My Writing Process or 8 tips for getting the writing done

It’s a great relief to be almost done with the books. I mean the textbooks and the supplementary materials that I’ve been working on for P3 pupils. I did enjoy doing them although there were tedious moments of reading and rereading the manuscripts. And it didn’t help that everything had a short deadline. But they’re done and now I am free, hurray, until we get started on the P4 books.

In the meanwhile, I’ve been thinking about this blog. I have many things to write about but I don’t always have the time. And sometimes when I have the time, I prefer to read a book. Writing is hard; reading is more fun and easier. But I don’t hate writing. I used to when I was younger, but after years of slogging at it, writing comes easier to me now. I also write to earn an income so I often have to write stuff that I won’t write under normal circumstances. But when I have to do that, I try to find the enthusiasm for it too and when I do, I feel good about the writing.

So after doing the books, I wrote a draft piece on writing for students. I did that in a weekend, and it was a satisfactory draft, considering that it’s about a dull subject like sentence structure. But since the beginning of the month, I’ve been working on a piece for a conference in early November. I’ve been invited by IDAC (International Development in Asia) a regional literacy organisation to be one of the plenary speakers at their conference in Manila on the theme Educating Teachers of Literacy.

I must admit that I have not written a long paper for a while. The longest piece I’ve written, in recent memory, is less than 2000 words, compared to the five to seven thousand word pieces I used to churn out in my other life. Writing a couple of thousand words isn’t that hard if I knew how I want to angle my paper. Unfortunately, that’s the hard part.

I began, like always, by looking up material that I might want to use or that’s related to my topic. So, I dragged out all my older publications, googled and checked out recent material on the topic. I had no intention of writing a serious research piece. Plenary presentations can be very boring for participants (I have been to many of these) and I thought something personal and a little light-hearted but with a couple of solid ideas should be good. Well, that’s easier said than done really. I finally wrote three versions, and versions 1 and 2 are completely different from the final version. I guess this is because I began with an idea in my head and I wanted to make the idea work and it wouldn’t. I tried two versions but I must add that within the two versions are numerous revisions. When the second version did not happen, I put the whole thing aside for a week and spent time with my sister who was visiting from KL. We cooked, shopped and chatted and I did nothing related to the paper for a whole week.

After she left, I began work on the student piece on writing. But on Saturday evening, I had dinner with my husband and over a Peranakan buffet, I told him about my paper and what I wanted to say. And suddenly, it’s all there. On Monday morning, I wrote 5 pages of my third version and there it was! Something like a plenary was finally shaping up. I put that aside for another week. You would have guessed by now that I have given myself a lot of time to work on this paper. I thought about bits of it on and off while doing my other chores, and on Saturday, hurriedly jotted down two points which came to me in a flash while brushing my teeth, and rushed out to town for an errand.

On Sunday, I printed out a draft but got distracted by a book I had begun reading, and decided to finish reading that first instead of working on the paper and that led me to today, Monday.

I have just looked through the paper and added the two points to it as well as a bit of a conclusion. That came up to 3544 words. Now, I will put it aside for another day or so before looking through it for a final print out for next week. But that’s not the end, of course. I will still be tinkering with it and working on bits here and there till the moment I stand in front of the podium and start talking about it. This time, I’m not even doing a final copy with references and all because I am not looking to publish it, well, not immediately anyway. It will take me another day or more if I have to put in the references as well. Regretfully, the piece is not as light hearted as I wanted to make it (can literacy be light hearted anyway?) but I guess I’ll try to present it in a light hearted manner. More importantly, it has something significant to say and the several solid ideas I needed.

Why am I writing this in my blog? Well, many of my friends write or are published writers. We often talk about writing and while I do believe there’s good writing and not so good writing, I also have a lot of respect for people who actually sit down and get it done. I am one of those who have not got down to writing many stories that I’d like recorded. In my mind especially are two great stories about my childhood with my siblings which I have entitled, Mushrooms soaked in virgin’s urine and Three blind mice. Then there are all those stories about my parents. I believe that my time has not come for doing this. I am too busy with other work and other writing at this point in my life. And I’m still looking for the best way to tell the stories.

But I know it can be done. So I am sharing here my tips for getting the writing done, and I don’t care what writing it is.

8 tips for getting your writing going

1. Begin by doing some research and thinking. You have to do this or else you won’t have anything to say. I reread my previous related papers. I read other books and journals to check on what has been written about the topic. I go online to search for resources. I make copious notes, usually on the back of used envelopes (Don’t follow this example of mine!)

2. I make an outline. I begin by writing something like, In this paper, I want to …. And I write down what I want to achieve in the paper. It helps me narrow the focus.

3. Talk to a lay person about it. I talk to my husband who is not in education. I run the arguments pass him and I ask if they make sense to him. I talk to as many people as I could about the paper and ask them for their feedback. Talking about the ideas help me understand what I am trying to do. They also make me obliged to finish the paper as people will ask about it!
4. When I have read enough, and this is a tricky concept, I start writing. What is enough? Some people I know never get started because they claim they have not read enough. Enough for me is when I have some idea of what I want to say and of what other people have said about the topic. I then get started on writing. I don’t want to delay the writing because writing helps concretise the ideas in my mind and help me sort out my own thinking too.

5. When I run into trouble with the writing, I stop and give myself a break. If not, I’ll carry on regardless of the quality of the writing. Sometimes, I make myself write 1000 words before I stop. And if I don’t like what I’ve written, I begin a new paragraph and start again.

6. Always have time to put the writing aside. I often give myself at least 4 weeks (without much work in between, let me add) to write a big paper. And I put aside a whole morning or afternoon every time I sit down to write. Don’t write when you have to rush off here and there for errands or other tasks.

7. Reread and revise. Don’t hesitate to throw away chunks of stuff that do not meet your needs. I sometimes save stuff that I can’t bear to delete but I’ll put that in a separate file. I have sometimes opened that file and rescued little bits for other papers. I don’t always aim for several thousand words. Instead, I aim to fulfil my objectives and I check these against my writing all the time.

8. When all is done, check your references thoroughly. If the paper is to be published, check the format that the paper needs and consult your publishing manual for the necessary style. Get a friend to read your paper and proof read it. Mistakes are unavoidable and the spell check will not pick up every mistake.

There you are. A lucky 8 points. These are my ways of getting started and may not be everybody’s way.

If you have a good idea about writing to share with others, let us know. As my yoga teacher often says, “If you know something and don’t share it, that’s a crime.” Another variation of this is, “If you have the knowledge and don’t use it, that’s a crime”. She’s talking about yoga of course but I think it applies to many aspects of life too. Billy Graham put it well when he said:

We are not cisterns made for hoarding, we are channels made for sharing.

Write on, everyone!

Are you listening?

Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. The friends who listen to us are the ones we move toward. When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand.
— Karl Menninger

There is a little quiz going around on the Internet in which you are asked to draw various body parts on to a cat. From your drawing, its size and its location, some pronouncement is made about your character. That was where I learnt that I don’t listen well enough because I had drawn small ears for the cat. Well, perhaps there’s some truth in that. I don’t know but it did help me to be more aware of myself as a listener when I am in the company of friends and family.

I am ashamed to confess that I often complain about poor listeners. You know, the people who need you to repeat your address and your post code 5 times before they can take it down correctly. I often put this down to the fact that in school, we encourage our students to develop bad listening habits. No? Well, see how you do on this checklist. You just have to answer yes or no to these questions.

Do you
1. Repeat yourself in class all the time because your students don’t hear everything the first time you said it?

2. Patiently echo the answers as many times as is needed so that all your students at the back of the classroom can hear them?

3. Speak slowly and wait patiently for students to laboriously write down word by word the instructions you are giving orally?

4. Always talk above the noise in the classroom, competing with your students’ chatting instead of waiting for silence first?

5. Often talk when someone else is speaking instead of listening to what is being said and think that this is acceptable practice?

If you said yes to 5 in particular, chances are you condone this practice in your class too. But hey, if you have 3 yeses there, you could just be guilty of helping your students grow up to be poor listeners through your very actions and behaviour.

What can be done? Well, for one, you can read the following:

10 tips for helping students to develop better listening habits.

1. Before giving any instructions to your students, make sure they are all listening to you. Wait if you have to, for them to focus on you before you begin speaking.

2. Never repeat instructions after giving them. Instead ask a couple of students to repeat your instructions to the class. If they get them wrong, have other students correct the information.

3. Speak clearly and don’t rush through your instructions or message. Maintain eye contact with as many pupils as you can by looking around the class. Don’t forget students who are sitting outside your line of vision i.e. those to your extreme left and right.

4. Do not walk around when giving instructions. This can be distracting and your voice may rise and fall, making it hard for students to hear you properly.

5. But on the other hand, it is good to position yourself in different parts of your classroom instead of sticking to the front. This way, you can monitor students better and giving instructions from a different part of the classroom also means that students are able to monitor your movements and learn to be alert to your presence.

6. When instructions are complex, post them on the board instead. Remember that our short term memory can only hold 5-7 bits of information each time.

7. When your students speak to you, listen carefully and maintain eye contact. You need to model what good listening looks like.

8. Expect your students to pay attention when you speak. Talking while the teacher is speaking or teaching is not just rude but students are obviously not paying attention to the lesson.

9. Roles play what good listening looks like with younger children. Ask them to tell you what a good listener does and list such behaviours for students to remember.

10. Finally, at the beginning of every lesson, do not waste time shouting for attention. Instead, write a task on the board immediately and direct students’ attention to it so that they can begin working while you get other students in order.

Since I am on listening, let me add:

5 tips for conducting a more effective listening lesson in the classroom.

1. Always do a pre-listening activity before you begin. Your pre-listening is to help your students anticipate the text to be heard, activate their prior knowledge, and set a focus for their listening. For example, you can tell them that they will be listening to a poem. Then ask them for some things that they should be looking out for if they are listening to a poem. If they are doing a worksheet with questions, have them preview the questions and predict the contents before they begin listening.

2. Always try out your listening text in advance to avoid any fumbling in class. If you have to read out the text, practise reading aloud at a natural pace. You need to read the text in sensible chunks. These should not be too long or too short. Remember how much our short term memory can hold; this will help you determine how big each chunk of text should be. Apart from reading the text at a natural pace, you should also not repeat anything, beyond the stipulated number of times. Don’t yield to students’ begging.

3. Read the text three times only. The first time, students must listen without writing anything. Their main goal is to understand what the text is about first. The second time, they can begin working on the task. Read the text again the third time for students to check their answers and to fill in any blanks. The text can be read twice only if it is short and the task is not too complex.

4. When the listening task is over, do not just focus on checking the answers. You can take the task further by discussing issues related to the topic. Students can also write a response to the topic or draw something to reflect on their understanding or attitude towards the theme. Doing this will help you extend pupils understanding of the theme or topic and help you see how well they have listened to the text. Students can also write a short summary of what they recall of the listening text. These are better indications of students’ listening skills, especially when they only have simple questions or multiple choice items as a listening task.

5. Never allow pupils to see the listening text and study it in advance. This will mean that they don’t have to listen but can just write down everything from memory. This will then not be a listening task but a memory task. All dictation passages must be unseen.
Listening well is an important component to good conversation. Taking the time to teach your students to listen well is something worth doing considering that this is not merely a skill for academic success but also a skill for life.

Finally, here are 3 interesting quotations about listening for you to mull over:

Just because I didn’t do what you told me, doesn’t mean I wasn’t listening to you!
— Hank Ketcham

Man's inability to communicate is a result of his failure to listen effectively.
— Carl Rogers

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.— Winston Churchill

Pronouncing our names

Recently, Senior Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Dr Balaji Sadasivan sadly passed away. I was listening to the news on the radio, read that day by a seasoned and well known news reader, and she pronounced his surname as SaDAsivan ( stress on DA). That made me wince because that was not the first time I have heard news readers and other Singaporeans mangling local names.

At the recent Teachers’ Conference, the emcee pronounced Manogaran as MaNOgaran. The stress would probably be correct if these were Western names but these aren’t. And it seems to me that there should be no excuse for Singaporeans not to know how to pronounce local names. Is this just ignorance or some weird attempt at showing off? I am sure you must have heard local deejays refer to Jurong as JuRONG.

I think it’s great that we are all out to encourage Singaporeans to speak better English and to improve their pronunciation of English words. But perhaps there should also be a campaign to help Singaporeans learn how to pronounce local names, be these Indian, Malay or the pinyin version of Chinese names. And while I am at this, can I also add that Genting Highlands is pronounced with a hard /g/ and is not pronounced JENting? It means "peak" in Malay.