In Search of the Princess of Unicorns

I was one of the panelists for the “Yes we do exist – SFF writing in Singapore” at Spore-Con (that will be a separate SDS post next Monday but this is more on the panel itself!) If you read my previous post on not getting enough support, well it would be silly just to say stuff and not do anything yeah?

So what’s this about the princess of unicorns?

It’s a metaphor because as I’ve said before, all these writers are actually hidden and perhaps on a united front we could make an impact here in Singapore? The poets are quite united in a sense that the key poets are making significant headlines and whatnot. The writers here are in their own little circles and only once the planets align, they might perchance meet each other.

Usually during the Singapore Writers’ Festival but that only happens once every two years.

Perhaps you might be the chosen one! The one who will lure the unicorns to you to create magic. With all the kitsunes and other mythical creatures.

Needless to say, Singapore is small. The probability of making a united front would be quite possible since you can hunt these writers down. It’s just what you’re going to do after that is the problem.

Knowing how the pace of life in Singapore and the busy-ness of how said writers are, it is more to plan on how to factor all these in. No doubt it will be online but there should be some real life events or things to be done to promote such science fiction or fantasy writing too.

For now, I will go on a search to find this Princess of Unicorns. In the midst of searching, I will plan how this should be. Would be like a guild of sorts? And who will be part of it. Even though it is SFF, most of us do crossed genres in which even if it might be fantasy, it could be urban romance fantasy or something to that sort.

It will branch out but the main points would be SFF since here, there’s quite a bit of writing clubs and circles with a more general outlook.

And what happens when you do bring all these tiny herds of unicorns together? There must be something to come out of it after all the work too. This is another point to research on. Our main agenda would definitely be to promote SFF writing and reading. To show that we indeed exist and for publishers, to reassure them that there can be money to be made from it somehow.

We need more variety people and what’s currently lacking is the SFF that’s published here. Definitely not due to the lack of writing but the lack of opportunities. Let’s fix thiiiis.