Author Ivy Ngeow
The Business of Blurb Once I found this task a chore akin to cleaning or ironing. Now I enjoy it and even do it on other people’s books. It’s the pretty and mysterious sister of the synopsis. The synopsis is a dry technical report of the book’s beats with all the spoilers but the blurb …
1. Write what you don’t know. Writing what you know is one of the worst pieces of writing advice. It must have come from the “old days” i.e. pre-internet where there was not enough information available to anyone so it would be dangerous and idiotic to stray past your own library. But today, how do …
I get asked this question a lot. If it takes only half a day to write a 1,000 word blog, then should it not take just 40 days to write a book? The answer is that it’s almost right. I started planning Overboard in 2018, just after Heart of Glass was launched in June. I …
Note that I don’t call them mistakes. I call them “things learned”. I don’t see them as mistakes because they are just experiences that made me a better writer today, by miles. 1/ I tried to write as a white male person. It’s unbelievable but true. I just thought I’d better aim to be like …
Recently I tweeted a memory I had of my penpal when I was 12 and I was astonished when today it’s so far had 80 likes. I know it’s not viral, humour me. I had two penpals. The one from the Philippines is in the tweet: To this day I cannot bring myself to open …
I wake up around 06:12 if I am good and 06:44 if I am lazy. I don’t need an alarm, it’s the same every day no matter what time I went to bed. I hit start on the espresso machine, make a skinny flat white. In my pyjamas I write before work, either working on …
CAVEAT: Firstly, it is not time that has to be made. There are only 24 hours, you can’t make any more. Secondly, it is words that have to be made, not time. Thirdly, it is ideas that make the words, not time. And now I will systematically break down the entire week to show you …
1/ Can you sit down for 20-40 minutes? This can be either days, nights, weekends, holidays, whenever. At any point can you sit down and not keep getting up? You know that writing is sitting down, right? First start with 10 minutes and then work your way up to 20 then 30 and finally 40 …
Without risk of cultural appropriation or misrepresentation or just being plain offensive. Diversity is a buzzword we all may at some point encounter. I have written from white, mixed and Asian people’s viewpoints and can say I am fairly comfortable now. My published stories or novels have a mixture of different cultures and it is …
Because it is very stupid. I could be doing a million other things, enjoyable things, non enjoyable things, things which could even make money. As I am approaching 41K WC of my FD WIP*, I begin question my own sanity again. I do not know what it is that makes me write. I really hate …