Saturday, June 07, 2014

Silverfish Writing Programme -- open for registration

Silverfish Writing Programme for July 2014 

now open for registration




The next intake for the Silverfish Writing Programme will be on Saturday, July 12, 2014, and will run for 10 consecutive weeks, right through fasting month, (except for holidays) from 10.30am to 12.30pm. Registration will open on June 1, 2014. The past few programmes have been extremely popular and we have had to turn away many late inquiries, because the maximum number of participants we can accommodate is 10 (ten). We have, to date, received 30 inquiries already. So we encourage those who are interested to register early and avoid the last minute rush. (Please, tell your friends who are interested, too.) The registration fee will be RM1000.00 per participant for the full ten week programme, but an early bird discount of 10% will apply until (and including) June 30, 2014.

The world is full of stories. Humans are the only storytelling animals on the planet. We may miss meals (ask your teenager buried in a book or your aunt or mum hooked on a television soap) but not our stories. Even in famine-stricken zones, while people wait for the food trucks to arrive, they tell one another stories to keep alive. In war zones, where life is in danger every single minute, people cannot resist telling stories. All religions have tons of stories that are constantly repeated. Stories are part of our very being, our claim to be human.

We are surrounded by stories every waking minute of the day. When we turn on our radio or television to listen to the news, or to watch a drama or sitcom or even a cooking show, when we open our newspapers or surf the net for news, when we go to the movies, to a dance, listen to a song, or look at a painting, when we go to the office, pitch a proposal to our boss, our clients, meet our co-workers when we relax over tea and gossip, or tell them about our day, or listen to their stories. When we read books, we read stories. And stories will make us laugh or cry, or be angry, and invoke dozens of other emotions. We will love characters, or we hate them. Good stories never leave us indifferent. We have a desperate need to tell stories in whatever form. That’s why some of us want to become writers: to tell our stories. But what do publishers want?

That's what the Silverfish Writing Programme is all about: what publishers look for.

READ MORE ABOUT THE PROGRAMME and REGISTER