eHomemakers Malaysia

Today, self-publishing has become a viable option for many aspiring authors. In theory, self-publishing allows the author to keep all the profits and have absolute control over the entire publishing process. In reality, instead of making money from their work, many self-published authors have sustained financial loss. A possible reason this occurs is because self-published authors are not aware that, fundamentally, the publishing industry is a business where issues like profit, loss and risk play as important a role as the quality of writing in the manuscript. Therefore, if you aspire to self-publish your work, you would be wise to create a business plan before you begin the publishing process. To make more sense of the steps described below, assume that you would like to self-publish 2,000 copies of a manuscript for a novel you wrote. In addition, for ease of reference, your business plan will be called ‘novel business plan’. The Executive Summary Normally, the ‘Executive Summary...

Yesterday, being the 1st day of Chinese New Year was also Valentine’s Day. For a long time, like a lot of people, I planned my holidays, trips to see relatives and parties around the days when these festivals such as these occur. I looked for cheap flights, offers for cut-price accommodation and, where possible, travel to nearby places. In the years since I started to write full-time, I have come to realise that my holidays no longer coincide with these religious festivals. Instead, I keep an eye out for festivals of a different kind – festivals within the publishing industry. For instance, last year, I planned my holiday after the Frankfurt Book Fair in October. That Diwali was around that time was an afterthought. What, then, makes something like a literary festival become more important than a religious or cultural one? What goes on in these festivals? What benefit does an author derive from these festivals? For this story, I thought I’d share with you some of what I’ve learnt fro...

Almost everyone I know is writing, or at the very least thinking about writing. They’re writing their blogs, Facebook entries, websites, letters, memoranda, opinions, outlines, summaries, synopses, petitions and so much more. What are they writing about? A mother who recently lost her 2-year old son in tragic circumstances writes a blog to keep his memory alive. A journalist writes his blog to give so that what he writes is the whole truth and not vetted by editors. Lawyers prepare opinions for clients on whether they should pursue a claim or not. Politicians sweet-talk their way into getting as many votes as possible. A songstress writes about her beliefs and what inspires her. There’s the writer who chooses to make a living by writing full time. Some are experts in non-fiction work. Some have scaled the literary heights and become internationally published authors. Then, there are those who continue to dream of making it big in the literary world. All of them use words and this got m...

Like moths to a flame, they’re always the first to find you, even in the most glamorous party in town. “So, you’re a writer?” they inquire. “You know, people keep saying that what’s happened in my life would make a great story. Will you write it for me?” It’s at this point I paste on a big smile and say, “Oh, interesting …” Then, I pretend my hand phone just vibrated and I have to answer this call as it’s from my aged parent. As I tell a close friend of mine, if I had a ringgit for every time someone has asked me to write his tale, I would have enough money to go on the world-trip by now. “You should just do what I do,” another writer friend of mine says. “Tell them you work for a dentist and they’ll talk about something else. No one wants to show you their decaying molars or chipped incisor in a party.” I’ve noticed that many non-writers see a writer as some sort of dichotomy. On the one hand, they cannot believe that anyone can make a living out of “stringing a few sentences ...

Whenever people say to me, “I am too scared to do what you did,” I am always amused. I smile and give a cryptic answer like, “Well … that’s life, I suppose.” Then, if the conversation continues and I’m asked to explain a little more, I change the focus of the tale and tell them the about race car drivers: it is said that when you are behind the wheel of a race car, one of the first lessons you learn is that you need to focus on where you’re going, not the fear. So, when the car begins to spin, you must control yourself and not turn to look at the wall that you’re sure you’re heading towards. Instead, you must focus all your attention on where you want to go. I always end the story with, “That’s what I did. I focused on where I wanted to go.” I’d say, about half of the people I tell this story to understand what I’m saying and the other half smile politely and walk away. Which category do you fall into? Perhaps, for this first post, I can go a little deeper into how I came to focus ...

A woman journalist interviewed me about working women who quit their jobs to take care of their children. She asked on the phone, “So what do housewives like you do all day long?” Taken aback, I explained that a ‘housewife’ works all day long to clean, cook and take care of family. She is very busy and she works hard. There is also a growing number of women who work to generate cash from home while they take care of the family. So they get to balance their work life with home life. I thought she understood what I meant. She insisted on seeing me in my house to see what I do. As soon as she sat down, she asked me earnestly, “So don’t you feel bored doing nothing all day long?” This time, I burst out laughing. It was very FUNNY! Perhaps I’ve become cynical. I’ve been asked these questions for the last eleven years, since I started to work from home after the birth of my daughter. It was a conscious choice that a modern mother made. It hasn’t made me a lesser woman. Instead, i...

A few years ago, I wrote an article about life-shifting (changing one’s views about work and living life). People who are life-shifters usually transform themselves from a rigid corporate or organisational life to a lifestyle whereby they do what they like and what means the most to them. Many readers from the corporate world wrote about their desire to become life-shifters but they didn’t know how. Quite a number of them were recently retrenched and they felt utterly lost. They wrote that they were hiding at home all day or pretended that they were still working in their former offices by going out of the house in the morning and coming back late. They also spoke about their low self-esteem. Reader HD lamented, “After I lost my job, everyone expressed their sympathies. It took me some time to get adjusted from a supposedly 'highly respected' successful career woman to a 'lowly' homemaker. It was painful. “I couldn’t handle it. There were days where I didn’t e...