Welcome to the first episode of The Creative Life, where I speak to creative entrepreneurs about their work, business and dreams. This is a project that I’ve been nurturing in my heart for a long, long time, so I’m really excited to finally launch it! There will be one TCL episode per month, and I plan to have at least 5 episodes for the 2020 season.

Interviewing authors is something I loved to do as a journalist. I’ve always planned to continue the work when I left the newspaper, but hesitated for the longest time because I’m a perfectionist. I didn’t just want to write articles. I wanted to create videos! A podcast! But I don’t have the right equipment. I don’t know how to edit videos well and I don’t even know how to podcast. But I realise that you’ll never be 100% ready to do a creative project. You have to dive in, make a bunch of mistakes and learn along the way. So, during the Movement Control Order in Malaysia, I spoke to a few writers via Skype and recorded the conversation.

So, it’s rather apt that in the first TCL episode, we speak about perfectionism and creativity. Alwyn Lau decided to self publish his novel during the recent Movement Control Order in Malaysia. He’s a columnist for The Malay Mail and a trainer in real life. He has never written a novel in his life, but that didn’t stop him. Like me, he dove in to his creative project, mistakes bedamned. Here’s what he has to say about his experience:

Do “like” the video and subscribe – “liking” a video will make the video more visible. Let’s tell the world about our talented Malaysian authors! 🙂

Here are some of the things we spoke about during the interview:

• How and why Alwyn went from writing about Malaysian life and politics in a column to writing it in a fiction format. He talks about the inspiration behind his unique fiction format. We both love Mosaic novels, and we both adore Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. But what are mosaic novels? Listen on!
• Alwyn took about 2 months to write the novel, inspired by the events of GE14 and spoke about how Stephen King’s tips were the backbone of his efforts.
• Alwyn’s tenacity in getting his novel publish resulted in a publishing deal, but it wasn’t a smooth journey.
• Why he turned to self publishing and the nitty gritty details of getting his book from Word document to an ebook that he could sell on retail outlets like Smashwords.
• Alwyn also talks about his DIY approach to marketing. His previous experience in helping his wife publicise her art classes on Facebook came in handy. Despite his natural adversity to advertising and marketing, he thought himself various ways to advertise and market his book. “Repetition and variety is the key,” says Alwyn. “It’s fun and you can play around with it.” Also, he really enjoys it when he gets unexpected messages from readers who would request if they could review his book or buy multiple copies.

In the end, his novel-writing adventure has given him a healthy appreciation of authors. “I’ve learned to appreciate the grueling task of writing and coming up with plots,” he says.

Alwyn’s book, Jampi, is available on Smashwords.