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A critical view of MP
Ms Irene Ng’s advice
By Kelvin Teo ⋅ April 18, 2009
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 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.
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