Attending a Writing Workshop

Sunday, 26 September 2010.

Today I woke up from my bed as early as 6 o’clock. It’s a Sunday morning. It was quite difficult for me to have a tight sleep last night. After cleaning and preparing myself, I rush for a Writing Workshop at KOS. This is the first time for me to attend a workshop for creative writing. Actually, I’m not so good in writing but I love writing. Writing makes me feel better and it is even one of my ways to reduce stress.

During the first session, we have been forced by a speaker to write about an event- what we feel about the writing workshop. It took me a long time to write a sentence. Then I realized that it was a long time (about two years ago) when I wrote such a personal journal like this. “Hm, no wonder I have no idea to write…,” I talked to myself. The first session was like an introduction session for me. The speaker encourages us to start writing journal. To be a writer, we have to be a reader. How to be a reader? It means that you have to love books. How to make you fall in love with books? The first tip is to choose something that you like (motivation, romance and so on). The second one is to choose a book that is not so difficult (that means you can easily understand the language and word used).

Moving on, we have had a session for novel and blog writings. We have learnt more about novel writings- the plots and elements. We also learnt on how to make our blog more interesting. The second session makes me recalled back my literature lesson during the school time. The terms like metaphor, personification and simile are really familiar to me at school but unluckily I have already forgotten what we had learnt before. I’m so sorry Cikgu Hasni… I really miss the school time when the teacher asked us to make a role play for each chapter of our novels (Bukit Kepong and Konserto Terakhir). I still can imagine how much I laughed at my friends when they acted especially the guy when they had to act as a female. We enjoyed the class lesson and of course the role play helped us to remember every scene of the novels.

The next session of the Writing Workshop is about poem but I do not participate in this session for some reasons. I enjoy the workshop and it really helps me in writing, yet there are still a lot of things I have to learn and improve in this field. In addition, to be a good writer, I have to be a good reader too.