Archive for Writing

So much for less writing…

January 10, 2012 Current Affairs, Journalism, Writing No comments

The thing about being in the Malaysian media…it rarely gets boring.

Found time to write two “Side Views” pieces for TMI. “Side Views” is for viewpoints and opinion pieces outside TMI’s “Opinion” pages. The latter is usually reserved for TMI’s regular columnists.

Despite being one of the aforementioned regular columnists, there were some things that made more sense expressing on TMI than just, say, on the blog.

One was the embarrassing gaffe by the Ministry of Defence. What riled me was that some tried to defend the mistake. You do not “defend” something as laughable as the page was.

When you can’t defend the Ministry of Defence

Then the surprising Anwar Sodomy II acquittal happened. Wasn’t planning on writing about it but my super said, “Why not?” I concurred.

901: A day for cautious optimism

In other news, am amazed people still read my opinionated blather. I try.

Writing – the basics

December 28, 2011 Writing One comment

Due to my change in job circumstance (more on that next year), have been brushing up on my language skills. That includes reading a lot of house style guides including The Economist’s. Found this gem in the latter’s style guide introduction:

George Orwell’s six elementary rules (“Politics and the English Language”, 1946):

  1. Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print (see metaphors).
  2. Never use a long word where a short one will do (see short words).3. If it is possible to cut out a word, always cut it out (see unnecessary words)

    4. Never use the passive where you can use the active (see grammar and syntax).

    5.  Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent (see jargon)

    6.  Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous (see iconoclasm).

Still holds true now.

Even old dogs forget old tricks – Tool the First

June 29, 2011 Writing One comment
Cover of "Writing Tools: 50 Essential Str...

Cover via Amazon

I find myself reaching for Roy Peter Clark’s “Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies For Every Writer” now. The realisation that more people read my work has made me even more self-conscious. And my friends know just how much a nervous wreck I can be under scrutiny.

 

The first strategy or tool: “Begin sentences with subjects and verbs” seems like common sense.

I should know that by now, shouldn’t I? Looking at my writing, I think I have forgotten more than I actually know right now.

Writing is a discipline. You spend your life, if you care enough about it, mastering it and always working to be better than you were yesterday.

You take your work, and oftentimes yourself, apart. You question – does that comma really need to be there? – you verify, you obsess over ridiculous minutiae.

Clark advises, “The next time you struggle with a sentence, rewrite it by placing subject and verb at the beginning.”

For dramatic effect, he suggests, to occasionally place subject and verb at the end of a sentence.

So I try it to write a short paragraph about my father.

“He looms tall in my childhood memories. I still vaguely remember the days when I was small enough to wrap around a leg as he walked, gleefully holding on while he stomped around the room until finally he would pick me up and carry me. In my mind, he was a giant among men. To this day, I still believe that.”

I didn’t set out to put the subject and verb at the beginning of each sentence. Yes, I did consciously do so in the first sentence but after that it was all about fleshing out my childhood memories of my father. I find it funny how I placed subject and verb at the end of both my final two sentences. The two sentences are parallel in beat, in rhythm.

But too many writers, in a hurry to say what they want to say, write sentences but forget the subject. There was a very good reason our English teachers would laboriously make us find the subject, the clauses, the predicates in our sentences. You have to take apart sentences and then figure out how to put them back together, perhaps in better ways. Much like how children played with toy bricks, rearranging them in as many ways as they could manage. Miss a brick or put in the wrong piece and down your little toy castles would go.

Perhaps by blogging again I will remember just how the bricks of writing work so that my readers will see what I’m trying to build for them with my words. I will have failed if all they can see is not the meaning or message, only the words.

Tomorrow I’ll write about a writer who totally misses the point of putting words together.

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We’re journalists too

August 19, 2010 Musings, Writing No comments
Bollwitts in the Wall Street Journal
Image by miss604 via Flickr

One of my best friends made a career change from tech journalism to the politics beat.

He’s never been happier. Yet each time he speaks of his ‘past life’ with derision and condescension, I get a little bit angry.

There is this misguided perception that if you don’t cover hard news, you’re not a journalist.

That if you don’t write about politics or the like, you’re not a real reporter.

I beg to differ. It’s not the subject that matters; it’s the job scope. No matter what you report on, a journalist is called on to report facts and be held to certain standards.

Unlike my friend, I loved tech journalism. What fascinated me was the pace of innovation, and how technology became obsolete in a blink of an eye.

I believed that technology exists to improve our quality of life and the Internet is testament to that. It has opened up the flow of information and provided a cheaper, more efficient mode of communication that connects people from all over the world.

Business journalism is usually considered boring – nothing but numbers and profit balance sheets. If you read the Wall Street Journal, the quality of its journalism warrants having to pay for its online news. There is a precision and attention to detail I wish more news journalists practised.

One important role business journos have is to keep businesses honest. Corporations know that their performance, their business practises and operations are being watched and analysed. Widespread coverage of the Enron scandal brought attention to the need for more transparency and public accountability in the corporate world.

“But what about writers for gossip rags? Are they journalists?” Such publications that peddle in hearsay and fabrications aren’t places for people to practise journalism as much as they’re made for populist entertainment.

My point here is: just because a reporter is covering a ‘softer’ beat such as tech, business or even, heck, lifestyle, it doesn’t mean he’s not putting in as much effort. That what they’re writing about matters less and that they don’t deserve to be called journalists.

Instead of looking down our noses at other journalists, we should be acknowledging the struggles all journalists face. Crap pay, members of the public who don’t realise nor appreciate the effort and hardship that goes into creating content and for some of us, the loom of arrests or lawsuits.

I am a writer who tries her hardest to be a journalist and sometimes, I wonder if I’m letting the title down. But one thing’s for sure – I refuse to deride others who are doing their darndest best to do the same.

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I want you to be happy

March 12, 2009 Writing No comments

Perhaps my mind is just taking a break from all the ‘corporate’ writing, but I’m drawn more to putting music and lyrics together now.

One refrain keeps playing in my mind right now, and I’m glad I recorded it months back:

I want you to be happy
I want you to be free
I want you to love someone
We both know it can’t be me

It’s just my putting into words the complexities I’ve dealt with in some friendships. Too often, I slide into non-platonic relationships, when I really should have just stayed friends. Problem is once I’ve done the whole ‘more than friends’ thing, it’s hard to go back to the way things were before – when there were no messy hangups, misunderstandings, or emotional entanglements that just make things harder than they should be.

And sometimes I get so emotionally close to someone of the opposite sex, that other people get confused. The more I protest there’s nothing going on, the more they insist something is. You just can’t win, eh?

Have ran the lyrics and music by a friend; he says lyrically he likes that what comes through is ‘honest and true’. I was a little afraid that the results would come out sounding far too personal or revealing but I’ll leave that to the friend I’m writing the song for to decide. Now to move on to the next tune!

 

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