Blog Posts

Bullets over body copy

4/2/2016

'A clear sentence is no accident', says the author of 'On writing well'. Well, looks like you don't have to look far to find examples of these little 'accidents'. Just pick up any magazine or browse any website and you'll see most of the article headlines will have a number in them. 10 ways to improve your sex life. 37 websites for free graphics. 8 ways to get over your ex. Even football sites are learning precisely 5 lessons from every weekend match. Nothing more, nothing less. Just 5 lesson, derby or not.
I thought headlines like these died along with their 'how-to' cousins. Apparently not. Left to these guys, they would probably rewrite the classic Lemon ad with "3389 reasons why a VW is better" (3389 being the number of QC inspectors in those days). You can understand why, though. It's sheer laziness.I mean why go through hours of writing and rewriting when you can easily crank out a bunch of 'X ways to do Y' headlines? You can spend that time more productively, by hitting the like button on cat videos and posting close-up shots of food.
I don't know when it will stop, but it's spreading like a cliche. Close on its heels are the bullet points (bullets don't kill good copy, people do, to coin a phrase). While bullets have their place, they shouldn't be the only way to express one's point of view. But 'the-death-by-bullets' approach is dictated by the 'X ways to do Y' headline. And with the proliferation of online material on every topic by anyone with access to a computer and the internet, coupled with the short-attention span of the audience, it seems decent copy will have to roll over and die.
But you do see decent pieces sprinkled across the web, dodging the bullets so to speak, leading you to believe that there is still hope for well-written articles. Speaking of which, here's a link that you might find useful: http://goo.gl/KczFQJ

To Do: Buy vegetables, cheese, milk and a painting.

8/1/2016

Something arty happened on the way to grocery shopping a couple of weekends ago. We picked up a lovely painting from Little Red Art's pop-up exhibition at Leisure Park, Kallang. They were just setting up the shop when we spotted this strikingly beautiful painting of Buddhist monks. The chirpy ex-banker running the outfit told us that they don't sell copies and hence this was a one-of-a-kind piece. And at around 500SGD it was extremely reasonable too.
The following week, after learning that the show was still on, we went back and picked up another piece (a HongKong cityscape) for less than $300. Besides the money-well-spent angle, there's a feel-good factor of supporting emerging artists in the SEA region. They showcase photographs too if you are into pixel-perfect art. Below are the paintings we bought and you can find them at http://www.little-red-art.com

The Fukushima Love Affair

14/12/2015

"A cheating wife deserves to be killed"

19/11/2015

Bullets over body copy

15/10/2015

Everywhere you look these days you are bombarded with headlines that promise 7 ways to improve sex life or 28 sites that will change your life or 76 ways to stop going insane from reading articles with titles with numbers in them. That and articles with bullet pointed lists.
I thought headlines like these died circa 1960 when Bill Bernbach revolutionised advertising with intelligence and wit. But no. Someone who was not on the memo sent by all the great ads from Bernbach, Abbot and the like crawled out of a stone, found a keyboard and just continued from where they left off. If it were up to these guys, they would rewrite (using write loosely here) the classic Lemon ad with "3389 reason why a VW is better" because that's the number of inspectors checking each VW. Or worse. I don't know when it will stop, but it's spreading like a cliche.It is as worrying as the spread of SMS lingo (omg!).
Close on its heels are the bullet points (bullets don't kill good copy, people do). While bullet points have their place in copy, they shouldn't be the only way to express one's point of view. It's just plain lazy or incompetence. But that's dictated by the headline, which, these days is all about '15 ways to something' or '27 ways to not do something'. With the proliferation of online material on every topic, and given the short-attention span of the audience, it is a genuine worry.
But you do see decent pieces sprinkled across the web, dodging the bullets so to speak, which give you hope that there is still hope for well-written articles.

Death of a special child

26/9/2015

Three basic qualities you must possess in life

18/9/2015

Recently, someone asked me this on Quora, I thought I'll reproduce what I wrote to that question:
Curiosity. Being curious about the things and people around your will lead you to interesting discoveries about them, and eventually yourself. You'll read more, study more and observe more. It will help you step out of your comfort zone and teach you important life lessons. Knowledge gathered in this way, will hopefully make you an expert on some topic or the other and help you earn a livelihood. But all knowledge is limited, and almost all the decisions you make will be based on insufficient data. And you realise this is why great men like, from Socrates to Feynman, have always said ' I don't know'. Because when you say you don't know, you learn. And that teaches you:
Humility. You understand that you are not the be-all and end-all as your ego would have you believe, and that the world doesn't revolve around you or your opinions. And that just like there are people worse than you, there are people better than you. Humility teaches you that the more you know, the more there is to know, so you don't become arrogant. And that when things are not going your way, it doesn't mean that they are not happening the way they should. You learn not to rush and this brings us to:
Patience. Everything takes its own time. The emperor and the beggar will have to wait nine months for the baby. A seed will take its time to become a tree, physical or metaphorical. It will teach you to be gentle with yourself, your loved ones and the planet. It'll make you realise, as sages have said, that the universe is unfolding as it should whether you are aware of it or not. This leads us to wisdom, which will teach us that there are probably more than three qualities you should possess.

Beauty is in the eye of your phone camera

27/8/2015

On our recent trip to New Zealand which included a visit to Kaikoura where we were lucky to watch four sperm whales, Hector dolphins and the Dusky dolphins, which was a rarity, said our whale watching guide. They know when the whale is going to the Flipper thing, so they tell you to wait and tell you exactly when to press the button as their experience in the business and the elevated seat in the boat gives them the advantage.
She also said something very insightful and true. "See with your eyes, and then take the photos". Seems obvious but ever since we have been given the power to take a photo in our palm, we don't seem to "see" our world through eyes anymore. Everything is seen through a social media likeability lens. See a rainbow? Snap and forget. See a fight? Snap, post and wait for 'likes'. See something cute? Snap.
Don't get me wrong, we need to keep records of what we see to share and treasure them later, especially something rare as a sperm whale. But we don't have to rely on our phone camera all the time, do we? Can't we see the world with our eyes, enjoy the sights, take in the beauty, marvel at Mother Nature's creations and then take a photo?

Book Trailer

4/7/2015

I made this book trailer using Keynote to make the slides, Garageband for music, and iMovie for editing. Initially, I took a couple of Udemy courses on PowToons, a free platform for making short videos. I used Audacity to record and manipulate my VO (you have to do everything when you are an indie-author) but figured it worked better with Keynote slides. The whole exercise in self-publishing has exposed me to a wide spectrum of tools and learnings. It's fascinating.

New book released!

1/7/2015

I know you are supposed to be sparing with the use of exclamation points but if the culmination of a year of writing, rewriting, deleting, trashing, coming up with new story ideas, revising, editing, rewriting doesn't warrant a single !, I don't know what does.
Well, so it's finally here, my second collection of short stories with a twist. It's titled 'The Last Meal on Haight-Ashbury and other short stories with a twist'. Here's a brief description: It takes you from the sixties hung-over Haight-Ashbury to the guilt-ridden mind of a mother who feels relieved over the death of her special child. From the powdery white snows of Kanazawa to the dark, deceitful schemes of an antique dealer. There are tales of an incorrigible Casanova helping a couple on the brink of breaking up and those of a five-dollar bill changing the life of an advertising veteran with twenty years under his belt. A phone call goes awry in Napoli while a grandfather clock may prove to tell more than just time.
I've read it so many times while revising and editing that I feel like Henry Ford, who, when he asked his staff at a board meeting when they were going to stop the campaign for his latest car, was told that they hadn't even started running it yet.
I should thank my wife who went through it with a fine tooth-cliche and made sure I didn't stop at the good enough stage. She probably read it more times than I did during the process of editing.
I did a final check before publishing it to Amazon, it should be live by tomorrow. I've published it on Gumroad which took all of two minutes, you can buy the PDF by clicking the 'Click to buy' on the right-hand side of this page, and also on my other site, www.shortstories.guru.
Hope you like it. Do let me know what you think, your feedback helps. And help spread the word.