About
About this blog
This blog is about sharing my ideas and experiences writing, being an entrepreneur and other topics that interest me. If you are reading my blog, chances are you are looking for some info about starting to write your favorite topics, starting and/or growing your business, books review, tips, how to and other topics that I will write about in this blog. I hope you will enjoy your visit and gain some useful information. Don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.
About Me
Well, where do I start? You have to read my post to find out who I’m.
But let’s talk about how I became a writer. I started to get interested in writing in high school. I kept a diary where I wrote my observations about what happened around me. It was more like me, myself and I - kind of writing. It was at this time that I formed an identity. And being a writer was one of them.
When I was 13 to 15 years old, I read a lot of children’s fiction—Nancy Drew Series, The Hardy Boys, everything with an adventure and investigation theme in it. I read the translation in the Malay Language. Occasionally I read my favorite children’s fiction in English - with a dictionary next to me. Although I didn’t understand a lot of the English words, especially if it involved something of a local color, I enjoyed reading it nonetheless.
Then, my classmates who were more advanced than me introduced me to the romance novels—the ones with the cover pictures that make you fluster. When you’re 16 years old, in the pre-Internet days, finding these novels definitely made you hide at the back of the school building with your friends–talking and giggling.
That was when I told God to let me be competent in the English language within a week so I can read the novels. I never mastered the language within a week, but certainly I got hooked on reading those novels.
But school got in the way. I stopped reading fiction when I went to the university. Writing to get my degree was an agony and I felt miserable for the entire four years.
However I did sneak in to take the Creative Writing Course and each of us were assigned to write a novel by the end of the semester in order to get a grade. I was on cloud nine.
After I graduated with a degree in Psychology, I didn’t wait. I plunged myself into being a real writer and was published within six months. And I never looked back for the next two full years. I couldn’t be happier to see my name on the cover of my young adult novels or to receive bylines in the newspapers. The smile was so wide–from ear to ear—I felt like a dog with all teeth showing including the fangs and molars.
It was back then.
A dean in the faculty of a local university read one of my stories and went after me. I succumbed to the offer of a full time job as an academician and to go off to graduate school. I stopped writing and worked as a lecturer for five years. I hated it and followed my dream after five years teaching at the local university.
So now I’m baaaccckkk…. Here I’m writing again and after published several books all in Malay Language, this time I’m going to shoot for the moon! I’ll write and publish in English, my third language. Even if I don’t land at the moon, at least I’ll fall on stars.
Welcome to my writing blog.
Julia
