Writing Your Life Stories Workshop—Kuching! 23 June 2012

 

Do you have fascinating life experiences to share or interesting stories to tell?

Have you always wanted to write but

couldn’t find the time or anyone to help?

Turn Your Life Stories 
into a Memoir or into Fiction!

ROBERT RAYMER  
teaches you pre-writing and story starting techniques so you can

quickly get your story and your ideas down on paper

based on publishing over 500 short stories and articles

and a prize-winning collection of short stories.

Are You Going to Keep that Story (or that Book) Inside You Forever? Or Are You Finally Going to Write It?

When:  Saturday, 23 June 2012                             Time:  1.30-5.00,  (*1.30 register; book signing, before and after workshop)	Who:  14-70+ years old Cost:  RM120 RM100 adults/  RM100 RM 80 students (full-time) *group discount for 3 or more booked at the same time RM100/RM80 students.
Where:  Kuching, I-CATS/ PPKS, (Kolej Antarabangsa Teknologi Lanjutan Sarawak/ Sarawak Skills Development Centre), Jalan Canna, Off Jalan Wan Alwi, Tabuan  Jaya (oppsite Giant); room A14, ground level.  Enter second entrance on the right and then exit to left of stairs and turn right.	What: Writing is a learnable skill.  Passion is not.  Neither is perseverance.  But desire to share your life stories can take you a long way to achieving your goals! Why: If you don’t tell or share your life stories, no one else will!  Question is, do you want others to know, or can you disguise it as fiction?
How to enrol:  Email your name, contact phone number, email address to robert@borneoexpatwriter.com
Next:  Invite your friends to join you or sponsor a younger/older relative.  Bring plenty of paper and pens to write!   SEE YOU AT THE WORKSHOP!

Areas of learning:  story starting techniques; pre-writing probing; tapping into your (or your characters’) emotions; using sensory details to bring your stories alive; plus tips on story structure, organising and editing to make it readable! Writing tips: Links to Robert’s article on "Pre-writing Techniques", “Judging Tips” , "The Power of Five",  "Writer Envy-Get Some Editing", “Tree Methodology”, “Prove Them Wrong!, and “Writing Workshops: Torture or Fun?"     Challenge:  You’ve been talking (or avoiding talking about) your “life stories” all of your life.  Isn’t it time you wrote it down for your family and friends or maybe adapt it into fiction?  A good story is a good story, but no one will know about it if you take it with you to the grave! Writing is not only therapeutic, but can also be profitable!                     Help your Sarawak-based friends and relatives find out about the workshop by sending them this link! Thanks! Leap Year Bonus: A practical way to change your year and your life!

Bio: 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, published over 500 short stories and articles, and conducted numerous, practical, hands-on writing workshops.   He is the author of Spirit of Malaysia, Tropical Affairs: Episodes from an Expat's Life in Malaysia and Lovers and Strangers Revisited, winner of 2009 Popular-The Star Readers Choice Awards, taught in universities and now translated into French. Writing samples: Three stories from Lovers and Strangers Revisited:  “On Fridays”, “Home for Hari Raya” (to be filmed by Ohio University) and “Neighbours” taught in SPM Literature in English 2008-2014 Excerpt of novel The Resurrection of Jonathan Brady now in the Quarterfinals of the ongoing Amazon Breakthrough Writing Award 2012.

*Announcement:  New workshop in KK on 17 June 2012!

* Here is a link to my previous workshop in Kuching, to my first KK workshop, second KK workshop, third KK workshop2011, Malaysian Nurses Association workshop, and International Tuition School workshop.

**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.

Creative Writing Workshop—Torture or Fun? Quill Jan-Mar 2012

 

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

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 

The Kuching Writing Workshop, Dec 17, 2011

Last Saturday was the “Turn your Personal Experiences into Published Articles” workshop in Kuching.  The turnout was about half of what we had in KK due to it being a last minute arrangement and too close to Christmas.  It also fell on finals day at Open University (and at least one other university); so many people who had expressed an interest couldn’t attend.  Those who did make it, including Charles from Miri, got a lot of writing done.  In fact Charles, who had attended the same workshop in KK in August, felt this one was better, maybe because he completed his first draft. 

In KK, like many writers who only write on computer, he seemed to have trouble writing longhand.  Writing longhand, however, can be liberating.  You just keep going to the end instead of reworking the beginning over and over to perfection (some never get to the end and just give up on the story.)  At the workshop, after all the pre-writing prompting that we use on your story, by the time I let them write, after they had already been thinking about narrative for about an hour, they were raring to go.

Charles did bring me another story to edit, which is the best way to improve as a writer.  Get some direct feedback, some guidance to take your writing to the next level. Consider it an investment into your writing future.  When I began, I hired someone to critique my first 20 or so stories, and the better ones ended up in that original collection Lovers and Strangers (1993 Heinemann Asia). 

Also attending the workshop was Allen, a photographer interested in travel writing, and Jasmine who has an interest in copywriting and who first came across me on a Malaysian airlines flight when she read my short story, “Merdeka Miracle” that I wrote with Lydia Teh and Tunku Halim.  Brenden, who’s studying in KL, was the youngest, who I first met at the 2009 MPH Short Story workshop in Kuching.

In the afternoon session we had Edrow who not only came with his 18-year-old daughter Joan, but had already completed a novel and had even been submitting it to UK agents!  After the workshop we talked about the whole finding-an-agent process and some alternatives.  It can take some time and plenty of rewrites.  Then there was my French friend Annie, who wrote a nonfiction manuscript about her experiences in Borneo, and writes a blog.  She has already blogged about the workshop, which she called “so refreshing; a tonic boost really.”

As I told the participants at the beginning of the workshop, you may know the beginning of your story as you begin to write today, but you may not know the full ending—where that story will take you years from now.  I used the “Mat Salleh” story from Lovers and Strangers Revisited as an example.  That story had its beginning when I visited my ex-in-laws in Malaysia for the first time while still living in the US.  I then took two correspondence courses offered by Writer’s Digest, one on the Short Story and the other, Advanced Short Story. 

Getting some helpful feedback, I kept reworking the story, glad that I had kept a journal and took a lot of photographs.  When I moved to Malaysia, “Mat Salleh” became not only my first published short story in Malaysia, but also my first published short story in the UK—in My Weekly (they even ran the story with colour photos).  When it was published in Lovers and Strangers (1993 Heinemann Asia), I thought that was the end of the story, especially after a pair of publishers bought out the publisher and dropped its Writing in Asia series. 

Twelve years later “Mat Salleh” and the revised collection, Lovers and Strangers Revisited (2005 Silverfish) was taught at USM in Penang.  The collection was republished a third time by MPH in 2008 and even went on to win the 2009 Popular Reader’s Choice award.  I thought that was the end of the story—a rather nice ending, too.  But Lovers and Strangers Revisited got translated into French as Trois Autres Malaisie.

Then I got an email last week and that old version of “Mat Salleh” in that original collection caught the eye of a film director at Ohio University in the US and they wanted to film the story.  After talking to the head of the film department, I suggested that for their purpose, the revised version of “Home for Hari Raya” might be a better choice, and they loved it.  So you never know the full ending of your story, where it’ll take you over the years and even decades, but the beginning you can start at a writing workshop.  You just need to get it started and see it through completion, draft after draft.

So, what have you written lately?  If you lack the discipline to start something new on your own, then sign up for one of my workshops.   Or any workshop that just happens to be in your area.   Good luck with your writing!


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

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—Torture or Fun?

Creative Writing Workshop—three words that can send shivers down people’s spine!  Is it the word “creative” that scares you?  Often I’m told, “I’m not very creative,” and they cringe at the thought, as if being creative is an affliction akin to some tropical disease.  Or is it the thought of “writing” that's haunting you?  I know back in school the thought of writing was often equated with torture doled out by masochistic teachers bent on ruining our lives or at least killing a few of our precious weekends.  Then there’s the “work” part in workshop that doesn’t sound terribly exciting.  Who wants to pay good money to “work?”  There’s also the money issue.  In reality, though, who are you paying?

Yourself actually.

That’s right.  You’re paying yourself to show up for the workshop and invest your time to do something that you’ve been meaning to get around to for far too many years.  Ever since you’ve had that nagging idea that you want to write something, or that you have a story to tell.  It’s not necessarily that you want to be a writer, but just maybe you want to write about what happened to you a long time ago, something that changed you, made you a better person or a little wiser or a little more cautious or very grateful.  You've been thinking, if only I had the time.  The workshop will give you that time!

When people ask me, “Are you really going to make us work?”

I reply, “No, I’m going to make you play!”

Writing is playing with words, playing with ideas, playing with memories.  No one is asking you to write a masterpiece, let alone a book.  Just play with your ideas, play with the memories of the events in your life, the significant events that make you special.  That make you think.

“You mean I have to think, too?”

Relax, we have pre-writing techniques that will help you think, help you to remember, like clustering or mind mapping, or free writing.  Pretty soon you’ll have ideas gushing out of you, long forgotten memories from your childhood or when you were an awkward teenager.  Soon you’ll be recalling events in your life that you either learned from, that helped get you through a difficult time in your life, or maybe even some hilarious mishap that wasn’t all that funny at the time, but now looking back, it cracks you up just thinking about it.  At the very least, you survived it, or maybe even had the last laugh!

Or maybe you shared a special moment, something spiritual or even miraculous that you want to share with your friends, family, even the world.  The Chicken Soup for the Soul series is filled with such stories that move us in so many ways.  Many of those stories were first published elsewhere, like in your local paper, under the first-person or a nostalgic section where you get to write about what happened in those days long gone by…

Have you ever done anything interesting?  That’s what got me writing my first narratives that make up Tropical Affairs: Episodes from an expat’s life in Malaysia.   I was lucky enough to take part in some movies while living in Penang (Hollywood came to me!), so I wrote about my involvement.  Basically I narrated what I did.  Unlike writing the short stories in Lovers and Strangers Revisited, there were no inventing characters, creating scenes, or any plot developments.  This was relatively easy, straight forward.   

Then I started to look around my life to see what else I could write about.  Around that time, we had a baby, so I wrote about the silly things that our baby cum toddler did, and the silly things I did too as a new father.

I then wrote about my experiences being a teacher, being a writer, being an expat, being myself, and at times, being out of luck—my misadventures!   Misadventures, I soon learned pays really well.  When things go wrong and you can laugh at yourself over it, and if others can laugh and learn from it too—now that’s marketable.  I even published an article for Quill “Making Money from Your Mis-adventures” 

Just recently, to pick myself out of some doldrums, I did something rather fun, I compiled a list of my top 50 achievements.  Back in 2006, I compiled a list of 25 and expanded it to 50.  It really got me thinking about my life.  Try it!

Of course, another fear we all risk at writing workshops is being “exposed”, found out that our grammar is horrible!  Welcome to the club!  Everyone present feels the same way.  You are not alone.  Far from it.  When I decided to become a writer, I naïvely thought that being a native speaker, with a university degree and a fairly decent grade point average and even getting some of my early work published, that grammar came second nature to me—like breathing; that I didn’t have to even think about it.  So I didn’t. 

Then a well-meaning friend asked me if I’ve ever heard of the term “dangling modifier”?  

Vaguely, I did, though I had no idea what it was.  Curious, I looked it up.  Oh my god, I’ve been breaking that rule all my life!  I flipped through the grammar section of one of my English text books and found all kinds of interesting terms and rules that I shamelessly broke, not knowing they were rules!  Infinitives, anyone?  Surely my teachers weren’t that bad, or maybe, I got a little careless over the years like bad posture.  

Admitting my utter ignorance, I sucked it up and relearned some basic grammar.  You don’t have to know all the rules.  Grammarians don’t even agree on many of them.  Can you split an infinitive or not?  We can split an atom, but an infinite?  Well I do, when it serves my purpose.  Let the grammarians decide if I’m right or wrong.  All I want to do is tell my story.

For my Creative Writing Workshops, we don't focus on grammar.  That comes with revising, later. All I want to do is help you to write your own story, to help you get it out of your system onto paper, where you can play with it (I was going to say “work with it” but who wants to work?) and make it even better.  The more times you go over it, rewrite it, read it our loud, and keep smoothing out the wrinkles, the closer you'll be to getting it published—if you want to.  Not all workshop participants want to publish their work.  They get their pleasure out of merely writing it.

By the way, this is how all writing begins; a writer gets an idea, plays with it, writes it down, and voila!  They’ve written something.  It may not be a masterpiece (that may come later, after they revise it over and over, or get some editing help) but it’s a start, and getting started on your idea, your very own idea based on your very own personal experiences, is why you should attend a creative writing workshop.  Besides, you might even have some fun (and meet some kindred spirits who never realized writing was so much fun either).  You might even at admit, at least to yourself, that you actually like writing, and that you got something to show for the time (and money) spend at the workshop.  If not a complete first draft, something well underway that you can finish off when you get home. And if you sell it, you could recoup your investment!  Who knows, you might even turn your idea into a book!  

And all those years, you thought writing was torture.  Shame on 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 KK on 17 June 2012!

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 

Take the Fear out of writing and replace it with Fun at the Writing Workshop in Kuching!

Created by Jenny!  Thanks!

Take the Fear out of writing and replace it with Fun!

Don't be intimidated by the word "creative".  It's just plain writing! 
 

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

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 

Borneo Post: Writing Workshop in Kuching--17 December 2011!

*To enlarge, click, right click, view, zoom

Are you serious about writing?

Are you up to the challenge?

Turn your Personal Experience into 

Published Articles!

ROBERT RAYMER takes you through the brainstorming 

and the writing process to produce a complete first draft, 

if you're up to the challenge!

Take the Fear out of writing and replace it with Fun!

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

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—Kuching! 17 December 2011

Are you serious about writing?

Are you up to the challenge?

Turn your Personal Experiences into 

Published Articles

ROBERT RAYMER takes you through the brainstorming 
and the writing process to produce a complete first draft, 
if you're up to the challenge!

Take the Fear out of writing and replace it with Fun!

*UPDATE: THREE DAYS REMAIN; NO DEPOSIT REQUIRED!
SEE YOU AT THE WORKSHOP!

When:  Saturday, 17 December Time:  9.00-12.00 or 2.00-5.00pm (one session/two-time slots)   *register 8.30/1.30			Cost:  RM120 adults/           RM90 students (full-time), above age 14
Who:  14-70+ years old, plus your friends and relatives		Where:  Kuching, Open University Malaysia, Sarawak Learning Centre, 9 1/2 Mile, Kuching-Serian Road
Next:  Email your name, contact phone number, email address, and your preference morning or afternoon session to robert@borneoexpatwriter.com

Not Sure?	Why not treat yourself or a relative to an early Christmas present or get a head start on your   New Year Resolutions!

Areas of learning:  pre-writing techniques, probing questions; 5Ws and IH; primary and secondary emotions; sensory details; narrative structure; organising and outlining; four killers of narratives; and some valid reasons for editing-it's not just about grammar! Writing tips: Links to Robert’s article in The Writer on pre-writing techniques, (click, right click, view and zoom to read) and the expanded version in Quill Annual 2011 , “Judging Tips” , "The Power of Five",  "Writer Envy-Get Some Editing", “Tree Methodology” and “Prove Them Wrong!"     Challenge: Start and complete the first draft of your narrative in the workshop and have a final draft before the New Year to start your New Year in a new direction!             Workshop Bonus: Plan and start an additional piece of fiction.                Help your friends and relatives find out about the workshop by sending them this link! Thanks! Bonus New Year Tip: A fun way to raise your self esteem and build your confidence for the New Year! And Leap for Success in the upcoming Leap Year.

Bio: 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, published over 500 short stories and articles, and conducted numerous workshops on creative writing.   He is the author of Spirit of Malaysia, Tropical Affairs: Episodes from an Expat's Life in Malaysia and Lovers and Strangers Revisited, winner of 2009 Popular-The Star Readers Choice Awards, taught in universities and translated into French. Robert’s interviews and book reviews can be found on his blog https://borneoexpatwriter.blogspot.com/

* Comments from recent workshop participants (below article) and a link to the actual workshop in Kuching,

**Here's the link to the first KK workshop, second KK workshop, and third KK workshop, the Malaysian Nurses Association workshop, and International Tuition School in Kuching workshop

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

***If you are interested to bring my workshops to other organizations or associations in Sabah/Sarawak/West Malaysia/Singapore/Brunei for 2012 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 

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!