(I was reminded of this by something someone mentioned today. In my line of work, it’s taken for granted that we can whack out a basic report without much more effort than it takes to get up and go for a morning jog. And so, we tend to forget that not everyone can write, let alone get into a discussion of style and technique. This post is for the people who are still trying to start writing in the first place.)

A lot of people find it difficult to write at all, let alone to write well.  Just putting their thoughts down on paper, or on the screen, is a giant stumbling block.  I know that block well. And I want to share a few tips that might help someone overcome it one day.

Writing – be it a novel, a news story, a school essay or even a blog post – is fundamentally a form of communication. What do we communicate? Our thoughts, opinions, desires, the things we know or have seen or have done or have ideas about.

Why do we communicate? To tell someone else something, whether or not they asked for the information.

How do we communicate?

Imagine that you’ve been given a topic to write about: The Impact of Advertising on Consumer Behaviour. Think about sitting down at your desk, pulling up a blank document and trying to type. Or even think about taking up a pen and a blank sheet of paper and trying to write. It’s daunting. It’s a huge task. And it doesn’t help that the topic is so very dry.

Now, take this topic and rephrase it as a question: “Do you think that advertising changes the way people buy things?”

And imagine that you’re having dinner with friends, and someone tosses out the question randomly. And, for some reason, you decide to answer it.

What’s the first thing you would say?

Maybe you’ll say: “No. Why should it? I skip all the ads automatically.” Or maybe you’ll say: “Yes. Definitely. People buy more when they see discounts being advertised.”

Imagine yourself saying that in the way you normally talk – a bit less formal, perhaps with some colloquialisms thrown in, pauses in different places.

And then write down what you just imagined yourself saying.

There’s your first sentence. What next?

Imagine that you went on to explain what you just said, in more detail, to the friend who’d asked you the question. Imagine that your friend is paying attention – having a listener is always helpful when you’re talking. And as you think of what you would say, write it down.

All you need to do is write down what you would have said if someone asked you about the topic.

Essentially, you are taking a familiar form of communication – talking – and using it to develop another form of communication – writing.  Many people who have trouble writing tend to find it easier to talk.  So, all you need to do is write down what you would have said if someone asked you about the topic.

But what you say doesn’t sound good, you protest. It’s too casual, it’s full of slang, maybe some inappropriate references.

Simple. After a few paragraphs, look back over the text, and quickly clean it up. This is a real pain to do if you’re using pen and paper. However, I’m going to assume that most people these days are doing their writing on a computer. Which means, you can delete, edit, rewrite and even use the spelling and grammar check function. You can turn your informal language into something more appropriate, get rid of the slang, use the thesaurus to throw in long words if you like. That’s the beauty of writing something down as compared to saying it –  you can look back at the words and change them to make yourself sound better.

A good tip at this point: don’t get too caught up in editing those first few paragraphs. You still have the rest of the essay to write. Keep thinking of what you would say about the topic – maybe something you hadn’t mentioned before, maybe a further explanation of what you’d already said, maybe stories about something related to the topic. Imagine you’re talking to your friend who asked you about it in the first place. (Yes, it’s a long dinner, your friend’s very interested, and you’re a great conversationalist.)

You can look back at the words and change them to make yourself sound better. But don’t get too caught up in editing those first few paragraphs!

Eventually, you’ll reach the word count you need for your essay, or blog post, or whatever you’re writing. And that’s when you can stop, look at what you just wrote, and think: you’ve communicated your ideas on this topic. It may not be all that coherent, but the important thing is that you got it out. And the only difference between having written it and having lectured your friends about it is this: you get to go back and clean it up later.

More about cleaning up in another post…

Standing at the bus stop at seven-thirty in the morning, watching a long string of “off-service” buses go past while the crowd of waiting commuters grew and grew, a sudden thought came to me: a new thought, an uncharacteristic thought, a thought unfair and unjustifiable and ultimately hateful.

So many empty buses. Must have been rerouted for the benefit of some PAP kaki. Wonder who and why.

I have my share of gripes against the government. But before that day, I had never found myself taking a simple everyday incident and twisting it along such bitter lines before. I couldn’t understand myself. It’s always a shock to find your own mind wandering down paths you wouldn’t have thought yourself capable of taking.

About fifteen minutes later, finally aboard a bus heading for the CBD, I began questioning why I had jumped to that nasty conclusion at the sight of the empty buses. And I quickly realized: I have no more security in this government.

Not in the sense that would spring to mind for readers of Orwell’s 1984 – we’ve had our share of that nastiness, and God forbid Singapore ever go back to those days – but in a much more low-key, insidious manner.

Two days before the seven-thirty commute, I took a 1.5km walk home from the MRT station fairly late at night. It’s a route I’ve often used, and although parts of the path are very dark because of poor streetlight placement, I’ve never felt unsafe before. The path runs through a HDB district, there are lights on in the windows and people looking out, there’s a police post nearby and a kopi tiam that’s open nearly to midnight.

That night, though, there was nobody. No cars in the car park. No lights on in the windows. No sounds of people going about evening activities. And I suddenly remembered that this area had been en bloc’d for some kind of redevelopment. Nearly all the residents had been made to move out – this is high value area, incidentally, just next to the expressway and within walking distance of bus stops, MRT station, shopping malls.

My familiar route suddenly didn’t feel safe at all.

And then I thought: HDB is kicking the residents out of all these old, spacious public housing districts to redevelop the land, presumably so more housing units and car parks can be squeezed into the same plot area. How long will it be before they set their sights on the group of five-room point blocks just across the expressway, with with a generous amount of (valuable) open space between buildings and plenty of grass and trees around? That’s where I live. Will my family and my neighbours’ families be the next to get tossed out?

I don’t feel safe.

These days, I look at the old HDB flats and wonder how long before the residents have their leases taken back and the land is sold to private developers for profit and glitzy condos. I look at the spreading mature trees shading our roads and wonder how long before they are cut down to make room for more car parks or a wider road. I look at our few tiny remaining nature reserves and wonder how long before they’re concretized to satisfy some town council’s budget requirements.

I don’t feel secure.

I look at billion-dollar monstrosities like Gardens by the Bay and wonder how long before all of Singapore turns into a paved, manufactured, industrially designed monument to so-called “First World aspirations” – discarding fundamentals like green spaces and open air ventilation and shade from the tropical sun in favour of metal and concrete and some elite architect’s personal vision of what the world should look like.

That’s not my world.

I don’t trust the government any more. I don’t trust them to do what’s right for the country or the people or the society that was built over the last fifty years. I don’t trust them to understand the simple things or to balance the complex ones.

There is only one thing I feel confident that the government will do. And that’s to dismiss the concerns of small people like me, people who’ve been pushed under the median income by the latest set of statistics. Yes, I’m confident they will look on my fears and my insecurity with contempt. I’m confident they will brush my alienation off as the whining of an ignorant child. I’m confident they’ll go on  rushing after their personal private visions at the cost of everyone else in this country.

Is there an alternative?

I don’t know.

I just know I don’t trust them any more.