MPH Writer's Circle yesterday

The audience for the writer's circle is shrinking. There were a lot more people at the
last one I attended, many months ago. Now, there are barely more then a dozen. What's
happening? Most people who were there, like me and my husband, were supporting the speakers.

A great pity too, because yesterday's topic "Blogging for Writers" was particularly interesting. David Byke, who brought his family along for support, did a great job moderating the panelists: Sharon Bakar, Nizam Zakaria and Lydia Teh. I was hoping to see Ted too, but he wasn't around.

Anywhow, these are the take away points from the forum:

1. If you're a writer, it makes sense to blog.

2. Your blog can be a forum for you to
a) create publicity for yourself and your book
b) get in touch with your readers
c) solicit comments for yout stories, titles etc
d) run competitions
e) solicit editors and publishers who might be interested in your work. Sharon Bakar got her Star column that way. And apparently, a lot of writers were 'discovered' that way
f) network with other writers who might later collaborate with you. E.g: I met Tunku Halim, Jennifer Tai and a host of others this way.

Other things I have learnt which are supremely interesting to me:
1) Malay girls who wear 'tudung' form the bulk of Malay readers
2) Malay boys don't read as much!
3) The Malay demographic is still largely undiscovered. We know romances sell well, but o9ther genres have not been tried and tested.
4) A lot of people on My Space are Malay girls who wear tudung.
5) They can pay as much as RM 45,000 for a Malay telenovella script, which apparently can take only 2 weeks to write!

It was great to meet Tunku Halim again, though he had to rush off. I asked him if he managed to talk to my agent Jerry, and he did.

After that, Lydia, Eric, my husband and I went off for lunch at the very place Eric and I had dinner last week. I think Eric is stuffed to the gills with Shanghainese food! We talked about future projects and stuff, including some with my husband, and checked out Lydia's life sized standee, now greeting visitors to MPH at the entrance.

Pretty cool afternoon.