Wednesday, November 23, 2011

the long and winding road

With my impending graduation next July, I've started considering my career options. I know, my first sentence is already a yawn. But that's the truth of the matter, and I have to come up with a plan fast before I end up roaming the streets with a cardboard sign saying, "Will sing for food." And I'm not even a good singer.

My dad saw how worried I was that entire day (but he was, in fact, the one who got me thinking about what I'm going to do after graduation) and sat me down for a talk before I went to bed. He told me to stop worrying about the things I can't control and that it's near impossible to be unemployed in Singapore.

But with a degree in English, I can't exactly qualify for a profession, if you know what I mean. I mean, it's all fine studying English in university, but it's an entirely different issue looking for a job that requires an English major. Is it true that English majors are doomed to end up as teachers? Not that teaching is a dead end. That's not what I mean. It's just ... I'm not the teaching sort. I have zero patience for kids, and I'd only see it as a means to earn income, the way I view my tutoring job now. The people around me who are well on their way to becoming teachers, you can totally see the passion in their eyes when they talk about the kids and their job. I don't get it. But should all else fail, maybe teaching is the only way to go.

Here in Singapore, if we sign on to become teachers, we get tuition paid for by the government but we'd have to be bonded for three years to the Ministry of Education. So if I decided to get bonded (after doing a year of post-grad in the National Institute of Education), I'd have to spend three years in the teaching business.

Gerlynn squawked at me to think through it carefully and discuss it over with my dad before embarking on - and I quote - "hare-brained notions" like spending three miserable years doing something I'm not keen on. How is it that some people such as her can be so logical and calm about everything? I'm a mess when it comes to making decisions for myself. Gerlynn always says, "Make your own decisions! You're 21!" Even my dad said that the other day - he told me I had to rely less on him to make decisions and be an adult now. I could blame it on my horoscope (Libras easy-going at best, and indecisive at worst), but that would be dumb.

I cried during that talk with my dad. He told me to put less pressure on myself, especially on something I can't control (although I don't really get what it is I can't control about getting myself employed). Before tucking me into bed he told me to communicate with him more (I was pretty reticent the whole day, worrying) so that he won't worry about me so much and he'd know I'm okay. I cried even more after that because what kind of daughter makes her father worry like that?

I know, I know. I was in a strange mood that day. And the weather did nothing to alleviate it. After the scorching morning, the rain gods were having a blast. The party lasted all the way until evening.

But post-graduation jitters aside, I have more pressing issues, like finding a part-time job to tide me through December. I don't mind scooping ice-cream or desk work as long as I can find time to swim every day and don't have to travel all the way to Alaska to work. Just putting this out there.

Sunday, November 20, 2011

From Kidlit:

A Writer’s Worst Enemy

Impatience is a writer’s worst enemy. To all those who are rushing rushing rushing to get your manuscript out the gate and into my hot little hands, think of it this way real quick: you’ve spent… what? A year of your life on this manuscript? Why not give it the best chance possible and spend as much hard work revising as it — honestly — needs?

There is a finite number of agents and editors. Once you query your project around to every agent who represents your genre or age group (or every smaller publisher that still accepts unsolicited submissions) and once they reject you, you can’t do anything else with that project other than a) self-publish it (a whole other bucket of fish, to be discussed later) or b) revise the hell out of it and submit again to people who might be open to seeing a drastically different version (your pool this time around will be much smaller). So… just take the time, revise the hell out of it from the get-go, and skip that whole nasty getting-rejected-first bit! In other words: be patient.

Sad truth alert! Not every manuscript you write will go somewhere, publication-wise. Far from it. Every manuscript you write is supremely useful, though. I think every time you sit down at the keys, you should be striving to improve. Everything you write this week should be better and more exciting to you than what you wrote last week. You hear people talking about starter cars and houses, maybe even starter spouses. Well, I think that almost every currently published writer has written at least one starter (or drawer) novel. MG and YA superstar Lauren Myracle wrote something like five books, she said once, before getting her first published. Some have many more than that. So will all the novels you write be published? Even eventually? Probably not. In fact, I think it should be a good and healthy thing to look at some of your starter novels and be horrified by the quality of the writing. That means you’ve come a long way since.

Everyone knows the story of the person who never once sat down at a computer before, wrote a first draft manuscript inspired by a dream they had, sold it for a million dollars and got six thousand movies made of their story, etc. etc. etc. You know why everyone knows the story of “the exception to the rule”? Because it’s news. It’s so rare that everyone talks about it and raises it to mythical status. The other 99.999999% of us mere mortals have to write plenty of dreary starter novels (and don’t forget about the Million Bad Words) before we can figure out how to draft a living character, create a compelling plot, achieve tension and humor and literary magic. That sort of stuff takes practice. And practice takes… patience.

For a lot of writers, or anyone working in the creative arts, our ego often compels us to think we’re “special.” What teen girl hasn’t heard stories of some chick at the mall getting discovered by a modeling scout and then immediately dressed up really cute and gone to the mall in hopes of scoring her one-in-a-million chance at stardom? It’s worse for writers, because they don’t actually have to get dressed and leave the house to indulge in such fantasies. Who among you hasn’t started in on a hot idea and thought, “This is a brilliant, undiscovered masterpiece that everyone will love the second they read it”? Who hasn’t let themselves boast, “Let all the other writers slog around in the trenches because I’m special“?

Well, talent is a huge piece of the puzzle, naturally. But hard work, I’ll argue, is a bigger piece.
Because naturally talented people — especially the people who know they’re naturally talented — often get an entitled attitude and wait for the success to come to them. It’s the people who think “I might not be special enough yet but, damn it, I will be successful” who usually end up towering over their smug counterparts. Because the ordinary writers have to work for it and they know it. They have to put in the hours to see improvement, to witness the talent start to shine. They learn to work hard and never give up. And those are the people who make it, while some of the naturally talented people sit around on their couches, waiting for that model scout to come knocking.

In the writing game — and I’ll say it is one, on many levels — the qualities of patience, hard-work, humility and the eagerness to learn will get you much farther than striving to be the exception to the rule. The former you can control, the latter you can’t. Wouldn’t you rather be in control of your success and your career?

Tuesday, November 01, 2011

Write, write and write more

I shouldn't be blogging right now. I have a Chinese short story and an English group paper to write, a French test to study for, and a French essay to write.

Yes, it's that time of the semester again. This mad rush, the culmination of earlier procrastinations, is taking ahold of us again.

I'd like to say that I'm not a procrastinator. I've completed all my individual work. The Chinese short story and English paper are group projects, which, as we all know, are a bitch to get down, given how difficult it is to coordinate all our schedules and get down to writing the damn thing.

So lots of writing to be done. Though I can't find a downside to that, because it's writing!

Just today, I wrote my first ever short story in Chinese. It was an in-class assignment and we'll be graded according to the piece we write. We had to write a short science fiction however we want. In other words, CREATIVE WRITING! I was hesitant at first because let's face it, I'm a lot more comfortable writing in English than in Chinese.

Writing short creative fiction in Chinese is different from writing those Chinese essays in secondary or primary school. Back then, we were forced to write to a lame topic or title and use the phrases and words the examiners or teachers would give us credit for. This, though, is free and easy. Write whatever you want, however you want, as long as it is credible sci-fi (it's a Chinese for Technology module, after all). I wrote a piece titled BLACK HOLE, where I used Einstein's theory of relativity as a metaphor in my main character's life and to serve as a backdrop against which his transformation is held. It doesn't matter if I don't get an A for this, because I actually had fun writing it (though I also had Google Translate to thank). I'm pretty proud of myself for coming up with a piece I actually like in two hours. In Chinese. Have I mentioned it's a first?

Okay, I'll stop bragging now. I'm trying not to go near my English group paper, which, if you think about it, is kind of impossible since I'm in charge of writing the introduction. Oh yeah, I'm a fine kick-starter. Go team, and all that.