Book Review by Yunita Phillips

Cincinnati - Ohio, In the world of writing, how to find ideas and explore them to become interesting topics, it is very important. Especially for the beginning-aspiring writers, they are always wondering how to get the ideas.  That question is very important and essential because how can we produce one writing if we don't have ideas or material to be written? Young writers often stop writing or have stagnation because they don't know what to write, have no ideas, no inspiration, and a thousand-one other reasons that make them not to write.

The book of Exploring My Ideas written by Fida Abbott is a wonderful response to that situation. This book will guide the young writers to resolve that problem.

Through its creative and informative presentation of this book, Fida presents ten short stories as the examples of a writing which ideas have been developed from simple daily events. Fida presents 15 sources of ideas that writers can use and explore them. The writers are free to choose which source they might use. Based on the ten short stories she has presented; the writer’s personal experiences seem to be good source of ideas because they have strong appeal and great impetus for writers to accomplish their writings. The writer’s personal experiences contain elements that involve both writer’s emotional and intellectual—which will enrich her writings more lively and powerful.

To add the personal experiences, the writers need to conduct researches to provide accurate data or logic for the story. This is important because writers are intellectually responsible for educating their readers by presenting a good and trusty writing.

One of the main strengths of this book is how Fida wrote her stories with a smooth, straightforward, and storytelling way. Once we read one of the stories, we will be excited and look forward to continuing reading the next story. We will be curious to know what kind of stories she will convey next. The themes are varied, ranging from mystery, relationships in a family or a workplace, mental health problem, horror, spiritual problems, etc.

In addition to providing technique how to explore ideas, Fida provides ten guides to plot a short story. This methodology explains about how to put the idea into a short story. It includes introduction of the main character, story conflict, how the main character solves the problems, and how the story will end with a satisfying way. There are also some examples on how to apply that technique which is taken from one of the stories in the book. This book is more valuable as there are some encouragements to the readers on how to improve their writings and how to submit their stories for profit.

I strongly recommend this book to beginning-aspiring writers as their helpful handbook. This book also helps us not to be afraid to write and not to be doubtful of our ideas. No matter how simple the ideas that arise in our minds, it is valuable, and we need to appreciate it. If we immediately take steps to work on it, it will become an interesting and enjoyable story to read.(*)

Profile

Yunita (D. Harahap) Phillips is the author of COKI—a series of children books with a young carrier pigeon as the main character. She attended some international publishers and writers’ institutions, held by Highlights for Children Foundation in Pennsylvania, Cook Communication MinistriesInternational in Colorado, and Media Associate International in Illionis. In the past, she worked at YK. Bina Kasih publishing house, Jakarta, Indonesia, for 18 years. Now she resides in Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S.A., working at home as a writer, a translator, and one of the instructors at Online Writing Course, Pelatihan Menulis Online HOKI (PMOH)***