Information that
may be useful to any budding writers out there
SINGAPORE – In an article published April 14th
in The New Paper, MP Miss Irene Ng exhorted broke professionals out
there who dreamt of writing a book to transform it into a reality.
Miss Ng cited the success story of JK Rowling, then a single,
struggling mother who finished her first novel when she was out of
a job. The rest, they say is the stuff of legends.
Thus, the article’s title says it all:”During hard times,
write”. I find there is nothing wrong with that advice because I
believe in the freedom of creative expression. In fact, creative
expression shouldn’t be limited to writing books alone. One can set
up a web publication site like this one for instance. Even I write
too, but that is for hobby purposes rather than a source of
income.
There is no doubt that Miss Ng is trying to give her two cents
worth in suggesting to Singaporeans a particular way of coping with
the hard times. Given her background as a writer, I wasn’t
surprised at her suggestion. While she has genuinely good
intentions behind her suggestion, I find it lacking in
substance.
From a pragmatic standpoint, a jobless professional would prefer
to work in temporary positions for the short-term as opposed to
writing a book. If the latter’s long-term goal is to land another
permanent job, working in temporary positions would make more
sense. A prospective employee who has proven his analytical and
management skills in addition to an ability to integrate into a
team in the temporary positions he has held would be more
attractive in the eyes of an employer than someone who merely spent
his days of unemployment writing a book. The employer would be more
confident of the former who has demonstrated transferable skills in
his temporary positions.
The obvious advantage of working in temporary positions is that
the employee is at least guaranteed a source of income. The writer
does not have any source of income whilst working on his
manuscripts. His income will only come in after his published works
hit the market. And for that to happen, he has to find a publisher
in the first place. Another barrier to overcome is the public’s
reception to the book, i.e. whether the book can sell.
What Miss Ng had also left out was elaborate details regarding
publishing practices which may be informative to any budding
writers out there. Any written work initially begins with the
conceptualization phase. This may involve the author alone, or in
certain cases, the editors at the publishers’ end might play a part
too. The next stage would be the writing phase. This part can be
very intensive and time-consuming, as the writers are required to
research for relevant information and write their manuscripts at
the same time.
What many budding writers take for granted is the role of the
editors during the authoring phase. Good editors are able to come
up with positive suggestions on how to better improve the
manuscript so that the final written work will appeal to the
general audience. Of course, there are editors who go on an
overkill, chopping and changing large chunks of a writer’s work
until the whole piece becomes unfamiliar to the latter. Most of the
time, this will not go down well among the writers especially if
the modified piece is a huge deviation away from the latter’s
original contribution. Needless to say, the good editors are the
ones who are able to exercise a fine balance between modifying the
writer’s work and preserving the original contribution. It’s an
editorial art to modify a piece of written work to appeal to the
audience whilst preserving the original contribution by the writer.
The role of an editor is under-estimated, but the latter can make a
difference between the success or failure of a book.
It is a common publishing practice for writers to be issued what
is known as “false deadlines” by their publishers. The “false
deadline” is usually on an earlier date before the actual deadline.
The main worry about “false dealines” is that writers have less
time to write or correct the manuscripts. Less allocated time to
work on the manuscripts will generally have negative effects on
their quality. Thus, the onus is on the writers to negotiate with
the publishers a series of deadlines that will not compromise the
quality of the manuscripts.
Last, but not least, is a matter of paramount concern to the
writer – renumeration. Writers are usually paid by royalties from
the sales of their books. And this will only happen after their
books have hit the market. Thus, before a budding writer decides to
work on a book, he would have to keep careful track of his personal
finances. He has to ensure that he has enough to sustain himself
and his family during the time he is working on the book up till
the day when it is finally released in the market.
Whilst it is good to encourage budding writers out there to
fulfill their dreams of publishing their own books in the name of
promoting freedom of creative expression, the latter should also be
armed with detailed knowledge of the venture he is about to
undertake.
A note about the writer:
He has worked as an editor at one major publishing house, seeing
six books from conceptualization to print, and as a freelance
writer for another major publishing house. He was also a
contributing author for a book aimed at junior level students, and
sole author for two electronic learning resources.