Member-only story
A Tale Of Two Panels
More lessons from the Singapore Writers Festival 2019
Over the course the ten-day long Singapore Writers Festival 2019, I tried to attend as many sessions as my (limited) time and energy permitted. From the scintillating festival prologue by Marlon James on “What constitutes a story and who gets to tell it” to the soft but haunting lecture by Claudia Dey on “Mothers as makers of death”, there was much to appreciate.
For a more pragmatic perspective, I attended two panels — one on the Plausibility of Passion where three writers (Felix Cheong, Elaine Chiew and Jon Gresham) discussed the annoying but essential question of “Can you make a living as a writer?” The answer, a resounding and unanimous ‘no’ from the panelists must have been disappointing to the young writers who filled the room beyond its seating capacity.
The entry barrier to writing may be low, but so are the rewards. All of the panelists had held lucrative jobs prior to making the switch to prioritise their writing. Most of them made a living from jobs that were either in the writing sphere or complementary to their writing lives. While the non-material rewards to writing may be priceless, most things in life come with a price tag. The key takeaway for me was — Don’t quit your day job. Yet.
