Speaking at Young Writer’s Seminar 2010

It's 2.30am as I post this.

In about seven hours time, I'll be at The Arts House. Scheduled to speak, with my friend Lucian, at one of the concurrent session titled "The Age Of Blogging - "Why We Write: The Future of Content-Creation".

Originally, we were to take 45mins each. But serendipitously, Lucian contacted me via IM Chat about a week ago. Asked if I'd be interested in a combined talk, since our topics had some overlapping points.

Sure!

It gave us a good excuse to seriously try out the collaborative capabilities of Google Wave, heh.


It was fitting that we were collaborating on this. The gist of our talk was on how writing has evolved beyond plain text, how communication has evolved and how that would relate to "writers", writing in the context of creativity and collaboration (here's where I'll talk about Creative Commons), an introduction/ exploration of Transmedia (Lucian's pet topic).

And we intend to provoke the audience with this basic question: "Why do you write"?

The organisers say 160 participants have signed up; mainly students from polytechnics, junior colleges and the local universities.

Up till a few hours ago, Lucian and I were still working and discussing on our presentation, typing away on our laptops, at our own homes, connected over the Internet.

We were still debating (amicably) whether collaborative story-writing would work in reality. Lucian felt that "the crafting of an individual story is always best achieved alone" and that "the storyline needs to originate from a single source".

I agreed with the part about writing being an essentially solitary process (writing by committee doesn't work, in my experience).

But I argued that collaboration could also be about editing, proof-reading, feedback.

Also, collaboration doesn't simply mean "only writers collaborate". Why not "writers + illustrators + musicians"? The most memorable tales I've come across are Children's stories, often a collaboration between the writer and the artist.

I also feel that it can be collaboration across time, long after the writer is dead. Like how I compose song lyrics adapted from public domain poems.

That's a form of collaboration to me.

We'll be posting our slides online.

I think Lucian is still doing up the finishing touches as I post this.


[image source: literarysociety.wordpress.com]

All In! Young Writers Seminar 2010
Theme: Writing and the New Media
Date: 20 February 2010 (Saturday)
Time: 9.30am – 7.00pm
Venue: The Arts House (1 Old Parliament Lane)

I took a look at the list of speakers. Very impressive (4 pages worth).

I joked to Lucian how we'd be lucky to get five people for our session. Out of which four might have wandered into the room by mistake. Heh.