Borneo Expat Writer: SPArks

Saturday, June 18, 2011

Creative Writing WorkshopTwo Coming to Kota Kinabalu!

CREATIVE WRITING WORKSHOP TWO COMING TO KK!

(different from the first--taking you through the brainstorming and writing process to produce a complete first draft, if you're up to the challenge!)

Turning your Personal Experience into a First Draft

of a First Person Narrative

Due to popular request, a second creative writing workshop

with ROBERT RAYMER

When: Saturday, 13 August	Time: 2.00-6.00pm	Cost: RM100
Who: 16-90+ years old	Where: 7^th Floor, Wisma Anglican, Karamunsing
Next: Email or sms your name, contact phone number & email address to.................

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

Farida Shukoor – 016-8486874 / fshukoor@hotmail.com

Come and write – produce a complete draft of a first-person narrative-- Your story!

Plan and start writing an additional piece of fiction.

In this 4-hour workshop, you will complete the first draft of a narrative, editing and revising it if there is time.

Areas of learning: probing questions; 5Ws and IH; primary & secondary emotions; sensory details; point of view & point of reference; organising & outlining; 4 killers of narratives; narrative structure; use of dialogue; reasons for editing-it's not just about grammar!

You will also brainstorm and start the first draft of a work of fiction.

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

the first one!

Find out more about Robert on his blog: https://borneoexpatwriter.blogspot.com//

Organised by the KK Theatre Group, SPArKS

www.sparks.org.my

Bio for Robert Raymer:

Named as one of the “50 Expats You Should Know” by Expatriate Lifestyle,

American Robert Raymer has taught creative writing for 13 years at two

Malaysian universities, has judged short story competitions including the

2009 MPH National Short Story Awards, and conducted numerous workshops on

writing and creative writing.

His short stories and articles have been published 500 times in such places: The Literary Review, Thema, Aim, London Magazine, Going Places, My Weekly, The Writer and Reader’s Digest.

Lovers and Strangers Revisited (MPH 2008), a collection of short stories set in Malaysia, winner of the 2009 Popular-The Star Readers Choice Awards, has been taught in universities and will soon be translated into French.

Tropical Affairs: Episodes from an Expat's Life in Malaysia (MPH 2009) is

a collection of creative nonfiction about living in Malaysia for over

twenty years. nominated for 2010 Popular-The Star Reader's Choice Award.

His latest book is Spirit of Malaysia (EDM, 2011).

He is a member of Maui Inner Circle, a critique group. His blog on writing,

his interviews, and his book reviews can be accessed from his blog https://borneoexpatwriter.blogspot.com/

One of his latest articles on writing, about pre-writing techniques, is published in Quill Annual 2011.

Another on "The Power of Five" in Quill-Jan-March 2011 and "Getting Known Through the Media", Quill April-June 2011

# # #

*Here is the link to the previous workshop in KK with links to three blogs from participants.

**Here is the link to the second workshop in KK., the Malaysian Nurses Association.workshop and 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 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

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

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.