I’m excited for today’s post because I’ve been looking forward to writing it for a few months now!
But I had to wait for an event scheduled this morning before I could finish writing it.
You see, my writer’s club scored its first major coup when a local author agreed to visit our monthly meeting today. All thanks to one of my club members who had a chance encounter with this author during a writing masterclass last November.
Meeting Real-Life Writers
Our fledgling writer’s club — called the CNF Writers Club — was inaugurated last August. It comprises six members including me. Though we share a love for writing, none of us has officially mass-publish any print books or materials to date.
The closest for me was when two of my blog posts appeared as stand-alone chapters in two local print books. The first was Salt & Light: Inspirational Stories of Faith in Families (2022), a traditionally published collection of stories about families navigating their faith. The second was an acquaintance’s self-published book — Genesis of Kindness: Unlock. Relish. Thrive (2023) — that recounted various acts of kindness.
Though I was honored these books included my blog posts, they hardly qualify me as a print-published author.
This is why I was stoked this morning to get a “fireside chat” with a real-life author. For the record, I have met published authors before. Just last year alone I was in the presence of local authors like Clara Chow and Adeline Foo (April 2023). In the same year, I also met international authors like Booker Prize longlisted author Tan Twan Eng (June 2023), Canadian academic Darryl Whetter (June 2023), and British author Jeanette Winterson (Nov 2023).
But nearly all of these engagements took place in large group settings.
This morning, however, there were just three of us from the club, seated over cups of hot beverages at the appropriately named The Book Cafe, with our wonderful guest author. A cozy gathering that lasted over two hours and yielded plenty of vignettes on the writing craft, and the life of writer Charmaine Leung.
Our Guest Author Charmaine Leung & Her Book
Author Charmaine Leung became passionate about the literary arts as a theatre manager in Jubilee Hall (Raffles Hotel) back in the ’90s. Her first published book — 17A Keong Saik Road (2017) — was a creative non-fiction memoir shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize 2018.
(For more about Charmaine’s book, click here, as well as here for a transcript of an interview with her)
Before the meeting this morning, I prepared many questions to ask Charmaine.
Questions about
— her inspiration for writing the book
— her writing experience, from ideation to publication
— the editing and revision process
— how to stay motivated to complete the book
— resources that helped her finish the book
— the process of marketing and publicizing it
— any advice she can offer fledgling writers
But most of all, I wanted to hear her up close and not in some impersonal auditorium.
Charmaine’s Journey As An Author
During the fireside chat, Charmaine generously shared her story of how her book came to be.
Since young Charmaine voraciously read anything and everything, especially books to do with Chinese culture. Her favorite haunt was Sunny Bookstore in Far East Plaza, which sadly shuttered ten years ago. She also journaled regularly which helped to hone her writing skills, though Charmaine readily admits it was Cantonese and Mandarin, not English, that was her childhood’s lingua franca. She struggled initially with the English language.
It was sometime around 2012 that the idea came to journal about her growing-up years living near the brothel her mother ran. This unconventional part of her life formed the backbone of Charmaine’s memoir about her mother. A tale Charmaine hid for years from friends, teachers, and schoolmates, but now ironically laid bare in her book for the whole world to see.
According to her, Charmaine never thought she would write a book. But as she continued writing her journals, it became clear this was a story that should be told. It helped her heal from the trauma of living out her childhood in a red-light district and reconciling family relationships. Especially the complicated one she had with her mother.
I won’t spoil it anymore except to encourage readers to go check out her excellent memoir.
For Charmaine, writing the book also helped her come to terms with how those years shaped who she is today. A confident writer with more books in her waiting to be written. (Yes, she has let on this morning that she’s already completed three chapters of her next magnum opus!)
The Realities of Writing And Publishing
As I listened to Charmaine, I couldn’t help but think of the road to publication.
Anyone today who still believes they can achieve fame and fortune when they publish a book is likely to be someone either already famous or has been living under a rock all along! The realities of writing and publishing are harsh, to say the least.
Fame is elusive and, if attained at all, fleeting. The book market is saturated. Profit margins are abysmal (assuming there are profits!). Costs are on the rise (it can take $20,000 or more to publish one book in one print run). The time taken to germinate a book can take anything from a couple of years to a decade (it took Charmaine some three years). I myself have been plowing through my draft memoir manuscript for four years now. And counting!
Worst of all, there are simply too many things to read and distract us these days, especially stuff online. Things like text messages, newsfeeds, (err hum) blog posts, and endless emails.
Who has time to read a book, let alone publish one?!
And it doesn’t help that I live in a small nation, with approximately five million permanent residents only. Anyone here would be lucky to sell 500 to 1,000 copies of any book. Let alone 4,000 to 5,000 copies, which local publishers will say is the amount sold by a ‘good’ title…over seven to eight years!
[I got hold of the above numbers from a news feature written in 2016. I’ve no doubt the numbers are even worse now!]
From Writing To Publishing: It’s All About Passion & Perseverance!
All that being said, I believe something that news article mentioned, remains the single motivating factor for writers to pursue publication.
It’s a personal passion project! And we do it to achieve that famous top level in Maslow’s hierarchy: self-actualization.
What else would drive a person to spend the wee hours of every morning and night all alone, pounding away at the keyboards or scribbling pages of texts? All the while juggling every daily routine and necessity of life.
In the end, we writers do it because we seriously believe we have something important to tell the world. And we believe the best way is to write and publish it for all to read and decide if it’s worth their time.
This is why year after year, publishers continue to receive manuscripts by those pursuing writing dreams to their logical, ultimate conclusion. For when you hold a printed copy of your book in your own hands, surely the feeling has to be like a father holding his infant for the first time. Nothing short of euphoric!
Or at the very least, you would let out an exhaustive but deeply felt sigh of relief that, finally, the Herculean task of hefting a book is done and dusted.
That alone has to be motivation enough.
Now that I’ve heard Charmaine’s account of her road to publication, I’m encouraged to persevere as best as I can so that I too can have that euphoric feeling.
And to my CNF Writers Club, I have but one thing to say: Pedal to the metal everyone!
