By Adeline Chia, arts reporter in Edinburgh

The life of a writer is never easy, and three Singaporean writers spoke candidly about the difficulties of being a scribe in Singapore at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

Novelist Suchen Christine Lim, writer Simon Tay and Cultural Medallion recipient and poet Edwin Thumboo had a sharing session at the book festival, now in its 27th year.

The 17-day festival, an important literary event in Britain, is packed with 750 events, featuring writers from more than 45 countries.

In a tent on Sunday, the three Singapore authors read from their works and took questions from the audience. The ticketed event drew about 50 people.

Lim, 61, read from her 1992 novel, Fistful Of Colours, about the interracial marriage between a Christian Chinese woman and a Muslim man. The book was the inaugural winner of the Singapore Literature Prize.

Professor Thumboo, 76, read a selection of his poetry, including one about a tourist walking down Orchard Road.

Finally Tay, 48, read from his first novel, City Of Small Blessings (2008), in which a retired school principal tries to save his home.

During the question and answer session, moderator Rosemary Burnett, former director of Amnesty International Scotland, asked what Singapore society really was like, quoting from Lim's short story, The Morning After: 'From the outside we're a tolerant, multi-religious, multi-cultural, multi-lingual, multieverything society. But inside there's a hard kernel. Like an apricot's. We can be most unforgiving.'

Tay said: 'I think we are more like a durian. Hard and prickly on the outside; inside it's very fleshy and soft, and if you get it right, sweet but a little bit bitter.'

Lim said there are 'hidden currents' in contemporary Singapore.

'But the writer's role is to go beneath,' she added. 'If I am told to look right, then as a writer I will look left, back and front.'

A Singaporean noted that all three writers have jobs apart from writing, and asked about the difficulties of being a writer in Singapore.

Tay, who is chairman of the Singapore Institute of International Affairs and an associate professor in the National University of Singapore's (NUS) law faculty, joked: 'I dare say that none of us could live on our royalties. There will always be some people, usually our parents, who advise us against taking up writing as a full-time career.'

He said a number of writers and artists in his generation, such as theatre director Ivan Heng and playwright Eleanor Wong, have legal training.

'Any child in my generation who was smart enough to get into law school... would go to law school. After that, you could do 'silly things'.'

But he added that the situation changed after the Government began to pay more attention to the arts, which has gained greater social acceptance.

Professor Thumboo, who is Emeritus Professor of the department of English language and literature at NUS, gave a simple answer: 'If your writing means something to you, you write irrespective of whether you will be read or not.'

Lim, who used to be an English teacher and later a curriculum specialist at the Ministry of Education, shared a story about her mother.

'For years, I've been writing in English. My mother knows Chinese and reads only Chinese. For years she thought of me as a failure because I did not go to law school. Instead, I did literature.'

It was in 2005, when she was commissioned to write Hua Song: Stories Of The Chinese Diaspora, a bilingual publication in English and Chinese, that her mother first asked for copies of her book.

She said: 'That was when I knew that, finally, when I was 58 and my mother was in her 80s, that she was proud of me.'

This article was first published in The Straits Times.