How Did I Get So Good At Writing*.
*On Thursday morning I received this email:
… I know this would *probably* get buried in your inbox, but how'd you get so good at writing? It's just so gripping. It's so good, you're probably the only guy I will never unsubscribe from on my inbox.
After checking it wasn’t a troll or spam, I told Dyan that just because she likes my writing, doesn’t mean it’s good - we could both be broken.
How can I transpose my life, my existence, this expression, that is replicable?
You want to write like me, you just have to be like me.
Be born in the 80s. Have parents with amusing expectations. Have a brother who brings your Archie comics from boarding school. Learn English through the comics.
Go to a Chinese primary school, the same one your mother was a teacher.
Get beaten when you score 95. Get beaten when you make a mistake. Confuse not being beaten as a reward.
Let food be your ‘yard time’, your only release from prison primary school life.
Be told you're not athletic. Be told not to go out. Be fat. Be told you're fat. Be told you have to finish everything.
Develop a sense of humor as a defense mechanism. Learn to laugh. Learn to laugh at yourself.
Be socially awkward. Be alone at high school. Be the champion of a speech competition at school, only to be told the results were mixed up, thus contracting impostor syndrome for the rest of your life.
Watch a lot of movies. I mean, a lot. Like once a week, alone in the cinema because, well, you have no friends. Read, read a lot. Read Murakami, read wuxia novels, read sci-fi novels, read self-help books. Read them in Chinese, then English. Read psychology books.
Let exam scores define your self-worth. Be a disappointment to your parents, coming last in class. Dream of going to America to study. Watch the second World Trade Center collapse the night before your final exam. Be the pride of your parents, fluking straight A's in the final exam.
Start fresh in Australia. Enrol in an architecture course in Melbourne. Be socially awkward. Get culture shock. Quit within half a semester. Family money wasted. See your parents forget your birthday.
Be shallow, and attracted to the advertising industry. Enrolled in an advertising course. Waste more money. Collect advertising award annuals. Learn good writing from bad writing. Good ads from bad ads. Peak early. Win a global student award. Travel to London. Overhear your lecturer telling the other that if you were not Asian, doors would've opened wide for you. Be promised a scholarship, only to be appropriated by the new dean for something else.
Travel to Japan. Have three bowls of ramen in a night. Get the cliche stuff out of the system. Be collecting books, mistaking that as being creative. Be into cameras. Be into photography. Be yourself. Don’t be yourself.
Be flown to Hong Kong for a job interview for a week, and be told you can't be a writer by a guy with broken English. Be promised a job, then withdrawn due to visa complications. Be given a job in Melbourne a week before deciding to move to Sydney. Be an art director in a multi-national agency. Be told you’re lucky, be told you’re shit. Let income define your self-worth. Let awards define your self-worth. Get retrenched.
Get a girlfriend. Help girlfriend with her business. Shoot your first wedding in America. Shoot weddings during weekends. Be a food photographer. Be an architecture photographer. Be a family photographer. Start a food blog. Be there when social media was wholesome. Have a fight with restaurant owners. Watch social media go to shit.
Get married. Have a child. Be sleep deprived. Let your child’s happiness define your self-worth. Be a shit parent. Be a good parent. Be a grown-up. Be cooking a lot.
Read old books. Write shitty things. Write good things. Write honest things. Be lucky. Ride the wave during COVID to have hundreds and thousands of people reading your rants.
Make new friends.
Have friends who will give you jobs.
…
Speaking about job-giving friends, Medibank Private has commissioned me to write about myself in their latest Live Better Magazine.
I was having a hard time shoehorning this news to you guys, but hey, thanks Dyan for giving me the clickbait title, and Mike the opportunity from the inside.
Apart from being me, you also need nepotism, and accept it wholeheartedly.
The article bought me a really nice jacket.
Second article coming soon, so I’m officially a freelance writer.