Developing Your Writing

Assalamualaikum warahmatullah wabarakatuh,

One thing I like about studying in Cambridge beside its collection of all the books published in the UK stored in the University Library, is the FREE training courses for the students by the Joint Schools' Social Sciences (JSSS). The University Library will receive a complimentary copy of any publication published in the UK making it the best place to do research, the JSSS provides all the trainings that a PhD student needs from finding a research topic to publishing the thesis into a book or article.

Last Wednesday, I attended a course on 'Developing Your Writing', given by a professional academic writer, editor and publishing house commissioner, Another Haynes. Basically the university pays for him to come and we get to join the workshop for free (our tuition fees of course has covered this). Even to write, you need to learn from books. He suggested more than 10 useful and practical books to refer if we want to write a good piece of thesis or book to be published.

While in Malaysia, the scenario is that the universities encourage the academic staff to write books to be published, yet many are still delaying it. Here in the UK, to publish a book is like nearly impossible. The reason for this is because there are so many young and enthusiastic PhD students who want their thesis to be published into a book. They will try to find a publishing house commissioner, try to make networking, get the commissioner interested in their work and write a proposal to them to be considered. Many of the times, they receive disappointing answer, not that their works are not good, but there are just too many good pieces of writings waiting to be published. This includes all the academicians around the country. In addition, the budget to stock more books into the libraries and book stores is shrinking since the books have over-flooded the market. Also, the use of online technology today, reading online is preferable than buying a book. Hence publishing a book is extremely difficult in UK unless you have a really interesting topic to write and of course your writing has to stand out from the rest, or else, your proposal will be put in the big 'no pile'. This is true to publishing an article in a journal as I said in one of my posts.

I don't know how to tell you the best writing is but always bear in mind that you are writing something and the readers actually will have to think if they want to pay the money to read your stuff. The commissioner, the editor have to think if the book can sell, if the libraries want to buy it, if the peer-reviewers will think the book is telling an original, useful and interesting story, if the book stores want to stock the book, if it's worth to do an in-print or just an electronic version of the book, if the students want to buy it as a textbook, etc. By knowing the readership, we will know how to write a good piece of writing. Hey, after all, the saddest fact for a PhD student is that your thesis will only be read by 3 persons in the whole world if it is not published, they are your supervisor, one internal examiner and one external examiner.

So, do I want to publish a book? Yes, of course but let me get my thesis done first.

ALLAHU'alam.

Wassalam.