Great Storytelling Network Newsletter – 31 August 2016

There is a ‘poetry’ vibe to this edition of the newsletter: Eric shares a poem and I share an interview with a Malaysian poet published in the local papers. I also share a piece about the differences, if any, between being a reporter and a journalist, which begins with a funny story.

Rohi, however, shares serious stuff and asks is writers have a business roadmap.

Happy storytelling.
Aneeta Sundararaj

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AT the height of World War II, in a small Johor town, a 10-year-old office boy learns a life lesson. The Japanese manager in the company where the boy works is in charge of making sure that cars and trucks are repaired and sent to the warfront in Burma (now Myanmar).

The clerical staff struggle to understand his instructions because they don’t know Japanese. The boy, having learnt Katakana at the Japanese school, understands some of these instructions and helps the staff carry them out.

“That taught me to always help people in trying circumstances,” says Mangot Para Prabhakar (MP Prabhakar). Today, 81-year-old Prabhakar uses such experiences to hone a skill he’s developing, writing poetry.

In fact, the experience he recalled above is chronicled in his poem, The Green Bicycle which is part of a compilation of 39 poems in a hardcover book called, Lasting Impressions. The book was self-published and launched in July.

Offering me a copy of the book, Prabhakar explains that the sequence of the poems reflect, the various stages of his life. Thumbing through them, it becomes obvious that on a broader scale, Lasting Impressions is also an account of some of the major events in our country’s history.

A POEM A DAY

Refusing to describe his poems as classical poetry or prose, Prabhakar prefers the term “narrative poetry”. They are not his dreamy imaginations or fantasies but based on his personal experiences of human relations, nature and its surprises.

To read more, please click here.

So, what do you do?”

This is a question I’ve become used to answering when on a date. On one particular occasion two years ago, what followed exceeded anything I could have imagined. I was meeting a gentleman for coffee at a café where I also meet many of the people I interview. So, the staff knew me well.

“I am a writer; a journalist,” I answered the man seated across from me. All I knew about him was that he ran his own construction company. What he actually constructed was never revealed to me. It was his secret which he promised to show me one day. I became frightened. I mean, going to a construction site with a stranger wasn’t exactly the basis of a safe date, yes?

Anyway, I said I’m a writer because it’s an easy answer that covers everything from journalism, fiction and magazine articles to web content.

“Do you write for the newspapers?”

“Yes,” I replied. Journalists usually write for papers.

“Which papers?”

“The New Straits Times.”

He leaned back in the chair and asked, “So, do you write fiction or non-fiction for the NST?”

Was he teasing me? I couldn’t tell…

To read more, please click here.

A time for everything in life
A time to start, a time to finish
A time to begin, a time to end

A time to come, a time to go
A time to go back, a time to U-turn
A time to think, a time to blink

A time to pull, a time to push
A time to be young, a time to be old
A time to grow, a time to mature

A time to work, a time to rest
A time to lead, a time to follow
A time to vacate, a time to resume

A time to read, a time to write
A time to talk, a time to listen
A time to learn, a time to train

A time to wait
A time to attack
A time to retreat …

To read more please click here.

Do you introduce yourself as a freelance writer? What response do you get? (Don’t tell me; I know.) What if you said you are a creative entrepreneur or the owner of a freelance writing business? Sounds much more impressive, right? And it’s true.

However, we may not have the confidence to do this just yet. I recently got an invitation to connect on LinkedIn from a young writer who described himself as a “Pro-Blogger, Digital Marketing Consultant & Budding Entrepreneur.” I wrote to him suggesting that he delete the “budding” and simply call himself an entrepreneur. He replied, “I’m not an entrepreneur yet. I’m still in the initial stage of becoming a successful entrepreneur.”

This proves it can be daunting to make the transition from freelancer to entrepreneur. I know this from my own experience. Fortunately, one of my writing mentors, Mridu Khullar, recommended Fizzle, and finally after months of procrastination, I joined it last month.

My biggest regret is that I didn’t join Fizzle earlier. I don’t want you to have the same regret. So I’m passing on an incredibly generous offer from the Fizzle team. You can try Fizzle for five weeks absolutely free (more details at the end of this post).

Here are five reasons why I joined Fizzle (and you should, too):…

To read more please click here.

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