012: Crack Open Google Translate
A bit of press and more thoughts on my novel-writing journey in this edition. Before all of that though...
Support my work
Work-Life Balance – the multi-award-winning prose/comics hybrid co-created with Benjamin Chee. It's currently being developed into an animated series by Robot Playground Media.
You can also get the Work-Life Balance bundle, which comes with the book, a mug, washi tape and more.
Worlds Apart: A Conversation About Mental Health – a comic co-created with Nurjannah Suhaimi.
HANTU – Spotify channel for the award-winning narrative series, Ghost Maps, and the talk show, Dead Air, both of which were co-created with Kyle Ong.
Tales From Incredible Tales – a retrospective podcast by Kyle and I, looking back on the cult classic Singaporean horror anthology series, Incredible Tales.
Meet Wei En
Ben, Ervin from Robot Playground, and I were interviewed by the Singaporean Chinese language paper, Lianhe Zaobao, about Work-Life Balance and its animated series. We had a lovely conversation that covered everything from working together to the differences between the book and the show.
I can't read the article myself, beyond what Google's managed to badly translate for me. Friends and family who can, however, have assured me that my name in it is Wei En Rui, and that Rui means "wise", so obviously everyone has to refer to me as Wayne the Wise from now on.
(Ben and I have at least one more interview coming out in the next few months, but more on that when it happens.)
Extra incredible
We haven't made an official announcement yet, but we've already mentioned it on social media here and there: thanks to the overwhelming support that you guys have shown, there'll be more episodes added to Tales From Incredible Tales' first season.
Utt flew in all the way from L.A. for a couple of days to record some of those additional episodes, which really does say so much about how wonderful he is. As always, Kyle and I (together with Nadia this time) had a lovely meal with him after our shoot, where we chatted about everything from writing to mental health.
Episodes will now go live on Thursdays and Tuesdays on all the usual podcast platforms.
I guess this is a novel-writing journal now too
After the previous edition of this newsletter, things started to get better for me. I don't want to jinx it and say that I've definitely found my groove again, but I've at the very least had a decent number of good days recently.
It probably helps that I've found the energy to read on my morning commute again. After that last freelance agency stint, I was just too exhausted to juggle a book and a bulky backpack, while trying to navigate the train during rush hour.
The day I felt like I could finally spare the brain cells to read a chapter or two? That was when I finally hit my 1,500-word-a-day goal.
I've been fairly consistent since, clocking in a total of 14,000 words as of this edition. I've set myself a deadline of 15 March for the first 20,000 and a detailed chapter breakdown for the rest of the book, and I think I'm well on my way to meeting it.
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Hellish boy
And that's a wrap
No links and things this time round, so once more, support my work...
And I'll see you in two weeks.