Borneo Expat Writer: brainstorming

Monday, January 2, 2012

In Two Days—Tomorrow Will Be Yesterday. So Make Today Count!

Sometimes it’s oh so easy to give up on your dreams, whether you’re an artist, entertainer, actor, performer, or writer. You don’t seem to get the breaks or you keep shooting yourself in the foot or maybe you just don’t have what it takes to succeed, so you toss in the towel or move on . . . . Too often it’s just a matter of giving up too soon or not hanging in there long enough. Yeah, it can be discouraging, but you just never know what’s on the other side of that brick wall that’s designed to stop you. Randy Pausch spoke about this in his Last Lecture.

The question you should be asking yourself is not when is this going to happen, but how can you make it happen? What do you need to do today—yes today and not tomorrow!—that will take you a step closer? If you’re not sure, try mindstorming, or brainstorming on your own. Mindstorm is a success-driven technique whereby you pose a question of your desire or a problem that you wish to solve and then write down 20 answers or 20 ways to move forward, and keep going until you reach 20!

Often it’s that last one, an obvious solution that you have overlooked, like doing some research, or plotting an outline, or printing out your manuscript and editing it on paper (and away from internet temptations!), or committing to working on it a half-hour a day if that is all the time you can spare, or consider waking up an hour early and working on it while the house is quiet and the everyone is still a sleep.

Another suggestion is just to get mad at yourself for not keeping your commitments, or acknowledging the truth—even if the truth hurts—that maybe you’re not doing enough to help yourself. Yeah, you want success bad enough, but so does everyone else, but are you willing to do what it takes? Naturally, we’ll say, yes, of course, I’m willing to do what it takes. If that’s the truth, then ask yourself, is that what you’re doing right now? Is that what you have been doing this past week? This past month? This past year? Right about now we start to rationalize or recite our favorite excuses about work or family or time commitments.

We don’t hold our feet to the fire. Instead we let ourselves off the hook and say something lame like, well if you were in my position…or maybe, it just wasn’t meant to be…or that others just got “lucky”. I don’t think so.

To start this New Year right—a Leap Year at that—you got to take responsibility for your own actions, simple as that. You got to say, well that was last year. Yeah, I let myself down, but this is a new year, a fresh start to set things right. This is what I’m going to do differently this year. These are the steps I’m going to take starting today. These are the commitments I’m going to make.

Write them down now, while the thought is there…

For me, I always seem to get myself fired up when that first novel contest of the year, Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award makes its announcement. (Update: one novel just made it to Round Two 2012, so far.) Don’t know how I missed the first two, but when the third one came around, I made sure I had a novel ready. Then last year, I got an early start and began rewriting my novels in November. This year, well today’s the day. Tomorrow is already too late! You know what they say about tomorrow. In two days, tomorrow will be yesterday.

That’s a sad thought. So unless you want to turn your tomorrows into yesterdays, then make today your day. Ask yourself, what can I do right now, this very minute that will move me in the right direction, and then build on that momentum. For me, I already began revising my pitch statements—start with something small, something manageable to get the ball rolling. That’s all you need, a little momentum to get moving forward. Then every day find a way to keep that momentum going, even if it’s only for half an hour. Commit to this! Pretty soon, you’ll start finding that extra time that you’ll need.

Imagine if you did that every day, how this week, this month, this year will be very different from last year. In fact this year could be your best year ever. Just see the potential, make a plan, try some mindstorming, mind mapping, whatever works for you, and just go for it. All the best for 2012!
--Borneo Expat Writer

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, July 6, 2010

Teaching Teachers to Teach Creative Writing

On Monday (5 July 2010), two days ago, I gave a half day creative writing workshop for International Tuition School in Kuching for about 70 teachers, whereby I combined the best of several of my workshops over the past few years. I applied some of my Tree Methodology (from Tropical Affairs, nominated for the 2010 Popular –The Star Reader’s Choice Award), some of my narrative writing skills, some critical thinking skills that I developed to jumpstart stories, and added some short story writing pitfalls to avoid from my MPH-Short Story Contest talks I conducted as one of the judges for the contest.

It’s always great to get positive feedback on the day itself, during the beaks, afterwards, and also while signing autographs for my books. But in the back of my mind, I’m wondering, how quickly will the staff actually apply this, and what will be their results? Sometimes, I never know. Other times, I’ll hear back from them or I’ll bump into them at a conference a year or two later.

Well just now I heard from Sheila Khoo, one of the teachers who attended, when she requested that I add her as a friend on Facebook, with the following note, “I was one of those teachers who participated in your workshop on 5 July 2010. It was an interesting one I must say!"

Grateful to hear that and curious to hear more, I added her as a friend. Sheila happened to be online at the time (it was during lunch) and she immediately began to chat with me. (I rarely chat, and if I do, I keep it brief!) She wrote, “Hi, thanks for accepting my request. That was a good one last Monday!”

After I thanked her, Sheila replied, “I was thinking hard on how I should apply all that to my students. I guess time is what we need. We seem to have a bit of time constraint with the syllabus we have. But I would just like to share something which I did just yesterday (Tuesday) with my students (primary). I did some creative writing activity. I made them write something about 'a special gift' within 3 minutes and they did it. Some managed to write quite a few sentences...and they enjoyed it! Lol! I read out their work in class without disclosing who the writers were of course and they really had fun!”

We talked about this at the workshop, the importance of sharing anonymously, so the students can learn from each other. I replied, “When you make it fun and interesting for them, they benefit in more ways than one—especially a personal reflection that makes them think—that's great. Sharing is always good, it allows them to hear what others wrote. It doesn't have to take a lot of time. Could be a warm up, or when everyone is bored or feeling restless. A chance for them to change gears, have a little fun, and then get back to the lessons now that they're refreshed!"

I’m thinking, this is great! One day you attend a workshop on creative writing and the very next day you apply it, and the students actually have fun! Wow!

During my workshops I don’t go into any theory or my research. That’s boring; they get too much theory from everyone else, especially at conferences, and no clue how to actually apply it so it can work for them! For me, I go straight into what we’re going to do and how you can apply it, and then we do it, so they learn the process and internalize it and feel comfortable using it and they actually have fun, too!

The teachers may not be writers, but with a little confidence and some models and ideas that they can use to teach, to brainstorm ideas, they can inspire their students to write! That’s what teaching is all about, a willingness to try something new that might even be fun for them and their students, and at the same time, the students get a chance to write about something that interests them (and have some freedom to explore a topic, not pigeonholing them so they all have to write an answer in only one way.) This can benefit them in many ways, as they reflect upon what they write and what others wrote. The important thing, they’re being taught to be creative, and these creative writing and brain¬storming skills can be applied to all of their writing—and for the rest of their lives!

Let’s teach them early and put more fun back into teaching of writing—for them and for you as teachers…

* here's a link to two workshops in KK, with blog comments from three participants, and.another in KL for Malaysian Nurses Association
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**Announcement latest workshop: Writing Your Life Stories Workshop—Kuching! 28 April 2012 (with links to other workshops and writing tips!)

***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.

****Update, the 20^th anniversary of Lovers and Strangers Revisited