Broken Bits

I am writing this while in the midst of sickness, stricken by cough, headache, fever, and nausea. For one who loves to write and can't not write, this may be moments a writer thinks best, the right time to pen down thoughts in forms and angles which may never be penned again.

Here's a peek to the broken bits of thoughts as I took a long walk into the world of nature this morning … a realm within a puzzle, needing to be pieced together. If you can still your heart and picture what I saw and succeed in assembling the pieces together in an understandable manner, you will have accomplished something.

… birds of different types chirping … crickets sounding … butterflies surrounding … insects of different types making noises … dragonflies buzzing … waters running … leaves falling … multitude of trees standing tall … trees with leafy arms and branches … leaves of different shades and colours … leaves of trees moving where the wind flows ... a leave caught within a spider web … a chameleon running across the grass … flowers in magnificence … fragrance of flowers … smell of nature … wind and breeze … trees and plants … red, violet, yellow, and pink … branches and twigs … strong and the weak … calmness against roaring waves … calmness as I've never felt before ... sea breeze blowing at my face ... sounds of waters hitting shore … train of ants marching on the floor … moments of reflection … nature in its beauty … a second Eden … spoilt only by vandalism and waste surrounding the shore … motor boats passing … coconut trees … sparkling waters … shining sun … barbecue pits … couples and families … people running … tai-chi displaying

Words of disparities can seem astounding. The truth is, many of us are too organized and structured for our own good. Spurring moments like these help inspire creativity. If you can read my thoughts and piece together my feelings from the bits above, you are a step closer to knowing me from within.

Fond Memories of the National Library

A chapter of Singapore history ended when the National Library at Stamford closes recently.

The National Library building at Stamford Road which celebrated its ground breaking in 1957 and officially opened for service in 1960 has now moved on to the next chapter in acquiring a new spot at Victoria Street that boasts state-of-the-art facilities and information hub to serve a wide area of services to its publics.

In commemorating the end of a chapter, the National Library Board (NLB) has invited the Singapore public with fond memories of the place to submit their reminiscences in the form of short write-up, photography, drawing or cartoon. The outcome of these submissions is a coffee table book entitled, Moments in Time: Memories of the National Library, which will be launched on December 9, 2004 at the library in Esplanade. It is therefore my privilege to be invited for the book launch and for the opportunity to contribute one of the many articles in the book.

The National Library building at Stamford holds a very important place in my heart because it was there that I first found my love in writing, as a result of organized group meetings introduced by the library under the flagship of the Young Writers' Circle. These meetings are held regularly on a monthly basis for the purpose of promoting local literature writing in prose, poem, freelance, and short stories. It is therefore with heart-felt sadness that I bid farewell to the many fond memories of this building as it vanish into yet another chapter in the Singapore history.

News Reporting: The Inverted Pyramid

Anyone who reads newspaper would know how hard news is written. The intro or lead paragraph always starts off with a summary of the whole news story, answering at least three of five Ws and a H on what, who, where, when, why, and how. The subsequent paragraphs expand on the summary and provide details of the news starting with the important at the top and the less important at the bottom. This is called the inverted pyramid.

Writing hard news is very different from writing features because it does not contain content of ideologies, anecdotes, or thoughts. It is not an editorial of opinions. It is all about facts.

The purpose of the inverted pyramid style of writing primarily serves the audiences and editors in the ways they read and edit articles. For the journalist, this method of writing reduces the time in processing thoughts and planning of how a story needs to be written. To the editors and gatekeepers, it allows a quick cut-off of content at the lower end of the story to fit the availability of space for print. To the readers, it allows quick content reading at a glance, with the gist of the story starting right from the beginning of the story, allowing them to move on to the next story even before the article is fully read.

For easier visualisation of how hard news is written, read my article on a court judgement at www.edvencomm.net.

Discourses of the Real

When a comment is added to a text in a blog, the action constitutes a discourse. A discourse as defined by Foucault is "a group of statements which provide a language for talking about - a way of representing the knowledge about - a particular topic at a particular historical moment" (Hall 1992: 291).

According to the constructionist theory, 'reality' and audiences are formed within discourses, and discourses are what make up the meaning in our daily lives, how we behave, how we see things, and how things are seen as norms in our social lives. We come to understand what is 'real' through what we know and expect of the material world, just as we come to know about our subjection to the law when we read about punishment for crimes in the newspaper. By knowing about the law we learn how we should behave in a society and this knowledge produces power that makes us subjects.

This means in essence that 'discourse produces the objects of knowledge' and that 'nothing which is meaningful exists outside discourse' (Hall 1997:44; Foucault 1972). This does not mean the inexistence of the material world, but that 'meaning' does not exist outside discourse. When a topic about something is discussed, we talk within a discourse. When we see things in the 'real' world but do not talk about it in an understandable language, 'meaning' is lost and communication is broken.

So what is actually the 'real' world? Is it a construct? According to media studies, the 'real' is a construct make up of representations within discourses. When we read in the newspaper about a war in the Middle East as an audience far from the site of occurrence, we essentially depend on the reporter to tell us the story. The story, although 'real' as far as the media and its audience are concerned, is from someone who provides meaning to what he or she hears and perceive about the event, which is usually quite different from the view of a person experiencing it.

Discourse about what is 'real' is simply how we seek to understand about representations. As readers and audiences we need to know how to see things from difference perspectives in order to understand the meanings of what messages are being conveyed in media texts and through understanding negotiate our positions as subjects in the society.

REFERENCES
Foucault, M. (1972), The Archaeology of Knowledge. London: Tavistock.
Hall, S. (1992), "The West and the Rest", in Hall, S. and Gieben, B. (eds), Formations of Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press/The Open University.
Hall, S. (1997), "Discourse, Power and the Subject" in S. Hall (ed.), Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London: OU and Sage.

Converting Audio CD files to MP3

Not too long ago I wrote an article on how to convert songs from audio CD into MP3 files. If you are interested to know how, read my article:
http://www.edvencomm.net/mp3edu.pdf

PLEASE NOTE: All material and content in the magazine is copyrighted.

Blogging: The Article

On August 11, 2004, I mentioned in this blog about an article I was writing for a magazine on the subject of blogging.

The article is now published and can be read on line at:
http://www.edvencomm.net/blog.pdf (Hi Res: 5.49MB)
http://www.edvencomm.net/blog2.pdf (Lo Res: 2.41MB)

PLEASE NOTE: All material and content in the magazine is copyrighted. To purchase hard copies of the magazine or request permission for reproduction, please write to the publisher.

Contemporary Fiction: Genres and Beyond

Writing fiction is an art, and although I am probably not the right person to talk about contemporary fiction since I currently only write non-fiction, any constructive comments or advice on the subject will be welcomed at this blog.

Now that my stand on the subject of fiction writing has been explained, I wish to add that although I am not an expert in the fields of fiction writing, I am however academically trained in the subjects of Contemporary Fiction and Authorship and Writing. Over the past few years, months, and days, I have the opportunity to read a number of fiction novels as part of my academic curriculum. The many novels and genres I have been tasked to read and analyze include Oranges by Jeanette Winterson, Psycho by Robert Bloch, Nice Work by David Lodge, The Memoirs of a Survivor by Doris Lessing, On the Black Hill by Bruce Chatwin, Guerrillas by V.S. Naipaul, The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro, and Beloved by Toni Morrision.

The novels mentioned above are writings consisting of many different genres, and although these are not the usual types of books that I would have preferred to read, an important lesson learnt from all these readings is to be a good fiction writer, one must read more than these and understand the many different genres of writings.

Analyzing literary is not exactly an easy task and to comprehend the many different genres and then categorize each type of writing content is only for the purpose of identifying the different kinds of writings represented. The pitfall of this is the generalization of different genres in writings and the assumption that all writings fall under a certain type of category. Unfortunately, this approach is not always correct, since there may be multiple genres represented in a single writing.

For example, an author may choose to include humor and suspense in a romance novel. To categorize the novel under romance alone will mean limiting the audience's perception of what the novel represents as a whole. If a reader is only interested in books of thriller or sci-fi, what are the chances of the reader entering a bookstore and going to a section selling books on fantasy or folklore instead?

There are of course many areas of fiction writing apart from genres and these include setting, characterization, plot, point of view, style, target audience, historical and literary background, narrative and narrator.

In the area of style, the writer may wish to consider content such as dualities, binaries, layered meanings, connotations, reminiscence, reflections, rhetoric, metaphors, folklore, and others. Examples of these are the dualities and binaries of academia versus industry in Nice Work, the layered meanings and connotative resentment of enlistment to fight the war, the reminiscence and reflections of events in the past in On the Black Hill, and the metaphors in Memoirs of a Survivor.

In a story setting, aspects such as historical background, constructed society, realism, context of past, present and future may be considered. Experiential content such as historical events that happened in the life of the author may be used to add constructed realism to associate the content in the story that readers may identify. Examples of story setting are the association of colonialism in the writings of Guerrillas, the depiction of societal chaos and the future in Memoirs of a Survivor, the folklore of telepathy of twins in On the Black Hill, and the classical example of Ben-Hur in the times of Jesus.

To write a fiction book or novel for a large audience in the international market, the author must explain or eliminate aspects of writings that contain associated content that is confined to a local context. These will include aspects of language, culture, words and literary terminologies.

For guides on modern language and literary writings, visit the web site of the Modern Language Association at www.mla.org for more details.