Let's Write!

23rd & 24th March, Tuesday and Wednesday

Here comes a legendary author, Miss Liew Suet Fun to tutor us about writing articles for publications. She is just awesome. One of her many books, Gilding the Lily tells the true stories of women we may bump to each other as just like any other normal human being but with amazing stories to be told behind the scenes. She read a snippet out of the book regarding a female radiologist from Taiping, and I was touched. More about the amazing stories of ordinary people here on TheStar Online.

Of course, we as bunch of scientists had much to learn about creative writing. We were nurtured, thought to, ordered to use simple languages in our lab reports. I'd never expect to do any creative writing in laboratory reports. However, this does not apply just to explaining a scientific research to the public in layman's term, it is the art of using words to grasp attention and at the same time enlightening the readers. Creative writing is very useful also in proposals, reports, write-ups for businesses. We were shown creative writings from magazines, articles from National Geographic, Scientific journals, Reader's Digest. How they (authors) could explain things simple and yet so vividly, of course, with excellent vocabulary and use of the language.

Everybody should try write. For starters, if your are unable to write, try to read more books. Her advice was

• Choose what you read. If you read rubbish, you will write rubbish. Shows the importance of quality reading. 
• There is no such thing as writer's block when you have the resources!
• It is possible to adapt to another persons' writing style if you are fond of it

I was inspired by her during the session. I used to have this dream of writing articles to be published in the papers or as columnists but I ended up becoming just a casual writer/blogger. I was ashamed of myself because I did not pursue my hobby and passion when I was young. My English could  have been better and I would have written more articles. Instead, she told me that I am still young, and can still fulfill my dream if I'd wanted to. She only started writing 6 years ago and shes a professional now.  Meeting her brought up so many memories in me, especially one in Form 2, when i was barely 14 years old, I wrote a 20-paged fantasy novel to be submitted to my English teacher, though it was only supposed to be a short simple essay.