Getting Published - 12. Writing Tips

Thanks to everyone who emailed me to let me know that the article about Fusion View came out in StarMag on Sunday. I’ve had great feedback from StarMag readers by email and comments - and it looks like The Star Online has fans from all over the world, including the USA as well as those in Malaysia (and London - I catch up with Malaysian news regularly by checking out The Star online).

Many would-be authors from Malaysia have emailed me since the article came out and asked me for writing tips and if I could give feedback on their writing. While I would love to help everyone, I am busy with my own writing and projects as well as my day job and if I took on the role of editor for everyone who asks, I won’t have time to sleep either! But what I can do is give some general tips which you may find useful - specifically picking up some of the common themes from the writers who emailed me.

# Write from your heart - feel what you are writing about.

# Don’t try to write in a high literary style - keep it simple. Write in your own voice.

# Work on your use and mastery of language - whether you are writing in English or any other language. How many ways can you find to say the same thing? How many words can you use to describe an emotion or an object or a colour?

# Have in your mind your reader - it could be someone you know or just a person sitting with you as you write or a crowd. Address your story to them.

# Keep reading - all kinds of writers and genres. Keep learning from other writers. You may not naturally like romances or thrillers or literary fiction. Try them all out. What can you learn from them? Read actively - ask yourself why that sentence is so good, why that paragraph really works. Then try writing something of your own in several different ways - eg as if it were in a romance or thriller or literary fiction.

# Join a writing group or start one of your own, go to creative writing classes - helping someone else with their writing hones the editing skill. You know what works or doesn’t work in someone else’s writing - now apply that to your own.

# Try writing poetry - the old-fashioned kind that rhymes and has rhythm. I find it helps to remind you of the beauty of the language and also stretches your vocabulary (how many words rhyme with “orange”?)

# Oh, and keep writing that novel … just keep going, one word after the other.