Writing Course in Thailand

I’ve no idea if any writers in Thailand read my blog.

I tried to let writers in Bangkok Women’s Writers Group know about The Literary Consultancy’s proposed writing course on Koh Chang in April. Unfortunately, my first email didn’t receive an answer.

It’s a great opportunity for writers, already based in Thailand, to join a top class writing course with only a short flight down to Koh Chang. It’s only too easy to feel remote from the publishing world and its activities out here.

So I sent the email again with a little note wondering if it had been received or not. This time I did get an answer. It said that the Bangkok Women’s Writers Group ‘is a very large group and many members get a lot of emails’ and therefore the BWWG admin prefer to keep mailings to group activities. Apparently this is ‘so that members can trust that a mail is about the group and its activities.’

I do understand wanting to keep the email address safe from irrelevant promotions. I am sure that their care with our personal details is valued by everyone. I could even see that if I profited in some way from the TLC writing course that it might be considered wrong to promote it. But I don’t profit. My interest in the course is purely as a potential attendee and I contacted BWWG to let any other serious writers know that the opportunity existed.

I had thought that anybody writing seriously might value the tip off that a prestigious organisation, such as the Literary Consultancy, is holding a course in Thailand: I know I would. ‘The only exception [to this rule] would be if one of our members published a book or something like that’ said the BWWG reply. I suppose I had hoped that it might fit in to the ‘or something like that’ criteria.

So if anyone knows any writers in Thailand perhaps they’d like to pass the details on. I’m not on commission you know.

Deadline

I’m forever finding ways to procrastinate. Sometimes they’re genuine and other times … well they’re not. Yesterday I had the whole day to write and there was no artwork due, nothing else I had to do. I looked at my screen most of the day, fiddling. I toyed with tidying my desk to accommodate my new scanner. I need to replace my contact lenses; need my hair cut, but I haven’t got time, I’ve got to write. I am not writing. I finished Julia Bell’s Dirty Work (loved it); watched a bit of crappy TV, and then out of sheer boredom I began to think about writing.

This story just will not go away. My not writing would be so easy if the story just slipped out of my head, but it’s demanding to be written, and it’s nagging away at me. I can’t get away from it. It’s clamouring at me like a child with verbal diarrhoea. Every now and again I realise – often out of desperation to stop the din in my head – if I just wrote it, it might leave me alone.

I was due out at the Bangkok Women’s Writers Group last night, but with nothing to share, what is the point? I’m not a writer if I’m not writing. I went out anyway, to sit in Starbucks with my planning folder. I bought some coloured index cards, in the stationery shop, and this is the bag they gave me. (What does it mean – apart from someone needs some grammar lessons? Was it a message for me?)

I gave each of the four sub/plots a different colour card and I began to scribble on them, ideas for all the conflicts, scenes, dialogue, with all the characters. Today I am taking my bag of index cards, my planning folder, my folder with the 25,000 words that need rewriting, all my notes etc. I am going to get my contact lenses organised and then I’m going to spend the day out in coffee shops to write all ideas on index cards. Then I will assemble them into some sort of order and start writing.

I am seeing my UK trip as a sort of deadline: a get writing deadline or quit this pretending to write thing.

Writers in Bangkok

I went to an organised lunch yesterday. (No comments about ‘ladies who lunch’ please!)

We had a speaker, Anette, come from the Bangkok Women’s Writers Group to promote their book ‘Bangkok Blondes’ which was published about two months ago. I knew her already from bookcrossing.

Most of the books written by farangs (westerners) published here in Bangkok are tales by men of men falling in love with bar girls or how they ended up in the Bangkok Hilton (prison). They don’t have much kudos. Some may be self published and most aren’t of a very high standard.

‘Bangkok Blondes’ is published by Bangkok Book House and according to local media is doing rather well (sorry, English understatement happening there) It’s doing very well. The blurb says: “Very few books on Thailand are written by women. Bangkok Blondes is one of the first. It reflects the lives of creative women who live and write in Thailand – *The Bangkok Women’s Writers Group.”

It also says “The BWWG* … has been meeting in bars, coffee shops and shopping malls twice monthly since 2000…”

So why have I never told you all about it? Well, I’ve been. I went about 18 months, maybe two years ago and I went two or three times. The reason I gave, when asked why I didn’t continue to go, was because I didn’t like it.

I think I felt a fraud. I didn’t feel like a writer … and I do … a bit … now. Back then, the idea of showing anyone anything I’d written appalled me. But I’ve done that now and while it's scary, so far no-one’s said ‘blimey JJ, you’re a crap writer.’

I’ve been toying about going back and so today I asked Anette to put me on the mailing list again. I will report back how I got on. It would be great to meet other writers in Bangkok, now that I feel a bit more qualified.