I have always wondered, in a back-of-the-mind kind of way, why so few of the young people who aspire to become writers in Singapore actually make it. No, quoting the National Arts Council and its list of known writers at me does not count (and do you notice a typo or two on the page linked to?)
There are certainly a lot of people out there who want to write, especially novels, short stories and yes, manga. I’ve met a number, most recently at the NaNoWriMo 2009 kickoff party just a month ago. Most of them are still studying. (Those who aspire to make a living from dry, real-life things like columns, advertorials and socioeconomic or political commentaries tend to be a lot older, or at least have been pigeonholed into it, like me.)
I keep asking, though: how many of these creatively minded teenagers will go on to actually become known writers? Some will certainly find their way into SPH, where they’ll be thoroughly disillusioned to discover that a journalist’s work is only about ten percent actual writing—the rest is an unholy mixture of 24/7 ground-pounding and 7/52 corporate stuff. And the actual writing itself is done within such a tight deadline that there’s no room to go on being creative…well, that’s debatable, but just look at the Straits Times. It’s often very difficult to tell who wrote an article without reading the byline. Most writers’ individual styles are subsumed by the twin constraints of time and the editorial pencil.
Then one day, I decided to scope out the competition here. I opened up Writers.Net and had a look under “Singapore”. As expected, I found an eclectic mix of professionals, part-timers and wannabes. I was also horribly embarrassed to discover my own profile, grossly outdated and not in the least reflective of what I can actually do now.
My embarrassment was quickly killed, however, by the following discoveries of dozens of teenage profiles, possibly posted due to the advice of doting teachers or enthusiastic CCA seniors. Most of them had pseudonyms that were…well…teenage. Some posted personal information like their hobbies, their favourite books (usually fantasy novels) or their pets. Others had set down very creative but still cringeworthy passages of prose that were meant to show their literary skills.
I winced. Then I went to update my own profile in a hurry. Then I decided to share some tips on turning literary aspiration into reality, at the risk of severely pissing off some of those creative teenagers whose names and details I shall not post here. For young people only: three tips to make things, if not better, then more easily transited between your teens, tweens and thirties.
1) Evaluate Your Email
The first place to start is with your email. You probably created a very cool email address when you first discovered the wonders of the Internet, and you might have a lovingly angsty nickname to go with it. Sending your latest manuscript to a publisher, even an online publisher, with that cutesy pseudonym isn’t going to get you a serious evaluation, though. Take it from me. I used the email ID darth_mint for years, since I was thirteen in fact; got numerous puzzled questions and odd looks about it and am now quietly shifting all my work-related correspondence to a more professional-sounding Gmail address. Think of your writing as a serious, ongoing thing that’s going to grow up with you. Give it room to grow—don’t trap it in an eternal box of teenage interests.
2) Personalize Your Profiles
Exactly how many online profiles have you got? Do you even remember them all? What services do you subscribe to? Do you really need them? What on earth have you posted on them? These questions repeatedly come up in news articles on digital privacy, and if you can’t answer them, you may be in trouble. Information that was posted on the spur of the moment can come back to haunt you years later. When you’re 40 years old, professional, dignified and earning $8,000 a month, do you really want a business contact saying “I saw your (insert website name here) profile, crystalline_mistlover_shadow is a rather…interesting nickname…” ???
Yikes.
I deleted a variety of online profiles some time ago. Then I overhauled the remaining ones (Writers.Net, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc) to display only the sort of information I thought I’d be comfortable with in ten years’ time. And I bookmarked them all so I can keep overhauling them. And I created a new profile, email and all, solely for the purpose of signing up for things like online games, socially suspicious networks and so on. K.I.S.S.—Keep It Separate, Stupid!
3) Review Your Blog
Just what have you written on your blog? Better look back through the archives and start throwing old posts out. Even more than your online profiles, the content of your blog can give away things about your personality that you might not want people knowing.
It’s more than tidying up your image, though. A blog is a very, very powerful tool for advertising what you’re capable of. So what if you’re sixteen and haven’t got a portfolio to show anyone? Your blog can be your portfolio. Post your top-scoring essays. Post observations about current affairs. Post short stories that you wrote, and make knowledgeable-sounding comments on them so people can see you actually think about your work. If you absolutely must have a public venting space for your personal emotional crises, make another blog for that and keep it private.
The same, by the way, goes for any personal website you might own (and do you even remember what web domains you have?) I was actually relieved when Yahoo! Geocities went down and took my fiction-hosting homepage with it. Not because the work there was bad, but because its presentation was still pegged somewhat to the teenage time loop. I still remember my supervisor at MCYS, where I did my university internship, remarking that she’d found my website and read some of the juvenilely formatted stories…ouch.
Now…I’m sure I have more work to do on all three of the above. I’m a decade out of my teens, but that doesn’t mean I’m immune to teenage nuttiness…

