I was with Apis Cuer and Brian tonight sharing something about reading. The sharing was with UMS Art Students at “Bicara Orang Seni: The Power of Reading” conducted by KARMA UMS at the Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Heritage, UMS, Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia. (Thank you so much, KARMA, for inviting us and allowing us to share with you all.)

Let me share some thoughts on my personal experience with reading and writing.

I don't think I can ever divorce myself from these two “boring” words, "reading" and "writing". Reading has already become part of my habit to balance my thoughts between truths and lies before I write. Reading helps a lot in opening my mind and heart to write anything under the shining sun and glittering moon. It even strengthens my love to my left, my right, my front and my back - my environment surrounding me. In Malaysia, the citizens are very fortunate that they are supported and urged to read and buy books. The government even exempts them from paying taxes if they buy books.
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When I was a child and only beginning to get familiar with alphabets and letters, I’d read for hours, unaware that what I was doing was really reading. I started when I was three to four years old. I just read letters like they’re abstract objects. I didn’t bother to understand what they were. Later I began to take interest in the things I read. I read books, magazines, newspapers, anything I could get my hands on.

​It felt gratifying, discovering things in the process. I found out how powerful reading is and eventually it became part of my personal culture.  I became aware that reading is good. I became addicted to it. I was very careful though. I was afraid that I would fall into a trap of false knowledge and lies because I used to hear people say, “If you read, read the books on morality or those that connect you to your God”. 

Frankly, I am dependent both on my reading and on my observations of things when I do my writing. I read to confirm facts, truths, and lies. So, it might not be boring to me. Reading connects me to my past and guides me as I reconnect my present to my past. It gives me strength to be powerful in my own way by creating a peaceful environment so I could be powerless again. Power here doesn’t mean direct physical power but power to recreate an oasis of knowledge and thoughts.

My way to counter boredom, I kept on reading and reading. Reading helped me weigh which one is heavy, which one is light. It also taught me to understand truths from lies, facts that are not true from truth that are not facts. Little did I know reading is not only a skill or an act of going through pages of newspapers and books, silently or aloud, but also something that needs interpretation, understanding, explanation, and analysis.

Reading is boring. I know it. And books are boring if I don’t read, even just a word. It’s the same thing as writing. Writing is difficult if I don’t start writing even a single incomplete sentence or scribbling or creating asemic writing in my notebook. But it’s just how it is. What I do, I connect my reading with my writing. If I don’t read, I will just be going round and round, unable to come up with anything sensible when I write.

I agree that reading is something that fights boredom, although, I too do believe that it could be boring depending on how I deal with it. “Reading is boring” is a phrase that agitates my mind and disturbs my brain cells.  Reading was not part of my culture back then. I read only because I needed to read to prepare for exams at school. In our family, I was taught “to study”, never “to read”. I didn’t realize studying involves a lot of reading. 

We can acquire passion with reading out of its being boring. For instance, we can turn boredom into something fascinating by reading to learn the way other people live, their history and story and thoughts and ideals. I  remind myself that when I am unsure about what to read, I should read something that keeps me connected to God, to myself, to the people around me and to those friends I never met in my entire life.

I treat reading and books as well as writing as my friends because it is through them that I can meet friends who may never be known to me. Those friends may not always be persons but also things and concepts I can talk to. When I am reading a book, it’s not me who is talking. It’s the book who is talking to me and it becomes the channel by which the author communicates with me, sharing knowledge through the pages I read.

​Because I read today, I learned about my life, my language, my friends, my loved ones, my peace, even about my boredom. I have no reason not to read. The word “boring” is a very boring word. It’s the enemy of our souls and it kills the desire to learn and explore. I can even visit places without physically being there through reading. 

Lastly, reading is my eyes, listening is my ears, but the psyche is still reading. So there is no escape in reading if we engage, take inspiration, and be truthful. I just don’t suggest reading if it makes us arrogant and turns us into followers of wasteful idealism through reading theories based on their own cultures. By reading, we can take what is good and evil but we should use our knowledge of evil to identify what is good. Let’s us all remember, by reading, learning and observing, we can identify that Sabah as our “tanah-air”, got it’s own land and sea, that is why it is composed of “tanah” and “air”, as we are its citizens are composed of sea-based people and land-based people. If we have sailors, we also have hunters. And they are our warriors.
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Thank you so much for listening to this “boring” sharing. God bless us all!

Presented at the Youth-PREP Centre
Alamesra, Kota Kinabalu, Sabah,
7th April 2016

When typing and/or encoding a story, poem, journal or article, the word “writing” always appears in my subconscious. The questions that come into my mind are: “What is writing?”, “Writing is what?”, “Am I writing?” and “If indeed I am writing, am I writing well?

Despite having read many stories, novels, poems, articles, and journals written by different authors and writers around the world and despite being someone who is regularly engaged in creative writing, I still often stumble with the questions “What makes one a good writer?” and “What constitutes good writing?”

In trying to understand the phrases “good writer” and “good writing”, we all need to begin with the general questions “What is writing” and “Writing is what?”

Here are a few definitions of the word “writing” according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary:

1. the act or process of one who writes: as

• the act or art of forming visible letters or characters; specifically :  handwriting 
• the act or practice of literary or musical composition

 2. something written: as

• letters or characters that serve as visible signs of ideas, words, or symbols
• a letter, note, or notice used to communicate or record
• a written composition
• inscription

 3. a style or form of composition
 4. the occupation of a writer; especially : the profession of authorship

For me, to write is to inscribe a word or a sentence with a pen or pencil or to encode something into our smart phones or computers to make a story or present our ideas to others.

I can say that I am not new to writing because I’ve been doing it during my school years (my teachers asked me to), but I am very new to what is “good writing” and how to be “a good writer”.  And “good writing” for me is very subjective.

I found writing to be a mix of many things. It is interesting, boring, easy, difficult, and challenging and to write, we have to deal with all its complexities, richness, and values.

Over the years I’ve been engaging myself with writing, or to be exact, typing into a smart phone or computer. I realized that:

Writing is our natural reaction to something.
It is our reaction to any social issue(s) happening in our society and that we write for a particular purpose and audience.

At first we don’t need to be so caught up with the appropriateness of words, grammar, and punctuations. In most times, this can hinder creativity. We should focus instead on planning as to what genre we will be writing in: poetry, novel, narratives or  feature or news articles. Later, we edit, proofread and reread before posting or publishing our work.

We can write whatever we like.
We can write for children, teens, and adults and for whatever topics we like in any languages and genres.

It’s good to write for a cause, although we don’t really need to be limited to it. We can even write for pleasure and happiness, as long as it is not to incite hatred and hate. It is up to us how to turn a word into a good sentence, then a good story.

Writing is not teaching.
We don’t write to teach people but to state issues, facts and problems that need solutions. As we do so, we should constantly rewrite to clarify the message that we want to tell our audiences. Our writing creates a message that could help transform our society into something good or something stimulating. Ultimately though, the value of what we do still depends upon how our readers and audiences perceive our message or react to it.

Most of the time, I write to document events, situations, feelings and observations.

Now, we have to know what makes a good writing, because what makes a writer a good one depends upon the writing itself. At this point, we’ll learn to write a poem. What I am going to share is but a small slice of a bigger writing pie. Still, I hope they will be useful for you.


WRITING POETRY

As you all know already, poems and poetry are our poesy. They are an art of expression in composition. Poesy is where our Malay word ‘Puisi’ comes from.

Ideas for writing poetry could come from anywhere. We can get ideas by observing our world, either intrapersonal or interpersonal. We may write to communicate with readers or generate emotional reactions from them. We may also write just to capture our feelings or experiences.

The most difficult problem in writing comes when we don’t start writing what we have in mind. Remember, our minds cannot write. We should always write down our ideas before they vanish into the air.

But how do we write?

Writing poems varies from person to person. There are no rules or definite ways to do it. But there are techniques and recommended steps which you may consider useful.

In the following section, we’ll try to learn these steps along with a few examples from my own work. (I have written many pieces of poetry. I don’t know if they’re good or not, but I am going to use them as examples here just to help explain a few points.)


1. Identify the subject

We can’t write anything without first identifying what our subject is. Do we want to write about any particular social issue-- pollution, killing, discrimination, corruption? We can research or read, but many times, our subject will find us, especially when we are feeling the situations and witnessing events happening in our surroundings. Our subject might be derived from a theme, idea or opinion.

2. Create a new thing

When I say creating a new thing, I mean avoiding the use of cliches -words or phrases that have been used and written by poets and writers many times before, like “no man is an island.” A poet must be creative enough to find something new and interesting.

3. Describe or use imagery

Our five senses--sight, smell, hear, touch and taste--could be helpful in poetry writing. English Professor Peg Lauber added a sixth sense known as motion and advises poets to “be a painter in words”. Let our eyes capture the picture the way a camera captures phrase. Always remember the phrase: “Show, don’t tell”, which means describe the subject, because ‘telling’ is killing your message. It’s better if our poetry comes with metaphor and simile.


Samples
Show, don’t tell.

“She shines like a canvass
of blooming roses
in different colors.”

- 2016.

Six senses.

“I did cross the rivers, many times  
and I am watching eagerly.”
- sight

“they danced in this
romantic garden of birds...
and then, they fly.”
- motion

“They only enjoyed my voice
and its melodious longing.”
- hear

“Peace is as common as candies.
I want to taste even just a piece of it.”
- taste

“I don't feel fresh this morning
not like a blooming rose.”
- touch

“smell like hell
sniffing this you can let go of evil.”
- smell


4. Don’t be framed with rhymes

Although rhymes in general are good, they can sometimes limit the artistic value and destruct the quality of our poetry. Whether or not we should use rhymes depends upon what we want to write. We can choose between rhythmical and non-rhythmical (free verse) poetry.

“the rivers dance gracefully,
and I am watching eagerly”.

- rhythmical

“I can only see the dark
that’s when there is a light”.
- non-rhythmical

5. Always follow the three Rs

Be persevering. Let’s not be too excited to publish our poetry. If we have friends, let
them read and comment first. That, after we’ve read, reread, revised our own work.

After finishing with our writing, we always ask ourselves: Is our article, poetry, novel, short story good enough? Don’t worry. At least we did our best. Let the readers be the judge. As long as we worked hard to write, it is already good, perhaps even the best.

Lastly, be always prepared with criticism. Not everyone can be pleased. In stories, it is simply not good if there is no conflict between protagonists and antagonists. Everything always comes with opposite.

Thank you all for  your perseverance!
And thank you, YPC, for organizing this sharing session.