i would like to level up

If you were among the first 12 people to subscribe to this ‘secret’ newsletter, this will be the second email you’ve received. Don’t worry, I doubt I’ll be writing fast and furious so it should be pretty rare to be getting more than one email a week (or maybe even a month? I’m not planning to hit any quota).

For the rest of you… welcome to words.!!!

(By the way, if you reply to this newsletter you’ll just be sending me an email, which is exciting in its own way. I’m too lazy to open a comments section.)

In my first newsletter I wrote about how I haven’t had time to do any of my own writing on top of my usual workload because, by the end of the day, my brain hurts too much for me to do any creative work of my own. As it turns out, the universe sometimes has a very responsive feedback portal, because this afternoon my body felt unwell enough for me to justify cutting back on work and dropping out of social engagements to stay at home (where my bed and my Tylenol supply live), while not rendering me entirely useless with severe illness. In short, a state of being that I like to describe as “the workaholic’s favourite ailment”—sick enough to not feel too guilty about giving myself time off, but not sick enough that I lose the ability to read, write and watch Netflix. (And no worries, I’m feeling fine now, thank you Tylenol, and by tomorrow it should be all good.)

So I did a little bit of writing, a little bit of plotting. I also started planning a writing workshop that I’ll be running in early August for Sing Lit Station’s Manuscript Bootcamp, where I’m one of four lecturers for this year’s focus on creative nonfiction. File under: things people trust me to do even as I secretly wonder if they’ve made a huge mistake.

That said, I think this workshop is a good thing to do. I’ll probably learn a ton just from having to sit down and think about how I work, answer questions from other writers, and learn from their methods and thought processes. I’ve been thinking for some time now that I’m not really satisfied with where I am as a writer. Not just because I’ve internalised a lot of paranoia and hyper-vigilance thanks to over a decade of trying to survive while writing critically about politics in Singapore, but because it feels like I’ve fallen too much into a familiar (if not always comfortable) groove as a writer. I’ve become too used to the modes and forms and styles of the writing that I’ve done for many years now, to the point where I sometimes feel like I’m just being repetitive.

I’d like to level up, whether with my journalistic writing or trying out other genres. I do not yet have a plan about how to achieve this double watermelon-worthy goal in the Suika game of my writing life, but perhaps if I throw enough fruit (I mean, writing exercises) at the problem there’ll be a surprise result.

I wrote this newsletter while listening to this. Really liked the vibe.