Writer – To write about personal observations and the observations of others.
Journalism – To write about current affairs in the angle of the organisational objectives.
Authorship – To write the truth in fiction as a duty to the public interest.
Sensory memory is the underlying element of method acting. During classes, our coach told us to tap into our past memories to bring out a certain emotion into the monologue. It has to be hidden, and not revealed to the audience. The audience cannot know which memory we are tapping on to bring out the characterisation and emotional undercurrent and inner fire to the performance. It is a underlying inner life that is unique to the actor. Hence two actors when given the same script, will enact the scene entirely different from each other based on their sensory memory that they bring forth to the performance.
A question was posed – how does a child actor tap into his sensory memory when he has not experienced life in it’s entirely? It boils down to authenticity. In method acting, the general rule is not to tap into any sensory memory that happened the past seven years. It is no wonder most actors hit their prime towards their thirites – leveraging on their sensory memory that they had gained over the course of years.
I had made the mistake of tapping into recent memories when I started out my YouTube channel and it seriously messed me up. Now, I no longer tap on recent memories, but the allowance is that we are allowed to tap into recent body sensations (pain, cold, pleasure, hot). When I write my books, I use the same technique in writing. I will repeat the motion of my characters while writing. Eg: Picking up a fork. I will imagine picking up a fork to cut a fish. If my character has to do a vigous workout and then start a dialogue. I will do the same, do a walkabout and a workout and go back to writing the dialogue to get the sense of how a person speaks after a workout. If I am unable to act out a scene, I will watch videos of actors enacting similar scenes or tap into my sensory memory. I would say Purple Python is the best book I had written as I had only learnt to apply the techniques I learnt over the past few years and crystalise it into a complete narrative.
I am glad to have been given a rich chaotic teenage life that I can tap on to write my works and enact my rebellion. I am no longer that crazy, or full of madness as I once was. I would say I had reached a pretty zen stage of my life where my number one priorty is my family followed by my friends. They ground me and stablise my random bursts of creative energy. Without them, I would lose my balance. They help me find myself, and regain the missing parts of my identity to form a complete whole me by just accepting the way I am. I was never able to dance the way I do before – only this year I had finally unleashed my inner soul song to be the passionate dancer that fires the dance floor.
Yesterday someone called me a “beast on the dance floor.” I was being filmed dancing. I am getting filmed regularly by dance patrons, as they watch me across the floor. To admit, I had never receive this level of “dance” attention since actively competing when I was a teenager. Only now, I had rediscovered my inner fire and happiness in dance. That I dance not to applease others, or be someone else that I am not. But to dance is to be myself, and dance for my own self actualisation, and the greatest enemy is myself. There is no one else who can stop me from being the dancer that I am. For this, I am able to be completely at ease even when dancing in front of thousands of people, it’s a completely natural act to me. The nervousness disappates and I am at one with the universe while on stage.
I am currently on ACT 3 of Purple Python, and as always, I am encountering an internal resistance to finish the book. I tend to leave my projects at 90% completion and run away. But I had broke out of that pattern by completing all my short stories by compiling them, as well as publishing two novels. The internal state of resistance sets in when I am about the write the final two scenes. It is not a new occurrence, it is already always there, and I have an urge to run. I spent 40 minutes walking around yesterday but I got stuck. Today, I wrote half a scene and got stuck again. I am now writing this to overcome my anxiety and fear of completing the book.
I wrote the ending of Blue Orca only after revising its second draft, then I finally wrote the ending scene. But I don’t want to do it with this book, I want to write the ending. I want to end the first draft and move on to the second draft. I am sick and tired of my own internal resistance. I know it is gonna end but I am enjoying the roller coaster ride too much to get off. I have to get off and start my other projects. I filmed four audio clips by Risque yesterday and went on a beta live stream for 30 minutes today, but they are just temporary side distractions from the main project which is to finish the goddam novel.
I am on a hyper-productive drive but my body is shutting down, it wants to travel, nap and walk. It doesn’t want to write the ending. My body sensations tell me to leave my project 90% complete. It’s ridiculous how I spent 4 years completing the Red Hourglass from inception. Ridiculous to overcome my comfortableness by travelling to a few cities to complete the book. The second book, I kept to a daily regime and wrote it from start to finish within a stipulated time frame. But for the Purple Python, I am thrown off my schedule and I am back on it, but it is giving me difficulty. In the sense that my writing is elevated and I don’t know how to control the monster I created. It’s defeating me. But I know this are just inauthentic fears trying to rip me, and I should just take control back of the writing and be the author that I am.
Writing a book has been a self-discovery journey, and there is no way I could write without confronting my own demons. I had dealt with them, that it is all complete as of now. Even my nightmares, they had stopped. My flashbacks, they had disappeared. What is left now is the space between my hands and the keyboard. Between my thoughts and words on the page. That I have to write it out and let it go and not keep it within me.
For the story exists within me and all I have to do is express it.
The biggest contribution Shakespeare made to the literature world is the Three Act Structure. It is fundamental to the plot of any narrative piece. The Three Act Structure mirrors real life. However, the fundamental difference that in real life, most people only arrive at a state of False Victory, the end of Act 2. They never have the courage to move to Act 3, to explore what is the Real Victory. The real ending.
In the movie, A Perfect Man, an aspiring writer who works as a cleaner falls in love with a university professor. He is tasked to clean out an old dead man apartment. He finds a finished manuscript written by the reclusive man about his biography on the Algerian war. He takes the manuscript, types it out in his computer and burns the hard copy. He sends the manuscript to a publishing house, and he receives a call to sign a contract. He starts rehearsing how to answer interview questions by the press by following identically to what other famous writers say through videos on YouTube. The university professor turns up at his book launch, she is impressed by his book. They start dating.
This is a false victory. He got the fame, he got the book published, he got the girl he liked. But all these are false because he never wrote the book. He was an imposter. In real life, we see many imposters like him. There are people like Paris Hilton who are famous when they have absolutely no talents. We have CEOs who hog the limelight when all they do is destroy the environment to increase corporate profits. We know an imposter when we see one. They are everywhere around us. Most people live in false victories, in imposed lives.
For a second, I was about to give up and disappear as you fell into your false victory. I did not know how to explain this in a format that made sense to you. I just couldn’t bear to see that happen to you. I am sorry, I freaked out. I should have stayed calm and try to explain it in a logical fashion that I meant. It was devastating to me as I see it so clearly that you are falling into the false victory.
There is nothing wrong with living in this mode like 99% of the others out there living out imposter lives. They work as a journalist when all they want to do is to write a novel. They work as lawyers but under the desks are half-completed manuscripts. They know who they love, but due to a parental objection, they give up on love.
Living life in the 1% is extremely hard. Moving from the false victory to the real victory is difficult and not achievable for most people. I had lived my shadow life writing business reports for years when all I want to do in my life to write my books and communicate my artistic ideas. Till today, I face the daily opposition of self-doubt of my own abilities.
What happened at the end of the movie, A Perfect Man was tragic. A friend of the old dead man threatened to blackmail the imposed to the press that he wasn’t the real author of the war biography. The author killed the blackmailer. He killed his brother in law who suspected he was an imposter.
Ridden with guilt and unable to produce the sequel to the war biography as publishers were haunting him daily for the next book, he placed the dead body of the blackmailer on his car seat and set it in flames. The next day, the newspapers reported that the famous author was dead, mistaking the blackmailer body for his. His girlfriend was pregnant and devastated.
At the ending scene, the writer lived a vagabond life without an identity working in ad-hoc jobs that paid in cash. He walked past a bookstore and saw his girlfriend. She was reading aloud the rejected manuscript that was originally what he wrote as an aspiring author. The audience gave a round of applause. A baby was handed to her arms. It was their child. She kissed the baby while looking at the clapping crowd. The rejected manuscript he originally wrote is now displayed prominently on the front display of the bookstore.
He wore his hood and disappeared into the darkness of the night.
A writer’s job in editing is finding about inauthenticities in the writing. For every work, there is continuous revisions to update the work itself. As it goes with relationships, it is a daily commitment to make relationships work. It is not a given that we are born to a family that we know our family members well either. It is a daily re-commitment to talk to them and get to know them better.
Finding inauthenticities frees us up to being authentic with who we are. Who we are is the sum of the people in our lives. To be truly free, is to be truly authentic about our inauthentic selves. When a person of high integrity talks, the words cut through. The impact shakes the universe. I had that experience in front of Heather Graham. Her words impacted me in a way that left me moved to believe that it was possible to be a world renowned author.
Heather Graham’s husband was in the audience during her panel at the Thrillerfest. When asked which actress she would choose to portray a character in her book, she said, “I will choose my own daughter, who is an aspiring actress.” What makes Heather Graham great is not the 150 novels she had written, but her ability to inspire others around her. Similarly, what makes C. J. Box a best selling author was his reply to the question of who the beta readers of his books are is, “his wife and three children.”
The great authors are at their truly authentic selves as their family is involved in every process in the way of them being able to shake the world and sell millions of books with lasting impact. Authors who are overnight success on the other hand, do not have the lasting impact of success due to the inauthenticities that creep in once they had made it.
Added footnote:
After visiting New York and meeting world reowned authors in the Thrillerfest, I realised that working on inauthenticities is crucial to making authenticity work. The big names we see who impact the world are life figures of those who had overcame their own inauthenticities to make a difference in this world. The people who are limited in their fixed way of being are subconsciously limiting those around them. By being open to feedback, a person rises from mediocrity to greatness.
Sex was the most talked about topic in the writer’s convention. To me, sex is sex. It doesn’t conjure anything up for me. To me, it is a flat three letter word that says S E X. The society however, made this word warped and confusing for most modern women. The very sound of the word sends some people spinning.
I do write about sex. Sex is like eating. To me, eating and sex are fundamentally human needs. Animals are biologically engineered to seek for these two things as well. I use the analogy of food to cover the undertone of sex heavily in my writings. Some authors can write about sex, some authors just can’t. It is a personal choice.
From my reading list, Asian authors do write about sex in more graphic details. Reading and writing novels is one of the liberties of our culture that no one would bat an eye lid on. My favourite author, Natsuo Kirino writes about murder and sex in almost every page. She is a celebrated horror writer in Japan. Anne Rice is another author who writes heavily on the undertone of sex. Her sleeping beauty series is a classic example of modern erotica.
Being a modern day celebrity is the equivalent of being a modern day sex symbol. The deprivation, the misunderstanding, the misguiding of sexuality in this century has lead to our modern day sexual dysfunction. In Japan, statistics show that half of the people do not have sex. The heavy reliance on videos, manga and other sorts of entertainment has created a false world there people would divert their attention to instead of building relationships.
As a creator, my hope is people would use my content to explore their the possibility of their lives and not grow dependent on it.
An interesting discussion at the thriller fest came up was that, “writers are perceived as experts in a field.” It hit me then that since publication of my first book I am now perceived as an authority figure. It dawned on me this shift of perception has an effect on how others related to me.
Now, I seem to be the go to person for answers ranging from any topic about the meaning of life although I write in the thriller genre with women serial killers. Initially I wasn’t able to comprehend this shift of how others related to me but now I embrace it. I am now actively listening for what someone has to say about their point of view. I am now interested in people’s lives. Maybe that’s why writers are the to go to person as we are actively seeking for answers to life as much as everyone else.
It seemed that my being has magnified tremendously since I published a book. There is now another layer of me existing outside me. There is the power of language that penetrates into the subconscious of those who encounter my words. I realize that my gift is a blessing and curse, and I have to undo the damage of my past by revisiting them and re-creating what is in the present for those around me to advance them in their own pursuits as well.
I embrace my being as a writer and now, it’s my time to contribute my knowledge to humanity.
First, I have to admit that I love control. I could spend an entire day planning and scheduling. It fits my occupation as a novelist. For a moment, we can suspend time and in the novel’s universe we are GOD! YES! That’s right, writing gives the ULTIMATE sense of control as I can kill off any characters and make them liked or disliked. I can control the scenes. Practically all the characters become my puppets and I am the puppet master muahahaha! I realised that I needed a new project management software for the purposes of writing a few novel projects and delivering them on time (like a business). I have to track my income and expenditure and ensure I am on track with my delivery. I decided to test out a new cutting edge space age design software at thrivesolo.com .
Honestly, these new software tools makes our jobs much easier. For example, Scrivener changed my writing life by allowing me to outline my book without having to write anything on paper. I had been much more productive after using Scrivener as compared to a normal words document. The reason is, software enables creators to think in a big picture and retrieve files and research and scenes more efficiency. I would even attribute Scrivener as a life saver to increasing my serious writing output. I wouldn’t have completed a 80 000 words novel without that software.
Hence the search for the ULTIMATE control started by looking for the ONE software that will enable me to concurrently manage my writing projects and deliver my final drafts on time.
Current Process
I currently manage my life using Google Calendar, Google Keep, Google Task, Google Documents and Spreadsheets. But it seems that everything is all over the place. I needed one central database that I can log in and know what I have to do for the day. I would also require a software that has a time tracker so I know how much time I am spending per project and if I am exceeding my allocated time. If I am exceeding time, that means I have to change my writing process (by changing locations, fixing my outline). Having a time management system in place allows me to study my progress and allocate the best times of the day for writing and nothing else. I currently use Google Spreadsheets to track my writing output and hours (eg: 2 hours from 2pm – 4pm, 2000 words). But I would like a software to generate information on that (how cool if there are graphs that will show compare my weekly writing output).
What 
I like about the interface is that it shows the project deadline and if you have exceeded your allocated budget. I had currently allocated $20 000 to The Ocra. I had given myself an hourly rate of $10. So it means if I exceed writing the book for 2000 hours, I am over my “budget”. But I estimate I would spend about 1000 hours writing and the remaining budget would be to cover the cost of publishing (editors, cover design, marketing etc). Honestly, most novelists never make $20 000 to recover their initial time and investment in writing a full length book. It’s purely out of passion that most writers are writing what they write. I would like to recover my investment of time and effort in monetary terms, but I would not use it as a gauge of my success or impact.
Anyway, thrivesolo is not THAT advanced, but the time tracking part is okay. The time tracker allows categorization of tasks. For my illustration, the main three activities of a novelist is: writing, outlining, research. I could see how much time I spent on each activity. But there is no weekly comparison chart time chart (yet). It seems I still have to use Google Spreadsheets for this function.
It’s quite inspiring to look at the interface design of this software in regards to setting milestones and tasks. Milestones are accomplished once all the tasks under it is completed. I feel kind of motivated when I look at this list. And the deadline. It fills me up with urgency! I love it! I used to put my milestones and tasks on Google Calendar and sometimes I will let it slip as there is no “deadline”. But this software now forces me to acknowledge I have to complete these deliverables by a specific date. This is probably the favourite part of the software that I like.
For $150 a year, it’s quite steep as there are many free options out there like Google Apps. I would recommend using this software if you simply have too many projects and too little time. For example, I have to focus on delivering content on my YouTube channel and novels and it is hard to keep track of both. Also, I would highly recommend this software to freelancers or those who are operating solo and would like to track their hours and invoice their customers. But an accountancy software like Quickbooks is still needed for tax filing as this is a project management software. I will probably use this software for a few months and see how it goes and I will update again if I am more productive using this and if I do deliver my novels on time!
My writing threshold is still at 2 hours mark per session. On the 2h 30min mark my brain is fried. I have drunk a full cup of latte and green tea. I am drinking an espresso now, but it isn’t helping yet. Outlining two novels is definitely mind consuming. I wish I could write more hours and feel energetic about it, but the drilling noises near where I stay is affecting my sleep and concentration. I have to sleep early, get out early, and exercise more consistently if I want to up my productivity.
I had changed my diet to high protein and lots of veggies. This is to keep my sugar level constant so I don’t crash. I hardly eat any white rice or noodles. I am almost sugar free. I learnt crucially yesterday that I have to stay away from pork or I may get stomach upset. I used to be able to eat anything, but after living in so many different countries, my stomach is much more sensitive.
I am breaking up 2 hours of writing time in two time slots. I will work later at night at home, when the drilling noises stop. Once I am finished with my outlines, I hope to write as fast as possible without making the same mistakes as I did with my first novel. I hope to dedicate solid four hours a day to my writing and nothing else.
Some of my crucial lessons from writing my first novel were:
I have to stay dedicated and think of the long term impact of my writings instead of short term monetary or recognition gains. When I watch the news, I see people acting out of pride and anger. The paris attacks are upsetting, as well as the terrorist acts around the world. I can hardly watch the news for this reason, it only fills me with such deep sadness at the state of the human condition that I lose my focus and motivation.
I hope one day, the human consciousness will evolve out of these emotions and go towards courage, willingness and love. That is my dream, a very idealistic one but I believe the world is full of abundance and we are fighting over nothing, but our own egoistic needs. There is much more noble causes out there to fight for, and when we start to focus on the bigger picture, our own pride disappears and a new sense of selflessness replaces the emotion of wanting. I feel that submission is the highest level of love, for when we submit ourselves to the greater good, it only magnifies and returns with unlimited abundance.
Looking at the stars and galaxy, being interconnected on the cloud, reading these text on cyberspace, we have already advanced so far, but the pride of those in power wants to keep us in this eternal servitude and bondage. But there is no bondage, it’s an illusion of the mind. What changes everything is our mindset in how we approach life. That we are free, and we have the power to change the future, instead of letting predetermined events happen to us. If the French Revolution could occur at the hands of the people, why can’t we change the world to make it a better place? These are endless possibilities.
As long we continue to dream, and let go of our internal bondage, we can be free.
The Red Hourglass hit 7000 downloads today on Amazon after 20 days of it’s release. I predict that there will be about 100 000 downloads in about six months. As of now, I am currently outlining the sequel. It’s called The Ocra, from Mimi POV. I am having fun with character boards and redrawing the universe. It seems that I am much more efficient compared to when I initially started out. What would take me weeks to outline, now takes me hours. It’s like my learning curve for the first book had short cut the process for my second book. I am able to bypass lots of mistakes that I previously made and know instinctively “what to do” now.
I also feel that I am much more expressive compared to before. I had learnt to let go over time and not really care what people think about me anymore. I used to hold back, but now I do it free flow. I write what I want, film when I feel like it. I don’t try to push or force myself too hard as I used to. I have to admit I used to be quite hardcore on myself, now I take lots of breaks. I exercise. I stretch and walk around. I set a timer to take a 17 minute break every 52 minutes, as according to latest research, the best productivity occurs in this time span.
I booked myself into a co-working space where I can drop in to write without interruptions. I used to do cafe hopping, but cafes are not consistently quiet. Some days it’s crowded. I need a quiet space, where it is guaranteed. I found a special spot at a very low cost that it’s unbelievable. They probably think I am a fresh grad etsy start up as most of the people in the co-working area are older men. I am so glad at this secret find that I am not going to reveal my new writing hideout :X
I am also outlining a series called “The Switch” in the contemporary romance genre. I usually work on multiple projects at one time, as being on one project drains me. I have to work on a few different tasks to feel energised. It goes with my reading habits. I read stimulanetous books at the same time, I flip from historical romance, to thrillers, to contemporary, to non fiction self help. It’s just the way my brain works in it’s dyslexic interconnected ways.
As for Butterfly, it is a very niche book in the femdom segment. I will probably just publish a novella first, and if the response is positive I would continue to work on it. I have so much notes on that book but I had been very very afraid to publish it over the years. I think female dominance is not a very common thing, and I just have crazy ideas on it that I can’t express elsewhere. But maybe it is the fantasy of many? Who knows!
After I am done outlining The Ocra, The Switch and Butterfly, I would be focus on my word count daily goals and hopefully I will be releasing two full length books and a novella a year if things goes well.
I will resume filming as Risque soon and do some audio recordings of her. I miss her too and I hope she returns back to screen on Youtube soon.
