In Conversation: Some lessons from the writing life

Shared with permission: Raffles Girls' School In-Conversation 2024

Another opportunity to speak at Raffles Girls School, this time as part of the student-led InConversation event on the theme of ‘Alternative Pathways to Success’. I was honoured to join two other wonderful speakers (Dr Koh Chaik Ming and Carol Tan) on the panel, and share some lessons from the writing life with around 800 Y3 and Y4 students.

Here’s a revised version of what I shared, originally under the much clumsier title, ‘What the writing life has taught me about actual life’:

It’s great to be here! It’s great to be back, actually, since I was here earlier this year to speak to a different batch of students. Thanks for having me again, and for the opportunity to learn from Dr Koh and Carol as well.

I’ll jump right in. You’ve all heard the advice never to judge a book by its cover, but I think we give covers too little credit. They represent hours of hard work that go into the making of any book – just not on the part of its author, but the invisible village that whips the finished product into shape.

The five covers on the screen come from different milestones in my writing life, and I thought they would be a good place to start in telling you what the journey has been like.

It all began in a school across the road you probably have mixed feelings about: Raffles Institution. By all accounts, I had a carefree time there. It felt as if ‘school’ was my CCA, and ‘writing’ was my full-time thing – the only time in my life when writing come anything close to that.

When I was in Secondary 4, the school’s corporate communications team decided to take over one of our student magazines and turn it into something glossier (but some of us felt, less authentic). So naturally, we decided to start a ‘rebel’ magazine. I got a few friends together to write stories, poems, and articles for a publication that we could truly call our own. The first picture you see was our labour of love, called ‘Re!magine’, which also gave me my first inkling of what it meant to put something on paper that others would be able to resonate with.

The second cover is special to me. You’ll see a picture of the Merlion on screen: this was the cover of an anthology that a group of older poets put together in 2010, full of poems about the Merlion. They were the first to give me a chance at formal publication, the first to take a bet on this young writer who was at the time still just scribbling poems in his notebook. One of my poems was accepted for the anthology – and though they spelled my name wrong, I was still overjoyed.

Let’s fast-forward to the third cover: a book by a man called Sharif, who had spent more than ten years by that point working in the construction industry in Singapore. Now, when I was at university, similar to Carol, I became very interested in how forces beyond individual control drive people from place to place, often with very little agency on their part, and land them in difficult situations. When I got back to Singapore, I came to know Sharif, a writer who had found himself here as a migrant construction worker. Not a word of this book was written by me, but I had the privilege to help bring Sharif’s story to a bigger audience, along with the publisher Landmark Books. I’m just as proud of this book as any I’ve written on my own.

The fourth cover, Moving House, is my most recent collection of poems – published in the UK by the wonderful Carcanet Press. Isn’t that a wonderful cover! I fell in love with it the moment I saw it, because it reminded me of the tortoises we had when I was a kid. And the last cover belongs to a children’s opera called The Bright-Eyed Otter, which is the most recent thing I’ve worked on. I love working with fellow artists in other genres, and a good friend of mine from school, now a professional composer, brought me on board to do this over the pandemic. We finally brought it to the stage this year, and it was such a fun process that I had to include it here.  

So there you have it: my writing life so far.

Now, my two fellow speakers have said a lot about why we should redefine success, as well as what that could look like. What I’d like to do in my remaining time is focus on the how. How should thinking about success differently shape our day-to-day?  

The first big lesson I learned as a writer – and I believe this applies to many other pursuits too – is that you shouldn’t be chasing ‘creativity’. A lot of us start out with the idea that you need to be ‘creative’, or create the ideal conditions for ‘creativity’. You spend a lot of time sitting in cafés, waiting for inspiration to strike. But what’s much more rewarding instead is to focus on ‘craft’: the idea that good writing, like any other creative act, can be boiled down to a set of skills, a practice. These skills aren’t the special domain of ‘creative people’, but can be honed by anyone willing to put in the hours. And with these skills, anyone (and everyone) has the opportunity to reach and persuade an audience.

Here are a couple of photos from my first book launch, in 2011 when I was pretty much your age. Among that audience were my first mentors, who showed me that being a writer isn’t just about getting words onto the page, but really the hard work of editing and refining what you’ve written into something others will read. This has ultimately been an important lesson not only because it’s made me a better writer. It’s also gotten me through tough times: when push comes to shove, when you start to doubt your own ‘creativity’, what you can always be more certain about are the hard skills you’ve built up over time – how you deploy, structure, and sharpen your language. Focus on that.

The second lesson that writing has taught me is: whatever field you’re in, don’t think and behave like you’re in competition with your fellow artists, but – as the title of today’s event suggests – in conversation with them. Writing can be a lonely pursuit. You’re often at your desk, trying to put the best words in their best order on a Microsoft Word document. But we get it wrong if we think that it’s primarily an individual art. All of us engage in what we love at least in part because others love it too. We seek to engage in dialogue with others, fellow artists, fellow dancers, fellow painters. Writing, in particular, is a form of communication: I write so that I can be in conversation with my readers, and other writers I admire.

Now on the screen you’ll see two of Singapore’s ‘OG’ writers: the one on the left is of Stella Kon, best known for Emily of Emerald Hill, which some of you have probably studied; and on the right is Suchen Christine Lim, who’s just won the Cultural Medallion. Both are among the humblest people I’ve met. The photo on the left was taken and the end of last year, at an open mic I organised in Peace Centre, which was about to be torn down. We advertised ten slots for the open mic, and I asked anyone who wanted to read to approach me at the start of the evening.

This lady comes up in the dim light and asks to read a poem. I ask for her name – “Stella”.

“Stella who?” “Stella Kon”.

Of course she can read a poem. When a legend of Singapore literature asks to be part of your open mic lineup, the only answer is yes. But I was so moved by the fact that Stella Kon herself was willing to slot herself in among many other unpublished young poets and read a poem nobody had ever heard. That meant a lot. Both Stella and Suchen have shown me that it’s so precious to always be in conversation with others, always be learning, rather than trying to compete – or rest on their laurels.

The final lesson I have to share is to just allow yourself to be in the crowd sometimes, and not in the centre. I know it’s ironic that I’m saying this from up here, on stage. But to be honest, what I’ve enjoyed most about the writing life is cheering other people on. Lots of our most important work takes place on the sidelines. The photo on the left was taken shortly after I arrived at university – a shy first-year student with a funny accent who had almost stopped writing altogether. The only reason why I was able to get back into writing and performing was that so many others urged me to come along to open mics and writing workshops – warm spaces of acceptance and encouragement – and start sharing my work. That made me realise it was all worth doing again.

Fast forward to 2021, when I was back from university and finding ways to support the thriving migrant writing scene here. What that looked like, I soon discovered, wasn’t organising events or leading discussions, but simply the art of stacking chairs. When my migrant friends decided to put on a festival, a workshop, or a book launch, the best way for me to help out wasn’t to step into the organising position and try to steer things. It was simply to be there an hour early, turn on the fans and lights, put out the chairs, and make sure they have the best possible platform to present their stories on.

So yes, allow yourself to be in the crowd, and not in the centre – true success doesn’t always look like being in the spotlight all the time. I’m afraid that’s all I have time for this afternoon, but I look forward to your questions.