During the islandwide curfew and lockdown due to the Covid-19 / Corona pandemic in Sri Lanka, 'Pick A Book' (Pick a Book encourages the reading habit by getting all participants to select a book, read and research on it thoroughly and present a summary which also helps to hone his or her public speaking, communication and presentation skills.) organized a webinar which was held on May 01st, 2020 at 07.00 PM for budding writers which I also participated in.
The title of the webinar was,
Been thinking of writing your first book for a long time? Why not use this lockdown season?
Join our webinar with Capt. Elmo Jayawardena, One of Sri Lanka's top authors
The moderator of the event was Mr. Ragulan Tharmakulasingam, a founder of 'Pick A Book'.
My cousin sister Rashmini De Silva sent me the link to get registered to this event.
The next paragraphs included in this blog post are a summary of what Captain Elmo Jayawardena discussed during the webinar according to me.
Captain Elmo Jayawardena is a pilot by profession and also is a part-time writer who has won many reputed literary related awards. His works are Sam's Story (2001), The Last Kingdom of Sinhalay (2005), Rainbows in Braille (2008), and Kakiyan The Story of a Crow (2019).
According to Capt. Elmo Jayawardena when you decide to write it is vital to decide what are you going to write. It should be either short stories or a novel.
How to start writing is simply finding a story.
You can either select ethnic violence (30-year-old civil war) or the 71' / 89' riots in Sri Lanka for example.
Capt. Elmo Jayawardena said that he was an accidental writer. He said that he is not a professional writer or a lecturer in the respective literary field.
He believes that there are no hard and fast rules in writing. Let your imagination be free.
How to find plot and stories is through giving life to the experiences you have.
Write a short story and in one day and polish the plot and the storyline later taking time to improve writing skills and fight barriers in writing.
To find plots to writing go to a bus stand with a notebook and a pen and write them down. Collect your experiences.
When you select themes for your writing whether it is for children or adults is up to you. But if you select for children the demand is higher.
And also since the reading population in Sinhala is higher in Sri Lanka, writing in Sinhala will give you a wider readership.
Mr. Elmo uses the computer to type his literature because there is an inbuilt grammar and a spelling check available.
Mr. Elmo emphasized that the editor and writer cannot be the same person. To avoid biases and mistakes being repeated.
Mr. Elmo also said that "If you don't have the discipline to sacrifice from your personal life it will be hard to proceed as a writer."
Capt. Elmo said when asked about the number of pages that it is secondary. He believes that it is highly required to focus on the process of writing. Hence the imagination requires freedom.
The process of writing simple according to Capt. Elmo is as follows,
(01) Decide to Write
(02) Decide to write: Short stories or a novel
(03) Decide the publisher
(04) Decide the readers
He personally said to new writers to use platforms like AMAZON.COM and to initiate a personal launch to get reviews accordingly by readers.
Process of publishing and selling a book based on Capt. Elmo's experience
(01) Write a book
(02) Get it edited
(03) Give it to a publisher
(04) Get it handed over to a publishing manager
(05) If okay or approved sign contract with royalties
(06) accordingly, get it published
The harsh realities of writing business and publishing
* You can't select a publisher but the publisher selects you.
* But based on your identity you can select the publisher if you have the relevant backing.
A question was raised during the webinar related to copyrights?
- Usually, the publisher handles the copyrights.
Types of editors to finalize the writing project according to Capt. Elmo
(01) Grammar editor
(02) Wordplay editor
(03) Third-party editor and reader
The daunting task of self-publishing
* Requires a good printer (Cover design, printing)
* Finding a Distributor is hard (E.g. :- Perera & Hussein / Darshana Ralapenawa)
Captain Elmo also emphasized that the publisher can influence and impact the content of the writing.
When a participant asked about the originality of writing Capt. Elmo mentioned the freedom of imagination.
When a participant raised a question about writing and plots Capt. Elmo said that he has never written anything with an exact plot.
Capt. Elmo has written everything in English and he believes that translating a book is highly required because it will expand the readership.
Issues related to ISBN (International Standard Book Number) were also discussed in the webinar.
Capt. Elmo said that ISBN is a complex legality issue and please always make sure to handle it properly with the publisher.
Some questions were raised during the end of the webinar,
(01) How to overcome writer's block?
What Capt. Elmo would do is he would have a short run outside and take a walk back refreshed.
(02) How to find out that someone has written about the plot that I'm currently writing?
That is based on luck was the captain's answer.
He further stated that forget everything else and start writing.
Don't think of the destination, think of the journey.
(03) Is it required to put references to your writing?
What Capt. Elmo said to this question was that he never left a bibliography. He wrote about history-based events. He said that he read thousands of books about history.
Costing and pricing of books
Capt. Elmo stated that he said to his publishers to always price the books at the lowest price.
During the webinar, a participant raised a question on how to become a prominent writer?
The two steps for this target by Capt. Elmo was to,
(01) Target for awards
(02) or at least get shortlisted.
A participant raised a question about the demand for what kind of genre of books people or readers mostly buy?
Capt. Elmo stated that it is mostly for children's books.
A participant raised a question about efficiency and effectiveness in writing?
What Capt. Elmo said to that was that the more you write the more efficient you become.
A question was raised about nonfiction writing and what capt. said was writing about professional life experiences would be great.
Everything depends he said. He believes that a three-wheeler driver might have better life experiences than a surgeon.
One of the final questions from one of the participants was whether have you been challenged for what you have written?
The short and sweet answer by the Capt. was that he was never challenged.
Finally, Captain Elmo thanked everyone and Pick A Book for organizing such a webinar.
