I remember the day my father came home from his office in Yomitan-Son, Okinawa complaining that he and his colleagues had to learn how to use a word processor. It sounded like a major obstacle. Until then he seemed happy with a typewriter.
Little did we know that the word processor marked the beginning of a revolution in communication. The personal computer, Internet, and e-mail not only enabled him to correspond with his kids, who at one time lived on three different continents, but also left an audit trail, or rather, a rich anthology of correspondence.
While Dad discussed philosophy and religion with my sister, he would correct my grammar and question my career decisions. Sometimes, he’d copy all of us in an e-mail to one of us. Through these e-mails, I was able to follow what each of us was up to. He must have enjoyed living vicariously through our adventures.
Dad and me in Brunei
Going through old e-mails on my various accounts, I suddenly realize that he asked a lot of questions I either never read or answered. In contrast, he answered all my e-mails except those in the few months before he passed away.
Ten years ago, when we were actively collaborating on a series of newsletters and e-zines I was publishing in Le Bon Journal, he queried why I felt the desire to write and publish. He had written and published two dozen textbooks and books, all of which are now out-of-print. Surely he should know why. But then, he had majored in foreign language and literature and later specialized in English grammar and translation.
Here is what he wrote to the me who had just moved to the Netherlands to commence my music studies in January 2004.
What is your motivation when you decide to write an article? Is there any material incentive or just your intention to have it published? In which media will it be published, and about how many readers may be interested in reading it?
What I mean is: if you just want to write to satisfy yourself, to kill time, to keep some records of your living, to let your web visitors read them and win their applause, to practice writing and become a good writer, then you may just write when you have time and need not consider anything about the results.
The writer author of “Dream of Red Chamber” (Hong Lou Meng, the best classic novel of China) wrote after his noble, rich family collapsed and he himself became impoverished, his work was so good that at first his friends and later people diligently, laboriously copied what he wrote. He won his fame only after he died in poverty. He did not get a cent from his great book. But publishers, bookstores later on and even today have made money from it and readers love it best among all Chinese novels.
A sharp contrast is Shakespeare, Samuel Johnson, Addison, Dickens, White, Thurber all wrote for pay as well as to advocate social justice, describe human nature, to name a few. So pay or royalties seem very important as an incentive. Eileen Chang wrote screenplay for HK fims (Red Rose, White Rose is based on her novel) for pay when she needed it badly even though she did not like to write screenplay.
I like to know if you wish to win fame and get paid, where and how will you get your space for your writing, space that will attract more readers than your webstation and that will pay you?
Brunei: Father with his friend Robert Yang, a writer known as 水晶 and an Eileen Chang expert
Note: His friend 水晶 wrote and published many novels and books. They were classmates at National Taiwan University. I would love to meet him one day soon.