Big Coco

  Let’s meet Coco the squirrel. She lives in Mr. McGoo’s Farm with her parents and her sister, Celly. Every single day, they play with their friend Kiki in the leaves of the coconut trees, waiting for a chance to sneak bite a coconut.

One day, they were hunting when they spotted a larger squirrel than them sneaking in the direction of their nest. They followed him. Turns out, it was Big, their neighbor. They only talked to him once because he is pretty quiet. Big likes to nibble on weird stuff like leaves, leather, and string.

Coco’s nest was in the largest coconut tree. The coconuts were big, round, and plump. And Big was nibbling the coconuts on their tree. Coco felt kind of angry, because Big has his own coconuts to eat. They started throwing mulberries from the clumps of mulberry bushes below at Big, shouting “Give that back!” Big threw twigs back. Twice Big actually tried to throw, but it poked him in the ear instead.

It was a long fight. Juice splattered Big’s body; splintered sticks lay on the ground like dropped swords, and the sky was turning indigo signing night time. Coco, desperate to go home and have dinner, threw a big coconut chunk at Big. Big fell off. Coco and Celly climbed up toward their nest, while Kiki had rushed already toward her burrow (Kiki is a ground squirrel). Big scowled.

You Have to Write

Yesterday evening, I went to a talk show at Gramedia Pandanaran, Semarang. The talk show was about writing. The speaker was Mrs. Aan Wulandari. She is an author and editor. She already published lots of books and wrote articles in magazines and newspapers. She's also my writing teacher, actually. I once joined her writing course a year ago.

The invitation said that it would start at 16.00. Unluckily, I arrived 45 minutes late, so I didn't listen to the whole presentation. Poor me...:'( But I still got the question-answer session. I was not that loss, then. Many questions rose from the audience, and she answered each of them clearly. Here I share some of them.

Because one of her published books is a comic, someone asked her how to make a comic if we can't draw a good picture. She answered that she didn't draw the pictures herself, but an illustrator did. What she did was made the boxes as what the comic will look like, wrote the story and conversation in the boxes, and gave the full detailed situation for the illustrator to imagine and draw the pictures.

Another one asked how to publish a book. She said that some publishing houses only want our writing sent by post, some others allow posting by e-mail. Each publishing house also has its own style that different from any other house, so we have to adjust our writing style to theirs as well, so that they can accept our writing.

She also shared how to start learning to write. She explained the method she used in her writing course. She first asked her students to read a story (just a short one will do), then they should rewrite it with their own language, characters, plot, and other stuffs. Or they can start with creating a unique interesting character, and then develop a story with it.

Here are tips when you write:
-Keep writing, so you will not like, delay it and stop writing
-Read a lot, you might find an inspiration there and you can also learn how the author make her interesting title, opening, plot, problems, solution, and ending
-A walk to the book store may help too ^_^
-Write with enjoyment
-Try as hard as you can, and
-Be confident

I didn't bring a camera, so I can't show pictures about this talk show. Sorry guys, but I hope Tante Aan will share the photos from her camera and permits me to use it in this entry...

So, you want to be a writer? then, You have to write.
Good luck!