My dad is no longer around, but he comes to visit me sometimes.
I’ll be lost in thought when his voice will appear out of thin air and whisper something in my ear, or his face will emerge and I’ll remember a scene that we shared. In those moments, he feels very real, and I sense his presence, even though I haven’t seen him in ten years.
My most vivid memory of my dad is on a summer’s evening when I was eight or nine. Since it was a scorching hot evening, where the ‘cold’ tap water was lukewarm, and you would sweat doing absolutely nothing, I crept out of my study and joined him in the air-conditioned living room. He was watching some TV while eating raw cucumber with a soy sauce and garlic mix. “Gross,” I said, watching him devour it. He smiled and broke me a piece. “Don’t hate something until you’ve tried it.”
Reluctantly, I took the cucumber, dipped it in the awful mix and put it in my mouth. It was the worst thing I had ever tasted: it was cold but warm; crunchy but liquidy; bland but spicy. It took immense self-control to keep it down.
“That sucked,” I said with a groan.
“Well, now you know.” And he burst out laughing.
There are other memories too, ones that randomly hit me out of nowhere. Words he’d said; food he’d cooked; things he’d do; places we’d been. People leave strange, little memories of themselves when they die. They bear so little significance at the time, but looking back, they are what keep them alive.
Yesterday I was sitting in the corner of a cafe reading a book when a stranger approached me. She was caucasian, with fair skin and dark brown hair that fell straight down past her face but curled up at her shoulders, and she carried a cream tote bag around her shoulder.
“Excuse me,” she said. “I didn’t mean to interrupt, but what are you reading?”
I smiled, and showed her the cover. “Norwegian Wood, by Murakami.” I said.
“Ah,” she beamed. “Any friend of Murakami is a friend of mine.”
We chatted for a short while, exchanging favourite books and recommendations. She was a law student, I found out, and was going to spend the afternoon reading court cases. “My favourite book is To Kill a Mockingbird. I think that’s the book that inspired me to do law.”
Eventually, our conversation began to lull, and she sat down at a nearby table, while I went back to my book.
Norweigian Wood is a bit of an unusual novel in that it is more a traditional, slow-paced romance piece as opposed to Murakami’s trademark magic realism, but there are some turns of phrases that really move you, and make you think. When I first read it two years ago, I didn’t think much of it. But re-reading it now, it felt fresh, and had life in each paragraph, not in a way that bursts out at you, but one that shines dimly, like a firefly lighting a desert; gentle but sure. As I resumed reading, I found this passage:
“His name was Nagasawa. He was two years older than me, and because he was doing legal studies at the prestigious Tokyo University, he was on the fast track to national leadership. We lived in the same dorm and knew each other only by sight, until one day when I was reading Gatsby in a sunny spot in the dining hall. He sat down next to me and asked what I was reading. When I told him, he asked if I was enjoying it. “This is my third time,” I said, “and every time I find something new that I like even more than the last.”
“This man says he has read The Great Gatsby three times,” he said as if to himself. “Well, any friend of Gatsby is a friend of mine…””
Last month, I began an experiment to publish one blog post every day. It was fun, and I’m glad I tried it, but have decided to stop. Here’s why:
1. My writing often felt incomplete. One day is not enough time to choose a topic, explore its nuances, create a story around it, and come out with something meaningful. My writing felt shallow, and I found myself rushing to a conclusion to get something posted. I didn’t like that: I was sacrificing quality for quantity. There is truth in getting better with more repetitions, but at some point you need to create work you are truly proud of.
2. Posting every day was taking a long time. I would spend 2-4 hours each day on a post, and that took away from reading or working towards more serious writing projects. Before this experiment, I would dedicate a day to reading and thinking before writing, or writing more short stories. Now, those parts are missing from my practice.
As a result, I’ll go back to my old publishing schedule: Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. That way, I’ll be able to take time to rest and read, but more importantly, write without feeling the need to rush to conclusions.
It’s interesting to note that the results of my experiment are similar to those of Derek Sivers, who also tried writing daily a few years ago. Despite this, I believe there is still utility in daily posting, which I’ll explore another time, but for now, for me at this time, this experiment comes to a gentle close.
For interest, these were the 30 posts that wrote, starting from the announcement of my experiment:
This is a fictional piece. Trying to experiment with storytelling.
Badminton. Sitting down, chatting to the doubles partner I just met and played with. Although we had never met before that day, we worked well together; we each knew where we were meant to be on the court, and where we should move during the rally, without a single word being said. We lose a close game but aren’t too upset, since the other pair were obviously much more trained.
We chat mostly about sports. He shares his best injuries playing rugby and football and his multiple visits to hospital. Gets to be the man of the hour, he says. It must feel good, I say, then ask how he got into badminton? He pauses a bit at this. Then suddenly:
“You got a kid?”
I shake my head.
“Having a child is probably the craziest thing that has happened to me. When she was born, I felt my ego dissolve a little. The centre of the universe was no longer me, but shared with this little angel that was mine – she was mine! Can you believe that?”
I nod my head.
“And now, my life isn’t to be the man of the hour anymore. It’s to make my girl feel like a queen, because when she wins, I win too. So I had to put aside these sports that were all about me making flashy plays and getting injured, and take care of myself so I can be a better father.”
The more I write, the more I find that there is much beauty in the world, if only we might stop to observe. There are stories behind every person, and street, and building, and even if we find ourselves stuck in a room devoid of all senses, we will always have ourselves left to discover.
The task that fiction writers must embark on is showcasing their world to the reader through nothing but words. For without a scene, there is no story, and a great scene can sell a book by itself, just as a bad scene can ruin one entirely. The great difficulty, and what separates the novice from the great, is how well they can share their world to others.
From Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet:
“If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for to the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place. And even if you were in some prison the walls of which let none of the sounds of the world come to your senses—would you not then still have your childhood, that precious, kingly possession, that treasure-house of memories? Turn your attention thither.”
Today as I was cycling through the city, I looked up and realised that it was a fine day.
The sun was warm but not scorching, bright but not blinding. On the sidewalk, families and couples walked to and fro, and there was a sense of excitement in the air. A little boy, happily slamming the traffic light button with his fist, with his mother shaking her head; a girl, cautiously approaching another girl reading a book, and tapping her on the shoulder, and the two, recognising each other, sharing hugs and yelps of elation; an old couple, walking nearby, nearly knocked over by the ferocity of this hugging, but smiling in light of the girls’ apologies, saying, “have a great day.”
The traffic light turned green, and as I pedalled off, the road felt firm and responsive, my legs felt strong and awake, and I felt like I could dance with my bike up and down the street. As I took a deep breath, I smelt something unusual: fried chicken. I looked to my right and saw the door to a fast food joint had just swung open. The waiter, ready to usher new customers in, caught my glance. We shared a smile.
“Even so, my memory has grown increasingly dim, and I have already forgotten any number of things. Writing from memory like this, I often feel a pang of dread. What if I’ve forgotten the most important thing? What if somewhere inside me there is a dark limbo where all the truly important memories are heaped and slowly turning into mud?
Be that as it may, it’s all I have to work with. Clutching these faded, fading, imperfect memories to my breast, I go on writing this book with all the desperate intensity of a starving man sucking on bones. This is the only way I know to keep my promise to Naoko.”
“Imagine all the people you meet in your life. There are so many. They come in like waves, trickling in and out with the tide. Some waves are much bigger and make more of an impact than others. Sometimes the waves bring with them things from deep in the bottom of the sea and they leave those things tossed onto the shore. Imprints against the grains of sand that prove the waves had once been there, long after the tide recedes.”
“Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity. This is one reason why meaningful change does not require radical change. Small habits can make a meaningful difference by providing evidence of a new identity. And if a change is meaningful, it is actually big. That’s the paradox of making small improvements.”
Here were three different genres of books, and three different takes on the theme of memory. To Murakami, memory is a precious but fleeting resource – something that must be preserved, for the memory of someone affirms their existence. To Colleen Hoover, memory is something that is dependent on other people, for we all contain imprints of others, and some touch us a little more, a little deeper, than the rest. And to James Clear, memory is something fundamental to self-improvement: the small habits we maintain produce evidence for a new identity, shifting us towards the person we want to become. Each one provides a different perspective on this topic, each with its own nugget of wisdom.
Through reading different books simultaneously, you create conversations between different authors that would never occur when reading one alone. Different concepts and imagery bounce off each other to form a wonderful mix of colour and themes that cannot be experienced any other way.
As a general rule, I always have at least one fiction and one non-fiction book going at the same time, and occasionally a third for light reading. The concoction of ideas that come as a result is fantastic.
Each month, I take down hundreds of lines of notes from these newsletters. Some of the insights I’ve gained through them have been the inspiration for many of my best ideas. If I ever need a goldmine of new ideas, my inbox is where I go.
In primary school, I found maths classes to be tedious.
It was filled with questions like these:
They felt repetitive, dull and lifeless. There was no value I could ascertain from repeating these calculations. I couldn’t see how doing these were a good use of my time. I would rather be at home sleeping, running around with friends, or playing games.
One day, our maths teacher was sick, and we had a replacement teacher. The replacement was actually a new English teacher, but since there were no other math teachers, the principal begged her to fill in, and she decided to give it a go. When she walked in, I sat at my desk, expecting her to give us more tedious questions. Except she didn’t. She walked up on the whiteboard and stood in front of us with a marker in her hand.
She pointed to one of the kids in the front row.
“What’s your name?” she said.
“George.”
“Say George here has these two pizzas.” She began drawing two circles. “And say each pizza has eight slices.” And she drew a line for the cuts. “How many pizza slices does George have?”
“16!” a girl from the back shouted.
“Great! Two times eight slices is sixteen.” She smiled. “And now, let’s say George has a great big party over and invites eleven of his mates over, so there’s 12 people in total. How many pieces does each person get?”
There was a slightly longer pause. “16 over 12,” someone said. “4 over 3!” someone added.
“Fantastic,” beamed the teacher. “Now for a trickier question… what’s the minimum number of pizzas George needs to order so he and all his friends at the party get one whole slice each?”
A longer pause. “12?” someone guessed. The teacher shook her head. “Try again.” And after some discussion, we finally arrived at the solution: one.
This memory stuck with me because it was the first time I actually cared about maths. Through telling a story, this teacher got a class of six years olds to care about this world she had created with George and an imaginary party. There was a real problem – dividing the pizza amongst us – and a tangible solution that could be solved with fractions. From that day, I realised that maths had real utility – and it was fun.
Since then, I’ve found that storytelling is a far more powerful tool for teaching information than what meets the eye. We tend to think of storytelling as limited in the realm of fiction writing, but what if its power far exceeds this?
Some of my favourite non-fiction books – Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty, Outliers: The Story of Success, Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance – all have very different subjects. But one thing they all have in common: they all tell great stories. Empire of Pain tells the story of the Sackler family in the opioid epidemic. Outliers explores what makes people exceptional though case studies. Better describes some of the common vices in modern medicine, and what is needed to be a good doctor. The main messages in these books can be distilled down to a few lines. But the power of these books is by telling us stories, making us care, and then giving us the punchline. The thrill of learning something new is heightened by the need to know.
Being a good storyteller is thus not simply a tool for writing novels. It is, rather, a fundamental component of getting a message across, in a way that intrigues your audience.
