoveling any snow.  Writing from the tropics does have its benefits, though I won’t mention the mosquitoes . . . . And who knows where my stories—after having gone French via Borneo—will end up next?

Now it’s just been confirmed, MPH is turning Lovers and Strangers Revisited into an e-book! That means another round of editing (plus adding those French revisions back into the MPH book).

Already Ohio University has contacted me about filming “Home for Hari Raya”. They came across that old 1993 collection in their library and were initially interested in “Mat Salleh”, but after talking on the phone and sending them a copy of the latest collection, they settled on “Home for Hari Raya.”  A couple of those stories may be taught by another professor in their Southeast Asia Studies program.

         

Ultimately this could lead the whole collection on a homeward journey to the US, which is why I keep revising those stories. . . . I want them to be more than ready.  I’m also hoping this serpentine road from Borneo never ends . . .   

             —Borneo Expat Writer

             

*Update, the 20th anniversary of Lovers and Strangers Revisited, my collection of short stories set in Malaysia

**Update: Book orders for Trois autres Malaisie.   E-book orders.  Or recommend it to your friends, especially those who would like to know more about Malaysia or have an interest in Southeast Asia.

  

Here's a link to the intro and excerpts, and to four reviews of Trois Autres Malaisie in eurasie.net, Malaisie.org, easyvoyage.com, and Petit Futé mag.

***Here’s an update to the French blog about Trois autres Malaisie and my meeting the French translator Jerome Bouchaud in Kuching, and my involvement in a French documentary for Arte (June 2017) on The Sensual Malaysia of Somerset Maugham.

Here are links to some of my author-to-author interviews of first novelists:

Ivy Ngeow author of Cry of the Flying Rhino, winner of the 2016 Proverse Prize.

Golda Mowe author of Iban Dream and Iban Journey.

Preeta Samarasan author of Evening is the Whole Day. 

Chuah Guat Eng,  author of Echoes of Silence and Days of Change. 

Plus:

Five part Maugham and Me series

Beheaded on Road to Nationhood: Sarawak Reclaimed—Part I 

Creative Writing Workshop Three in Kota Kinabalu

The third creative writing workshop in Kota Kinabalu was the smallest of the three, but that was to be expected, since it required, ideally, either a first person narrative or a short story from either the first or the second workshop sent in advance.  Some, who had promised to attend, never got around to it, while others seemed under the impression that they had to attend one of the other workshops despite it being made clear in the announcements, that that was not the case.  Ideally, it would be better, but if they had a story to submit, they would have benefited like all the others. 

In fact, there were a couple of new faces, guests brought by others who had no story.  They just came along to learn.  Several of the participants, at least six, did manage to attend all three workshops, including Tina Kisil, whose book Footprints in the Paddy Field had recently won second prize in the 2011 Popular-The Star Readers’ Choice Awards for nonfiction.  This time she was trying her hand at fiction. 

Before the workshop, I found out that several of the participants had been encouraging one another to take advantage of having a published author go over their work.  They even exchanged their stories to get some feedback.  As agreed, I received most of the manuscripts, 3-5 pages, about a week in advance of the workshop (ideally I wanted two weeks and did get some—thanks for those who submitted their work early).  Initially, I didn’t plan to line edit the stories; I just wanted to give them my overall impression and point out story or logic problems and suggest how to correct them as I did with MPH short story contest workshops in Kuching and Miri, but since I was getting mainly first person narratives (some very intriguing), what they really needed was some serious editing!  Especially some of the short stories!  They were almost there, but...

During the workshop, I went over the bigger issues of each (so everyone else could benefit) by projecting their story on a white board and using a marker.  An overhead projector would’ve worked better because every time we moved the text, the old markings got in the way, so there was a lot of erasing.  Now we know (and now we know where to get an overhead in KK!)  With the help of Jude, the organizer, we tried to minimize the movement between paragraphs (that some stories required). 

After asking the participants in advance, many agreed to have their stories sent around to the others so they would have a chance to read them before the workshop.  That helped to make most of us familiar with the story, so I could concentrate on their problems such as generalizing too much at the beginning, or not starting close to the action, or going off on tangents, or creating needless confusion by jumbling dialogue or using pronouns with no clear antecedent. 

I kept stressing that if you anticipate that people are going to ask you questions while reading your story then you should answer the questions such as “Who is this character?  Where is this story taking place?  When did this happen in relationship to the other events?"  By answering these 5-W questions before readers have a chance to ask, you’re not only making it easy on them but you’re also eliminating needless confusion. This allows the reader to get caught up in your story, in your characters, instead of pausing to scratch their heads.

After going through all of the major issues for everyone’s benefit, we broke for tea, and then I gave another jumpstart topic “He/she kicked in the door,” which I brainstormed for them.  While they worked on this and tried to produce a complete draft by the end of the workshop, I then met with each participant who had submitted their story, so we could discuss the rest of the editing that only concerned them.  This way no one was wasting their time waiting for me; they were all busy writing.

For many of them, meeting one on one was an eye opener; it probably felt like they were back in school, though I never experienced any teacher going over my story in such detail until years after I graduated and took a writing course!  It’s not grammar mistakes that I’m pointing out, except when they were present; it was stylistic mistakes of using vague or wrong word choices, or trite expressions, or combining or separating sentences for effective­ness, or cutting out unnecessary words, or rearranging their sentences to increase clarity or effectiveness.

Now and then all writers need to go through this.  I know I sure did when I first set out to make myself a writer, and later even paid someone to rip up my already published Malaysian short stories so I could sell them overseas and produce a better collection of short stories as I did in Lovers and Strangers Revisited.  Now I work with both published and unpublished writers as I blogged about earlier.

At the end of the workshop the writers agreed to meet in the future to push each other in the right direction to improve their writing, something we all need now and then, a push to get started and another, often a bigger push, to keep your writing going.  This is what I set out to achieve in my three creative writing workshops in Kota Kinabalu.

                                                  *  *  *

*Here is a blog about the third workshop from one of the participants. It's always exciting (and scary) to get feedback so fast!  I have my perception of how it went, but what really counts is how they saw it!  (Looks like we even chose the same photos! Decided to add one more...)  Yes, I agree, it can be embarrassing to have your mistakes pointed out but we're all making mistakes, and often the very same mistakes, too!  It's a good way for everyone to learn. 

Here's another blog from another participant.

**Here's my workshop with Malaysian Nurses Association.   Another with International Tuition School in Kuching.


***Announcement latest workshops:  Writing Your Life Stories Workshop—Kuching! 23 June 2012 (with links to other workshops and writing tips!) and also a workshop in KK on 17 June 2012! 



If you wish to contact me for a creative writing workshop at your school (for your staff or students or both) or your association, I can be reached at robert@borneoexpatwriter.com 

Here are links to some of my author-to-author interviews of first novelists:

Ivy Ngeow author of Cry of the Flying Rhino, winner of the 2016 Proverse Prize.

Golda Mowe author of Iban Dream and Iban Journey.

Preeta Samarasan author of Evening is the Whole Day. 

Chuah Guat Eng,  author of Echoes of Silence and Days of Change. 

Plus:

Five part Maugham and Me series

Beheaded on Road to Nationhood: Sarawak Reclaimed—Part I 

Announcing the Third Creative Wrtiing Workshop in Kota Kinabalu!

        As promised by the organizers at the second workshop in Kota Kinabalu in August '11:

CREATIVE WRITING WORKSHOP 3

with ROBERT RAYMER

 www.borneoexpatwriter.com/

When:  Sat, 22 October	Time:  2.00-6.00pm	Cost:  RM120
Who:  16-90+ years old	Where:  7th Floor, Wisma Anglican, Karamunsing
Next:  Email or sms your name, contact phone number & email address to.................

Contact:         Jude Day – 014-3514298 / jude.day@gmail.com

                       

edit- improve - edit - improve - edit –IMprove

IMPORTANT DATES:

8 October – send a piece of your writing to jude.day@gmail.com for Robert

22 October – discussion of samples of writing:  what has been done well and how the piece can be improved. 

*You can come to the workshop even if you haven’t sent in a piece of writing!

Guidelines – for submitting your work: ·         A-4 paper ·         2-5 pages ·         Double spacing ·         1.25-1.5 margins on all sides ·         Times Roman 12 ·         Left justification only ·         Page numbers ·         Title and your name on each page ·         Centre the title and add your byline.  For example:  by Robert Raymer

Advice from Robert       Don’t give up       Trust your instincts       Write 3 or 4 drafts before submitting your writing       Proof your work before submitting it       Enjoy the process! Organised by the KK Theatre Group, SPArKS  www.sparks.org.my

NOTE:  You can attend this workshop – even if you missed the others!

*Here is the full writing guidelines and our reasons for allowing those who had missed the other two workshops to participate.

WRITING GUIDELINES FOR KK WORKSHOP

by

Robert Raymer

As was mentioned at the second workshop, choose one sample of your work only, either your first-person narrative from the workshop, or your “they found me” story (see Tina's sample), or if you wrote something else since the August workshop, or finished something that you started at the first workshop in April! The choice is yours.  Those who missed both workshops but are still keen to join and learn, then send in your best work.  If you still want to attend but opt not to submit your work and have it discussed (this is fine; it’s a personal decision), you can still learn from the process, from the mistakes or over­sights of others or from what they’re doing well.  I would recommend getting started on this right away so you’ll have adequate time to go through it and revise it without rushing to get it done at the last moment—remember school?

Please use A-4 (white) paper, 2-5 pages, double-line spacing, with 1.25-1.5 margins on both sides (and top and bottom) to allow plenty of room for corrections and comments.  Use Times Roman 12.  (No fancy fonts, which are hard to read and one side of the paper only!)  Either American or British spelling is acceptable—just be consistent.  And learn how to punctuate: one space after a comma, two spaces after a full stop (and only one exclamation mark no matter how exciting your point!).  Do not use full justification, which spreads out text unnaturally; use left justification only.  (These are standard guidelines for submissions to editors and for entering contests.)   Use page numbers and put your name/title on each page.  Center the title and add your byline (see above).  My Story, or My Narrative or They Found Me, by the way, are not titles; they're subjects!

Trust your instincts while you write and don’t give up so easily!  Ideally you should write three or four drafts before submitting it (I often print it out a couple of times to edit it again); each time you go over it, your writing will improve (and you’ll catch more typos and mistakes!).  Writing is a process, a skill you can use for the rest of your life.

Also proof your work, especially if someone else typed it for you.  Why be penal­ized for their careless mistakes?  Even if you already write well, take the time and effort to improve your writing by taking it to a higher level.  Apply the 12 Rules to Improve Your Writing Style handout that I passed out (there are plenty of other writing tips on the Internet or in bookstores).  Enjoy the process of writing and take what you write seriously (but not too seriously!); if you don’t, why should anyone else care?

Please sent this to me two weeks before the workshop (via Jude) so I’ll have adequate time to go through them all.  (Afterwards, do not send revised pages/copies, new versions or new stories because that will just make the process messy and troublesome for all.  Nor do I want to waste an hour going through the wrong version or the wrong story!)  So only send it when it is ready.  For this round, I will not be doing a full edit, just making general comments for the workshop (concentrating on the first two pages where narratives/stories often go wrong); still this is time consuming and often requires me to re-read your manuscript a couple of times and think about ways it can be improved!  Also bring an extra copy to the workshop for you to make comments on!  And extra paper for notes and reminders and ideas while we’re discussing the other work.  Since it’s far easier to spot mistakes in other people’s work than your own (even when you’re making similar mistakes), please offer your gut-level constructive suggestions.  Others will appreciate it.  You can also learn from these comments and then apply them to your own story.

After the next workshop, after you have had time to make any suggested changes, then I will be willing to do a full line edit with comments at a reasonable rate (based on double-space pages) for this and for any future work.  I have done this for years with students and even published authors.  This is also what I did when I first began to write—hired someone to help edit my work; we all have our blind sides when it comes to our own writing.  Again, this is optional, but highly recommended for those who really want to improve their writing.

Looking forward to reading your work and seeing you again in KK for our next workshop.

* Here's the link to the third workshop.

**Here's the link to the first workshop in KK

***If you know of other organizations or associations in Sabah/Sarawak/West Malaysia/Singapore/Brunei that would be interested in having me for workshop, please contact me.   Thank you!


******Announcement latest workshops:  Writing Your Life Stories Workshop—Kuching! 23 June 2012 (with links to other workshops and writing tips!) and also a workshop in KK on 17 June 2012! 

Creative Writing Workshop in Kota Kinabalu (Round Two)

Robert Raymer making a point

On Saturday, 13 August, we had our second creative writing workshop in KK, “Turning your Personal Experience into a First Draft of a First Person Narrative.” At the earlier Universiti Malaysia Sabah workshop we had an extra two hours but at the first SPArks workshop in April 2011 we didn’t have enough time to do the subject justice, so it was good they invited me back.

About half of the participants from the first workshop had returned including Tina Kisil whose book Footprints in the Paddy Field was nominated for 2011 Popular-The Star Reader’s Choice Award for nonfiction, Farida Shukoor, who initially contacted me in 2009 about coming to KK (I taught her son at USM), Jude Day who made the arrangements for both of our workshops, and Lo Sin Yee who again flew up from Miri and even brought one of his works for me to edit (as originally planned before we added a third workshop). There was also Mark Storey who had arranged the UMS workshop back in April.   Several others, however, missed because of either exams or Ramadan, something we failed to consider when we chose the date. Fortunately others filled the vacancies so we nearly reached our target of 24.

Making full use of the four-hour allotted time, we devoted three hours to the narrative that they chose to write, after generating 15 topics for them to choose from. For those who seemed to have forgotten that they had lived a full life of significant experiences, I read them something that I wrote for my creative writing students at two universities (and expanded it by a paragraph): 

Typical experiences

If you’re a typical student at a typical university, you’ve already accumulated hundreds of experiences that have made an impact on your life. You’ve made and lost friends; done things you’re either proud of, ashamed of, or regretted; been punished for doing things you weren’t supposed to; felt guilty over things no one knows about; been blamed or wrongly accused by a sibling, a friend, or a parent; been scolded (and punished) by a teacher for being late, not doing your home­work or being part of a noisy class­room; fought with siblings, friends, or enemies; been bullied by older or bigger children (including relatives); survived a crash in a car or motorcycle or bicycle; moved with your family to another house or lived away from your parents; been proposi­tion­ed by someone from either the opposite or the same sex; con­sider­ed running away from home (even if you only made it next door or to a relative’s house); taken something that didn’t belong to you (which you had either kept, returned or threw away); felt like you wanted to die because you were embarrassed or angry or frustrated; and grieved over the death of a pet or a relative.

For those of you who have taken part in extra-curri­cular activities such as sports, or choir, or belonged to some association or club, or have won an award, or have been praised for making something creative or for having a talent like singing or dancing or drawing, or have had the oppor­tunity to travel around your country or overseas, then you’ll have plenty more experiences to write about.

If you’re older than your typical student you’ve probably had jobs, been engaged or jilted, been married or separated or divorced, had babies, raised children, bought and sold or crashed cars, and even bought a house. Not to mention the thousand other life experiences you’ve had in your thirties, forties, fifties, sixties, and do I hear seventies?

* * *

I then asked them to choose one topic that they’ll be working with for the pre-writing process. I kept stressing that they choose their topic carefully. A good topic often chooses you. Maybe there’s an unresolved issue from your past that needs addressing. Some topics, I told them, especially if they had a traumatic experience like a death of someone they were close to, or were molested as a child (which is, unfortunately, increasingly common), will not be easy for them to write, but in doing so, it would be therapeutic for them. Later, if they wish to share it or publish it, others can benefit from it, as I blogged about regarding a short story that I wrote based on one of my relatives.

During the pre-writing process, I gave them plenty of prompts to explore and flush out, not only the details but also people’s motivation and their emotional state. This forced them to think about, not just themselves and what they did or what happened to them, but also to consider why they did those things and why others acted the way they did. This was a real eye opener for them, to consider what all was going on in other people’s lives and their own, thus establishing a cause and effect relationship.

Later, I asked them, “Had you written off the top of your heads, would you have considered any of this? Therefore your narrative would have been far different, not as fully developed, nor as interesting for those who read it.” Before I finally let them write that first draft, when I had them raring to go, I asked them to outline the main points, which helps them to think through the narrative from beginning to end, thus improving its organization. This is often the stage that my students would back away from their topic, realizing that they chose one that really wasn’t all that significant. It’s always better they find this out before they invest several hours writing and rewriting. Even better, if they chose the right topic from the beginning! Sure enough one of the participants asked if he could switch topics!

After spending a full hour writing out a first draft (or taking it as far as they could), we took a break, then we dabbled with some fiction via the topic “They Found Me”, which is the crux of many short stories and best-selling novels, easily adapted into children stories, thrillers, sci-fi, and mysteries. Two of my recent blog posts, on The Shack and the short story “Mr. Penumbra” are essentially “they found me” stories. In The Shack (which I recently read and Sin Yee brought a copy with him from Miri) in more ways than one -- in the beginning and also at the end, a series of them!

Usually, when time is permitted, we’ll read samples, as we did for my two-day workshop with the Malaysian Nurses Association  But this time around we’re saving them for a third workshop in October/November. Two weeks prior to the workshop, the attending participants will be sending me a typed version of either their narrative, their “they found me” story, or someone they may have started and finished from the first workshop, then I’ll go over the first two pages as I did for the MPH-Alliance Short Story Awards workshops in Kuching and Miri when I was one of their judges (which I blogged about in the first workshop—this way I'll make sure I get only one from each!).

Later, if any of the participants are interested, I’ll be editing their revised post-workshop versions  at a special rate, something I highly recommend, something I did when I first came to Malaysia and wrote the short stories that later became Lovers and Strangers Revisited, now being translated into French. And did it again when I first revisited the stories, even after they had already been published, many several times in several countries. As a writer, we do have our blind spots to our own stories, even when those stories are close to our hearts—the narratives of our lives—like those that we explored in this second creative writing workshop in Kota Kinabalu.

                        --BorneoExpatWriter

*If you know of other organizations or associations in Sabah/Sarawak/West Malaysia/Singapore/Brunei that would be interested in having me for workshop, please contact me.   Thank you!

** Here is a link for a blog post about this second workshop from one of the participants. 
***Here's another link from another participant. 
**** Here's the link to the third kk workshop. 22 October 2011! 

*Announcement latest workshops:  Writing Your Life Stories Workshop—Kuching! 23 June 2012 (with links to other workshops and writing tips!) and also a workshop in KK on 17 June 2012! 

Creative Writing Workshop—Two in Kota Kinabalu

Just back from two back-to-back workshops in Kota Kinabalu (Sabah, Borneo), one a six-hour workshop for Universiti Malaysia Sabah (above) and then a four-hour workshop organized by the KK Theatre Group, SPArKS (see below).

Mark Storey presents a gift to an exhausted Robert Raymer after
6-hour workshop at UMS

The first workshop at UMS, we started out with 30 academic lecturers and tutors, including someone who recognized me from Unimas, a former colleague from USM, and a fellow expat writer, Mark Storey, who organized the event.   

In the second workshop, the ages ran from thirteen to mid-sixties, from secondary students to published authors, including fellow MPH writer, Tina Kisil, author of Footprints in the Paddy Field.  One participant flew in from Miri, one was the daughter of one of the UMS staff that I taught the previous day, and another, Farida, was the mother of a student I taught at USM years ago. In fact, her enthusiasm for bringing a creative writing workshop to KK brought both UMS (Mark) and SPArKS (Jude Day) aboard.  Suddenly I’m in KK conducting not one but two workshops to two very different groups.

Robert Raymer demonstrating the use of clustering.

Also attending the second workshop were two students from IPGK Gaya and three UMS students who were taking creative writing in Malay. They told me how different my approach was from the way they were being taught and how easily they can apply my ideas to generate their own ideas.  At UMS, they’re getting mostly theory but they don’t know what to write, or where to even start!  

I take the opposite approach by leaving the theory where it belongs in the textbooks (see “Tree Methodology”  from Tropical Affairs) and showing them some useful pre-writing techniques that actually work in the real world.  We also use sensory details and 5-Ws as prompts that flood them with even more ideas.  Within minutes they’re eager to write.  Several times, after getting them started, I had to stop them, so we could move on, so I could introduce more story-starter ideas! The important thing is they got started and later they can finish up what they began.

The workshops went so well in fact, it looks like I’ll be back to KK in August for another related workshop and possibly a follow up in November. The one in August, I will be creating two longer writing sessions (one for first-person non-fiction, the other for fiction) so they can produce two finished samples to add to what they’ve already started and hopefully completed. (My final exams at USM were one hour and I was always amazed what they came up with after investing some of their precious time with pre-writing).  Then a follow-up workshop (after they’ve had time to rewrite and polish) so I can critique their opening pages from one of those samples, as I did for the 2009 MPH Short Story Awards when I was one of their judges.  By limiting the size of the workshop to 20-25, we can devote 10 minutes for each participant.

When I did this in Kuching '09, this worked wonderfully. They all benefited no matter whose story we were discussing since the others made similar mistakes in their own stories.  (It’s easier to find mistakes in someone else’s story than your own!) 

When I tried this in Miri '09 (maybe because of all of the advance publicity), it wasn’t as effective because many of the writers had sent in stories via their friends or even their moms, so they weren’t even present for their own feedback, nor could they benefit from the feedback for the other stories! Other writers took advantage of the theater style seating and passed down multiple stories.  One submitted four!  I was furious when I found out later what was going on.  It was so unfair to the writers who were present with their own short stories because we couldn’t get to them all.  This time around, as I did in Kuching, where we sat around one long table, I will personally collect each story from each writer, so everyone present benefits.

When I put on my judging and editor’s hat (as I did briefly in KK), I can show them what is holding back their writing (be it grammar, organization, style, including word choices, repetition, and using tentative or trite expressions), so they, and all those who attend, can take their writing to the next level. Here are the judging tips that I posted for the MPH contest and workshop, the post-contest comments and a little inspiration to prove them wrong, and the story behind the story links, whereby I blogged about the significant changes that I made in the Lovers and Strangers Revisited stories that led to their various publications (80, so far, in 12 countries!)

A one-off workshop—although inspiring and motivating for all—is rarely enough.  One writer in Kuching, was so inspired by one of my workshops at Unimas, he turned his ideas into five hundred page book!  (It still has a way to go, but he sure got off to a great start!)  For others, they’ll eventually get around to doing some writing.  We all know about good intentions, but life and work often gets in the way.  The real learning comes from the actual writing. The doing!

      —Robert Raymer, Borneo Expat Writer

*One of the IPGK Gaya students blogged about the workshop. (Yes, our pictures came from the same source, but he added more!)  So did the gentleman from Miri.  Here's Tina's blog about the same event.

**Here is the follow up KK workshop in August'11.  And the third KK workshop 22 October '11

***Here's my workshop with Malaysian Nurses Association and International Tuition School in Kuching.

Here's a blog link about being interviewed on TV for Kuppa Kopi.  If you wish to contact me for a creative writing workshop at your school (for your staff or students or both) or your association, I can be reached at robert@borneoexpatwriter.com  



******Announcement latest workshops:  Writing Your Life Stories Workshop—Kuching! 23 June 2012 (with links to other workshops and writing tips!) and also a workshop in KK on 17 June 2012! 

If you are interested to bring one of my writing workshops to your organizations or association in Sabah/Sarawak/West Malaysia/Singapore/Brunei please contact me at robert@borneoexpatwriter.com  Thank you.

Here are links to some of my author-to-author interviews of first novelists:

Ivy Ngeow author of Cry of the Flying Rhino, winner of the 2016 Proverse Prize.

Golda Mowe author of Iban Dream and Iban Journey.

Preeta Samarasan author of Evening is the Whole Day. 

Chuah Guat Eng,  author of Echoes of Silence and Days of Change. 

Plus:

Five part Maugham and Me series

Beheaded on Road to Nationhood: Sarawak Reclaimed—Part I