In Conversation with Anna Tan
Anna Tan (AT) grew up in Malaysia, the country that is not Singapore. She is the author of two fantasy books, Coexist and Dongeng, and has short stories included in various anthologies like Fixi Novo, Gerakbudaya, and Uncommon Universes Press. She is also the editor of NutMag, an annual zine published for and by MYWriters Penang.
Anna was once a certified and chartered accountant with a Big 4 firm but has given up on annoying bean counters in general. She is the current president of the Malaysian Writers Society (MYWriters) and oversees the group in her hometown of Penang.
In 2019, Anna completed an MA in Creative Writing: The Novel at Brunel University London. She is interested in Malay/Nusantara and Chinese legends and folklore in exploring the intersection of language, culture, and faith. She can be found tweeting as @natzers and forgetting to update this website.
In this interview, JY Tan (JY) shares a glimpse through the mysterious veil on Anna’s work, not just as the writer of Amok (novel #1 of her Absolution series, releasing 2021 – 2022) but also editor, pillar of the Malaysian writers community and publishing veteran.
JY Tan (JY)
Although Amok is based on the biblical legend of Samson and Delilah, the novel chooses to focus on Putera Mikal's struggle with faith instead of Sultan Simson's. May I know what inspired this narrative choice?
Anna Tan (AT)
While what I was looking for was a supernaturally strong character, I don't really like Samson as a person/character. Just from what we have in biblical texts, he seems like this really arrogant bully. Plus, he's pretty old by the time the story happens and Amok was always supposed to be a more YA-focused, coming-of-age story. So I figured, what if I focused on someone else instead? Someone who is affected by the same promises and is trying to make sense of what's going on?
JY
As a Creative Writing major, writing a short story for my dissertation already seems daunting, let alone the first 15 chapters of a novel. Which part of Amok's writing process was the hardest for you?
AT
Outlining. The word count was never an issue because I've finished NaNoWriMo multiple times. But what I suck at is outlining and plotting. So I wrote the whole thing as a shitty NaNoWriMo first draft, then worked backwards to write an outline (which was actually my Term 2 assignment on the MA). Writing the outline did help refine the novel tremendously—and rewrites and edits were much easier because of it!
JY I understand that you're not just the President of the Malaysian Writers Society but also the founder of Teaspoon Publishing and editor of the MYWriters Penang NutMag zine. How do you manage to juggle so many roles and still find time to write?
AT
Wellllll…as the founder of Teaspoon Publishing, which is in the business of publishing novels, writing becomes part of the job. So it's a little easier to set aside time to write because it now counts as "work", otherwise I won't have a next book to publish. Heh. But it also eats into writing time in the sense that I also need to do other things like marketing and sales. The Malaysian Writers Society & MYWriters Penang are team efforts—so it's a matter of arranging schedules with everyone else, and we pick up each other's slack.
JY As someone who has self-published the majority of your works, what would you consider the biggest perk of this route compared to traditional publishing? On the other hand, what would you consider its biggest disadvantage?
AT
The biggest perk is being able to control your overall vision for the work, including things like timelines, editorial decisions and cover art. Why I say this is because many times the work doesn't sell not because it isn't good enough (though that's sometimes true), but because the story doesn't fit the publishing house's direction/catalogue/style or they don't know how to market it.
The biggest disadvantage is distribution and marketing. I initially thought it was capital, but raising funds to publish has proven easier than trying to get the books into physical stores.
JY Finally, what's the one thing you know about the publishing process that you believe would help aspiring writers the most?
AT
Understand what you really want for your work as well as what you're personally capable of doing. There are writers who want the validation of a traditional publisher, while others just want their work out there and would rather put it out themselves than wait on someone else to validate them. Some writers just want to write and not get involved in the business side of things, while others who are more entrepreneurial want to be involved in all the various aspects of publishing. All these preferences are equally valid. But the main thing is to finish that manuscript first because without it, the whole publishing process is moot.
Note: This interview was conducted via e-mail.