WRITING + LIFE
Eat Manuscripts, Write Sandwiches and Brew Tables
Writing a book is one feat. Talking about it after it’s written is the tough part being creative
In March 2020, I wrote a seven thousand word manuscript. I wrote it in my room after the Prime Minister announced we were going into a lockdown. So much of the future was uncertain, including when the lockdown would end. We were to brace an unprecedented event, he said.
It was a unique moment. My phone was lit up with incoming messages from friends panicking and texting WTFs. At home my mother was worried about how her grocery plans were going to be disrupted. I was reading Michelle Obama’s book “Becoming”. I closed it, put it back on the bookshelf, and walked into my room.
After years of not journaling, I sat down at my desk and did just that. I started with a sentence on how I felt. I deleted the sentence. “Who cares?” I told myself. Instead of “Me”, I changed the pronoun to “We”. In this unprecedented event, it wasn’t just me sentenced to house arrest. The whole world included. Thus, this cannot be about me. This was a collective event.
So, I sat and I wrote. Some days I didn’t. I read, questioned, and challenged my own thoughts. Each time I felt bored, perturbed or frustrated by a news event or government announcement, I pounded the keyboard.
Long story short, in November 2021, my first book was published. About 57,000 words. It was published by Penguin Random House SEA. It was still uncertain times where the pandemic was concerned so ground events were not planned. In fact, I had no plans to do anything about it. But what was unavoidable was to discuss it. I dreaded that. I had purged all I had, and at that point, I no longer wanted to discuss it. I’m sure most writers won’t feel this way. This ought to be a moment of jubilant and celebration. I’m an oddball with no apology.
For me, that was the problem. In the process of writing the book —it’s about enduring trials and tribulation of COVID-19 using your EQ — I learned about broken systems, backhanded policies and governmental failures.
I saw many things in a new light. We were not out of the woods yet where the pandemic was concerned. Everyone, save for me, my eldest brother and niece, had experienced COVID. Where the book is concerned, I had moved to a different chapter. In my head, I was writing another untitled book.
Eventually, the publisher said, it would be good to talk about your book — but when you’re ready.
Now that many months had passed, I realized what would be worthy to discuss about the book is the creative journey it took to get me to November 2021.
Many writers talk about wanting to write a book. The act of writing is the epic journey. Many remain half written, partially scribbled, outlined and many more written in our heads.
Where my mechanics are concerned, words string together in my head as I do something unrelated to writing. It usually pops up as I am walking. My creativity works in tandem with my movement. I don’t dwell on any subject matter forcing me to figure it out. I process by asking questions, exploring them in colors.
I try to paint them, visualize them, before I write a single word. Or not. I could just swim and listen to music. This is not to avoid or to procrastinate. It’s to allow the subject to marinate and to develop organically.
At a later point, the idea will reoccur. Using a Design Thinking approach, I remove the superficial layers — the obvious, the predicable, the expected. After a day, a few or weeks, sharper ideas reappear with developed overtones and better words.
And then there is intuition. That voice that navigates and tells you if this something worthy of a story or not. To walk, to sit, to run, to paint or to dance. The same voice that navigates you to avoid, to face, to disrupt, to lament, to process, to disclose or to simply keep the idea locked within.
My journey to November 2021 is a path of writing many things I didn’t like. And that, I believe, is what makes it clearer over the years.
You start with what you don’t have the liberty to do.
I started my career writing magazine articles about relationships. The great irony was I wrote them when I was single. Within months, I got tired of writing stories along the lines of “10 Reasons Why He Loves You”, “7 Red Flags in a Relationship”, “5 Signs He is The One”. They were mind-numbing to me as a writer, but were the in-demand staple of our readers. Clients loved them.
On occasion I’d slip an article that had a bit more bite. Articles on date rape, surviving cancer, and struggles for female independence. These were stories rarely discussed in Southeast Asia because locals believe in superstitions where if you talk about them, you bring them into existence.
I felt a need as an editor to shift that paradigm through my own writing. I was fortunate to have bosses who agreed with my point of view, except we had clients who preferred the fluff, the fantasy and the Barbie planet menagerie.
I was hired on several occasions to write and edit for high profile government-linked projects. I had numerous contentions, and many more when it came to ethics and integrity.
The SMART Project was a coffee-table endeavor that was to document the first tunnel project in Malaysia using the Boring machine. SMART refers to Stormwater Management And Road Tunnel.
By the designers and engineers’ own definition, “SMART works on a three-mode system. Mode one operates under normal conditions or when rainfall is low such that no water needs to be diverted into the tunnel. Moderate storms activate mode two. This diverts flood water into a bypass tunnel in the lower section of the motorway tunnel which remains open to traffic. During the once or twice yearly heavy storms, a switch is made to mode three when the tunnel is closed and the full tunnel section with a combined capacity of 3 million m3 becomes available to divert the dramatically increased flows.”
As an editor, you don’t want your name associated with a project that questions integrity. You need to fact-check and ensure research is valid and reliable. The 11.5km tunnel is an innovative solution for a city center plagued with severe flooding and can’t afford to expand. The engineers did a remarkable job but the government, not so. As many corners were cut in the project, I declined and walked away.
I learned about the geological landscapes of Kuala Lumpur and project engineering, and that was as far as I could be involved. Writing a project of this magnitude, had to be about Truths. When it isn’t, your credibility as a writer and editor is not worth being stamped on the final product.
The other project that challenged me was a tribute project to celebrate one of Malaysia’s former Prime Minister’s 22-year administration. Fifty-five leaders, movers and shakers were interviewed discussing the premier. Some of the interviews were terrible, beyond rewrites. When I raised the matter, they wanted to change my role from writer to ghostwriter. I said No, and from this project I learned about the shambolic process that existed in the local publishing scene.
I was invited by an old boss cum artist to be assistant curator for a local art gallery. It was a weekend training at no pay for 12 months, and meant my social life will be crickets for some time. I took the offer gladly and it was through my Peruvian boss’ art expertise I learned curating and framing words were as connected to visuals as it did to writing. It sharpens your narrative vision and how to compact your story-telling. My South American boss had style and panache in the way he did things, like his artwork and ceviche. Through conversations and curating his associates’ work who were painters and photographers, the maturity and broad strokes of my story-telling evolved.
The experience that influenced characterization was when I offered to help out at a friend’s café for several months. My friend, the owner, had to move away to focus on other businesses. Although he could barely afford me, I agreed to pittance in exchange for the experience working three days a week.
There I was, waitressing and making grilled cheese sandwiches in the back. In the evening, I moped the floor and arranged crockery. During this stint my writing was mainly grocery lists, customer orders and short notes on memorable moments, like customer anecdotes.
Some friends were shocked to see me willing to roll up my sleeves and take orders. For me, it was liberating, a turning point, and among my best.
It was through managing the café I renewed my faith in humanity.
Feeding hungry people makes you a hero, and it surprised me how people were all too happy to share stories of their day.
I attended to many old folks, namely tourists from Europe, and they love recalling moments they fell in love, the places they’ve travelled, and places they intend to travel. The slightest of things could become an hour chat on a slow day. They could ramble on how grateful they were for a glass of cold coffee or lemon juice on a hot day. Customers were also full of surprises.
Once, on a busy day, all tables but one were full. A young gentleman walked in and ordered local coffee. He sat reading a book in the furthest corner at the vacant table. I had my hands full and perhaps it was obvious. I was surprised when he approached the counter near the kitchen and asked, “Do you need a hand?”. I laughed. He insisted he had qualification working at his university cafeteria as an undergrad.
Turns out he was a British architect conducting a PhD study on bamboo and commuted between the remotes of Colombia and Haiti. Better yet, we were both children of the 70s, and had been exposed to Mad Cow disease and Chernobyl of the 80s. We laughed at how fucked we were.
It was through managing tables and the customers I rediscovered the power of narratives and the need to describe human connection.
I also grew to respect feedback in ways that humbled me. When I wasn’t improvising my grilled cheese sandwich presentation and adjusting the salt and seasoning of my pasta dishes, I was exploring dishes and asking customers, “What do you think?”
Once, feeling nostalgic, I made beef stew using a recipe I got from a mom-and-pop restaurant in Minnesota. I added it to the day’s special menu. A man walked in and ordered it. He sat eating quietly. He finished it.
As I was cleaning his table, he spoke, “You know this is the damnest thing, but this stew reminds me of the ones I eat back home.”
“Where are you from, sir?” I asked, feeling more nervous than intrigued.
“Michigan.” He smiled.
“Ah, here’s a secret. That stew’s recipe is from your neighboring city, sir.”
In hindsight, I learned the impressions and grooves of better writing outside of my comfort zone. More importantly, the need for positive human stories. The world may frail, decentralize and dissolute around us, but we need to keep the human spirit alive. Be it scented candles, spiced coffee, grilled cheese sandwiches, a song, a manuscript, we ought to produce what uplifts human courage.
Writer’s integrity, truth-telling and narrative stylistics, these three components became my thematic thrusts.
Telling a story from different timelines, posits and point of views (from different ages), and shape-shifting personas, were the things I learned from being held back in the course of my writing career.
When writers lament they can’t seem to write what they want, or struggle to find that “Aha” clarity, do the opposite. Adopt the approach of the salmon — fight against the current. Being imprisoned by what you can’t do will help you discover what you can.
Writing my book was exactly that. The moment I was told by my Prime Minister we were to be imprisoned by a virus, a whole nation to be suspended till indefinitely, it dawned on me two things: to uncover what I can do in the sea of “can’t-dos”; in the event I lost to the virus, in the footsteps of Anne Frank, I had written words that may someday be discovered and make sense to others.
I had walked away from several book projects, and for the longest time, with a career taking center stage of my life, a book of my own was considered far-fetched. It was a stretch to even find time to finish reading a book, more so writing one. Yet, COVID-19 opened the door, pushed me out. A book was written because it had to.
That is all that matters, and all I have to say about my book. For now at least.
Love and light writing yours.
