Great Storytelling Network Newsletter – 30 September 2018

I delayed sending out the newsletter because I wanted to share a very special story with you. Earlier this month, I was invited to write a story for a booklet being prepared for the centenary celebrations of a church in my hometown. In it, I write about Sister Alphonse Coombs, who also makes an appearance in my collection of stories, Two Snakes Whistling at the Same Time. With the editor’s permission, I am now able to share it with you.

Meanwhile, Rohi shares a story about how to avoid common problem for writers – missing deadlines. As it happens, our guest blogger, Jason Kincaid, also shares his take on a very useful tool to overcome writer’s block called ‘Descript’.

Please note that the newsletter next month may be delayed as well because the launch of my two books is being planned and I would love to share my experiences with you. So please, be a little patient next month.

Happy storytelling.
Aneeta Sundararaj

–> kɒnvənt ɡɜːl by Aneeta Sundararaj

–>Are You a Writer Without An Editorial Calendar? by Dr. Rohi Shetty

GUEST BLOG – Overcoming Writer’s Block with Automatic Transcription by Jason Kincaid

Commemorating the centenary celebrations of the Church of St. Michael in Alor Setar, Aneeta Sundararaj remembers the Catholics who played an important role in the community.

‘kɒnvənt ɡɜːl’. If you’re a former student of St. Nicholas Convent, Alor Setar, you must recognise these words, know what they mean and how they’re pronounced. If you do, you’re a credit to the Sisters who once taught us. If you don’t, shame on you! Remember those lessons in Phonetics? In case you’re still confused, ‘kɒnvənt ɡɜːl’ means ‘Convent Girl’.

The memory of my lessons in Phonetics taught by Sister Alphonse Coombs pales in comparison with what happened one sunny day in 1980. It was just us in the airy classroom next to the vast playing field.

Stop it, Sister. I can’t even look at you right now.  

I wanted to scream, but no sound came out. Mercifully, the bell rang. I gathered my books and escaped from this torture chamber.

“What did you learn today?” Mummy asked during our drive back home.

Wanting only to wipe out the memory of what was said, I ignored her. It was some years later before I shamefacedly admitted the real reason I refused to return to those one-to-one lessons with Sister Alphonse. In 1980, I was all of seven years old and didn’t know how to tell Mummy that Sister Alphonse had explained that to know if something was male or female, I needed to know its gender or sex. My dilemma was how could she, a nun, who was the best and most wonderful of all the Sisters, say this bad, awful word? Sex. How could Sister Alphonse do this to me?

After this, the time lapse between my sins and the act of confession increased. In one particular case, it was twenty-five years.

Imagine. It was a dreary day in September 1981. At about 10.25 am, an announcement was made over the PA system. The unfriendly voice said, “Aneeta Sundararaj in 3 Green, go to Miss Sibert’s office now.” Classmates who dared to, looked at me as though they were commiserating with a death row inmate about to make her final journey to the gallows.

Five minutes later, I stood before our headmistress. On Miss Sibert’s table, that horrible thing called the Report Card was open as she scanned my marks for the month. I swallowed the lump in my throat, aware that I couldn’t plead for mercy on account of the fact that Mummy and Miss Sibert were previously classmates in Light Street Convent, Penang. Was it true that Miss Sibert ate naughty girls? Maybe, she’d cane me instead. But there was no rotan in sight.

She looked up, pushed her straight hair behind her ears and said, “Aneeta, are you interested in learning Mandarin?”

Huh? Interested in Mandarin? A question? No scolding? I stared at her and cocked my head to one side, puzzled.

She turned the Report Card so it was the right way round for me, pushed it closer and pointed to the column marked ‘Mandarin’. That month, I’d achieved a grand total of 10 marks out of 50. Previously, my average was 45 marks.

I can’t remember how I answered Miss Sibert. In fact, I wonder if I said anything at all. Decades later, though, it was time to confess my sins and seek absolution.

“Miss Sibert,” I said during a visit to her home in Penang, “I didn’t dare tell you that the girl who used to sit next to me wasn’t there. She was sick and didn’t come to school that day. So, I had no one to copy from.”

She looked at me with a benign smile and said, “Yes. I knew. I just wanted to see what you would say.”

Oh, dear God. I was mortified.

Reflecting on all these stories reinforced my long-held belief that these women, though cloistered and unmarried, were not dumb, stupid or out of touch with reality. Street-wise, knowledgeable and quite business savvy, they were strict with us, but incredibly kind.

In fact, Sister Alphonse comforted me whenever I was lonely because Mummy travelled outstation for work. Almost every day, my classmates and I, a group of precocious girls, each born into religions that were so far removed from Catholicism, visited her at her home, Sisters’ House. She guided us to the Chapel where we dipped tiny fingers into a bowl of holy water, bent the knee at the altar and made the sign of the Cross. She listened intently as we shared our grievance of the day which was invariably something monumental to us like who used whose eraser without permission.

The highlight of my school years was the celebrations for the Golden Jubilee in 1984. One of them included a production of The Sound of Music at Stadium Dato’ Syed Omar in town. Although the entire school was involved in this, I recall that members of the larger Catholic community in Alor Setar, such as the Rao family, also gave of themselves to help make this a joyous occasion. For a few days in August 1984, Kedah Royalty and the public watched as we morphed into Maria von Trapp and serenaded everyone about the hills being alive, momentarily forgetting that Alor Setar was completely surrounded by flat paddy land.

In spite of these happy memories, many at St. Nicholas Convent, Alor Setar during the 1980s bore witness to a brutal reality. For one, the large Cross above the office building was pulled down because the very sight of it might influence students to embrace Catholicism. New school badges were engraved with a forgettable motto to replace the one that Convent Girls the world over knew – Simple in Virtue. Steadfast in Duty. The spirit of the Sisters of the Infant Jesus who served at our school was whittled away until one day, fighting back tears, one of the Sisters said, “We have to go. Our mission is over.”

By the mid-1990s, the nuns left the home they’d known for more than 50 years and Sisters’ House was razed to the ground. Gradually, all the buildings in the school were also destroyed. Today, the site of what was once the premier school for girls in Alor Setar is a non-descript supermarket.

The legacy these women left lasted long after the dust settled. For example, family friendships such as mine and Shanta Rao’s, which were forged while we were still at school, continue to this day. I often tease her father, Uncle Rao who is a stalwart of the Catholic community and tell him that most of us refer to him as the Bishop of Alor Setar. And his wife’s hospitality is legendary. I mean, Aunty Leela’s delicious cakes…sigh. Do I need to say more?

There is residual sadness at what happened to our school. That said, no truer is a statement than the verse from the Holy Bible: And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13:13). I speak for the majority of former kɒnvənt ɡɜːls of St. Nicholas Convent, Alor Setar when I say that we carry in our hearts an immense gratitude and love for these Catholic women who made it their mission unto God to shape the women we have become. I pray that the intangible values they inculcated in us will live on in future generations.

The best thing you can do as a writer is to create an editorial calendar and stick to it. This single step will transform your writing life because you will gain incredible focus and clarity. It will help you to avoid stress, procrastination, and writer’s block.

We writers are notorious for procrastinating and waiting until the last possible moment to complete their projects. Missing deadlines is a cardinal sin for a professional writer and yet we have all missed deadlines more times than we care to recall.

Often we stay up late to complete the project and submit it just in time. We promise ourselves we won’t repeat this mistake again. And the next time, we repeat the same sorry pattern. It’s a destructive habit we just can’t seem to escape.

We should never finish anything the night before it’s due to be published. Aside from the caffeine overload and the sleepless night, we don’t give ourselves enough time to review, revise, and polish our writing.

The foolproof way to avoid this curse of procrastination is to use an editorial calendar. An editorial calendar helps you to decide what you’re going to publish well in advance so that all your writing projects are completed and ready to be published weeks beforehand.

We need to ask ourselves if we are willing to take our writing seriously. If we have an article that is due to be published on Friday and we complete it a few minutes before time, we are too late. Publishing content in this way is stressful and unprofessional. However, we are late even if we complete the article a couple of days before. So we need to create at least 4–6 fully completed articles in advance.

For example, if you publish a post on your blog every week, you should create 6-8 posts in advance. Does that sound crazy? Probably, yes. But is it doable? Yes, provided you make a major shift in the way you plan your work. Here’s how to do it.

Schedule a list of topics or articles
How often do you have a blank mind staring at a blank page with blank eyes? For a writer, there is no greater suffering. You’re wasting energy thinking instead of writing.

The way to avoid this is to plan in advance. You need to know the topic you are going to write about before you sit down to write. Set aside one day every week and make a list of topics to write about for the rest of the days in that week. You can even make a list of ten headlines for each topic.

Then schedule the topics for each day of the week. Put it on your calendar: topic, working headlines, and the time allotted for each day. For example, make a list of topics on Sunday and schedule it on your calendar. Then on Monday, you just have to look at the calendar to know what you’re going to write about.

Editorial Calendar
In the previous step, you have created a scheduled list of topics for each day of the week. The next step is to create an editorial calendar, which is simply a schedule to publish specific topics on specific days.

Creating an editorial calendar will depend on your writing process, the time available and the type of content that you wish to publish. In this step, you need to plan the steps that will take each article from preliminary idea to the final version. For example, you may schedule separate slots for the first draft, revision, proofing and final polishing before publication. This is different for each writer.

The most important part of the editorial calendar is creation of a content buffer. For example, if you send out a weekly newsletter, you need to create a buffer of 4 to 6 newsletters in advance.

To summarize, here are the steps to create your editorial list:

• Brainstorm a list of topics on a specific day of the week
• Schedule one or more topics or articles for each day of the week
• Schedule the time for each step of your writing process – headline, first draft, revision, proofing, and final polishing
• Create 4–6 articles in advance
• Decide the schedule of publishing each article and put them in the queue
• Repeat the process

The key step is to create a buffer of 4–6 articles in advance. These should include your own writing projects as well as projects for your clients. Ideally, you should complete every project a few days before the date of publication.

Equally important, you must schedule your promotion strategies in your editorial calendar. These may include:

• spread the word about your article on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and other social media every week
• add the link to your email signature and
• email influencers in your niche

An effective way is to create a checklist and schedule a time to complete it every week.

Whether you write fiction or non-fiction or short articles or novels, using an editorial calendar is a no-brainer. It’s the most effective way to get rid of stress, indecision, procrastination, writer’s block, and perfectionism

Join the conversation
Have you set up an editorial calendar for your own writing and promotion activities? What kind of editorial calendar do you use?

Let us know in the comments below.

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