Istoryan Writers

[gareb]

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constellations
8th of May, 2008

like every kid, i once dreamed of blasting off toward the skies in a rocket ship, away from everything else that festers inside gravity's oppressive grasp. i wanted to pull myself away into those distant, twinkling promises of new grounds to land my feet on. i wanted to explore each patch of sky, constellation by constellation, for civilizations where i might belong.

and now that i have somehow grown up, every time i reach for something in the sky, i feel my feet lift up, sometimes a few inches, sometimes a few miles from the ground. but like everything, i come crashing back; rudimentary lessons somehow learned of much should be burned just to get enough lift to fly...

not long after, the few inches became many, the few miles became light years. following the shadow's path, each day sends me streaking farther and farther away from where i came from. until the dominant light of the sun which overwhelmed my sky receded slowly into the background with his fellow stars.

just one of the many stars.

it's a wonder how, sitting where i can see the city lights, everything looks so small but so connected. how things, as you step away from them, begin to lose their individuality and start to become just a part of a grand whole.

knowing which little spots of light once became centers of your orbit, became constant objects of your cares. seeing the streetlights tracing tell-tale paths you once took to just to reach those spots of light that now became corners of constellations; markers for those times when, in the proximity of a few inches the idea of escape was the last thing in your mind.

the flickering city lights below; squint and see stars.


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@diem, galenostiel, and the rest, i need your inputs.

[diem]

Brother gareb, I'll definitely get back to you on your neat piece but thanks for now for keeping the thread alive Now some words of wisdom from JK Rowling.

At Harvard, Rowling stresses role of imagination
By JAY LINDSAY, Associated Press

J.K. Rowling extolled the crucial importance of imagination during a speech Thursday at Harvard University's spring commencement, saying, "We do not need magic to transform our world."

The "Harry Potter" author also stressed the benefit of failure, recalling the humiliations of her time in poverty before her career took off with her string of novels about a bespectacled boy wizard.

Before the speech, two members of Harvard's class of 1936 paid tribute to Rowling by carrying brooms during an alumni procession.

President Drew Gilpin Faust also welcomed witches, wizards and Muggles — non-magical people in Rowling's books — to the commencement. Faust noted that there was a larger number of young children than normally expected for a Harvard graduation and that she knew she was the just "the warm-up act."

Rowling, who was given an honorary doctor of letters degree, urged the Harvard grads to use their influence and status to speak out on behalf of the powerless.

"We do not need magic to transform our world," she said. "We carry all the power we need inside ourselves already; we have the power to imagine better."

Imagination gives one the ability to empathize with others, she said.

"Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation," Rowling said. "In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity; it is the power that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared."

Rowling described a low point seven years after graduating from college, when she was a poor single mother.

"The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are ever after secure in your ability to survive," Rowling said. "You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity."

She called such knowledge "a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned."

[Von!-x]

updates:

I had not written any new fiction works lately. Busy in work and blogging in the sides. A blog post of mine recently won as the best entry for Challenge no.2 in the http://www.theblogawardchallenge.com. Another entry is listed as a finalist for Challenge no. 3. It is in blogging that I continue to practice writing.

I blog here: Blog From Cebu To The World

[diem]

In regards sa imong present devotion to blogging, I feel that this article by Professor Butch Dalisay is apt.

An awakening in Aklan
PENMAN By Butch Dalisay
Monday, June 9, 2008

Peering through my window in Seat 7F, I watched a dog strolling nonchalantly beside the runway as our plane landed in Kalibo airport. Apparently the mutt didn’t or couldn’t read the signs I saw as we drove from the airport to the campus of Aklan State University: “Beware of the exhaust from airplanes.” Any place where people and dogs come perilously if indifferently close to steaming jets has got to be worth a visit, and we were not to be disappointed. Kalibo would prove refreshingly laid-back, over the days that our group of UP professors spent there to conduct a workshop for teachers at Aklan State University.

The formal title of the workshop was “Online Journalism: Web Writing for Cultural, Literary, and Historical Content,” and we had been invited by the good folks at ASU — through the sponsorship of the Commission on Information and Communications Technology — to help teachers write for the Web. Like many other schools around the country (including the University of the Philippines), ASU has entered the Digital Age, with impressive banks of computers hooked up to a fast Internet connection and Wi-Fi routers spreading the signal, but the teachers and staff themselves have some catching up to do with the technology now available to them. ASU president Benny Palma and CICT project manager Leanna Beltran put their heads and resources together to support a workshop to produce both the content and the means to get ASU’s teachers and their ideas online.

I’d originally thought of begging off from the workshop, pleading fatigue after having already taken one too many flights and road trips this summer, but I really couldn’t say no, for more than one reason. If I could gallivant around the world, I could certainly go to Aklan. Also, and unknown to even many members of my own family, the Dalisays — those of us whose grandfathers, like mine, were farmers in Romblon — have roots in Aklan. I’ve found Dalisays in Davao, Iloilo, Quezon City, and Central Luzon, but there’s probably no greater concentration of Dalisays than in Aklan, specifically Ibajay. There, in 1673, a man named Don Francisco Calizo Dalisay was elected gobernadorcillo by the principales. Presumably, his descendants crossed the strait to Romblon and settled there; one of them was my grandfather, Anatolio, whom I met just once when I was 10; he was a big tall man who was husking coconuts, and didn’t say a word to me.

So going to Aklan was a homecoming of sorts, and I looked forward to visiting Ibajay or even just passing through it, on our way to our one day in Boracay, after the workshop. I was also challenged by the prospect of bringing my fellow teachers onto the Internet.

I’m a strong believer in technology as a means of bridging or leapfrogging over social and economic gaps. We can talk all day about the “digital divide,” which is sadly real; but that divide won’t close unless and until we bring the machines to the people — and, in ASU’s case, bring the people to the machines. Too many computers rot in the offices of presidents and principals and in locked “computer labs” because the people who are supposed to use them either can’t, or don’t know how.

Over three days, around 35 teachers and staff members from ASU’s several campuses listened to lectures on literature and the Internet from me and my colleagues, Drs. Isabel Banzon-Mooney and Lily Rose Tope. Isabel and Lily Rose guided them through a reappreciation of Philippine and Third World literature, then I stepped in to talk about the Internet, hypertext, reading and writing for the Web, and finally, publishing on the Web.

Predictably, many participants began with an admission of being ignorant about or intimidated by computers and Internet. As far as they were concerned, they may have felt too old to learn about the Internet in a workshop they didn’t even ask to attend (the visionary Dr. Palma had ordered them to go). They could write ideas down on paper, but putting them online was an entirely different challenge.

To put them at ease, I recounted how I myself at one time avoided computers like the plague — I even lugged my Olympia portable typewriter with me to graduate school in the US and worked on it doggedly for my whole first year, before succumbing to the lure of my first Mac. From then on it was love sweet love.

But more practically, I walked them through the process of putting up a group blog (ASU Web Writing Seminar), using a live Internet connection. They had worked on individual translations, critiques, and commentaries, and we uploaded a few of these, plus a few pictures, for them to see how easy it was, before breaking up for lunch. I had given them the password to the blog so they could upload their own material, and I saw people finishing their lunch early so they could go back to their computers and try their hand at getting their work and their names online. Within less than two hours, I was happily astounded to see that our three original entries had grown to 21.

They may not exactly have been literary gems, but suddenly we had a nosegay of Aklanon translations of poems by such stalwarts as Alfred Yuson, Marne Kilates, Marra Lanot, and Angelo Suarez, where just a day earlier we had none. And now they were online for all the world to see. The joyful wonderment in our workshoppers’ faces mirrored ours. With a few guided keystrokes, these Aklanons had empowered themselves as writers and publishers, claiming their rightful spots in cyberspace.

Many thanks to Dr. Palma, Len Beltran, ASU Arts & Sciences Dean Mary Eden Teruel and Prof. Edecio Venturanza III (whose life story beats any telenovela, but I’ll save that for another time) for the opportunity to have been of service to my sometime provincemates. Fittingly perhaps, I never would have discovered Don Francisco Calizo Dalisay if it hadn’t been for the Internet. It’s a long way from 1673 to 2008, but last week, my past and present came together, and for many others, the future just began.

* * *

[diem]

U.P. SARSUWELA WRITING CONTEST

Rules of the Contest

1. The Contest is open to all Filipino citizens of all ages (including Filipinos holding dual citizenship) from June to August 2008.

2. The theme of the contest is “Amor, Vida, Patria” (Love, Life, Nation). The story maybe historical or contemporary in subject matter. The work must follow the three-act structure of the sarsuwela and must be written in Filipino.

3. The author must submit the entry to the Board of Judges. The deadline for submission is 29 August 2008 Friday, 5 p.m. The office of the UP-CAL closes at 5 p.m. Entries sent by mail or courier should be postmarked no later than the same date of the deadline.

4. All entries are to be submitted to the Board of Judges, U.P. College of Arts and Letters, University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City. The said College is in the Faculty Center (FC), UP Diliman campus.

5. All entries shall consist of a soft copy (CD in Word or Text Format) and three (3) hard copies (Times New Roman, Helvetica, or Arial Narrow fonts, 12 points, double spaced in 81/2 x 11 inches coupon bond). The recorded score (CD in MP3 or other PC compatble format) shall also be included. The author’s and the composer’s real names and addresses must not appear on the entry; rather, they should seal in a letter envelope both the prescribed Official Entry Form and Authorization Form, together with their bio-notes or brief résumé; and this envelope should be submitted together with the entry. On this sealed envelope should be written or typed the title of the entry and the authors’ pen name.

6. In submitting the entry, the author warrants that the work is his/her own and that he/she has absolute ownership of all intellectual property rights thereto. Together with the entry, the author should submit the Official Entry Form and the Authorization Form for the Contest.

7. The submission of the entry must be accompanied by the author’s written consent to abide by the rules of the Contest, duly signed by the author.

8. Authors may submit only one (1) entry.

9. The judges shall choose one (1) winner to be announced on September 30, 2008. The author and the composer shall equally divide between them the contest cash prize.

10. Winning entries shall remain with, and become the property of, the U.P. College of Arts and Letters which shall have prior right to its production and publication.

11. In order that the winning entries may be accessible to the public, the authors grant, assign and transfer to the U.P. College of Arts and Letters the following rights without any necessity of any payment other than the prize already awarded: (a) to publish from time to time the winning entry or selection or portion thereof as it may at its discretion determine;
(b) to designate or appoint editors to edit the work or any portion thereof to suit the demands of publication;
(c) to furnish a reasonable number of copies of the work to the National Library or other libraries;
(d) to make the work available for downloading on the Internet or other electronic medium; and/or
(e) allow scholars and students to make copies for their research.

In making the works accessible to scholars, students, and lovers of literature, the College only intends to promote a wider literary appreciation of the works.

12. The prize for the winning entry is P200,000.00.

13. The U.P. College of Arts and Letters has the sole right to designate the persons who shall constitute the Board of Judges for each contest category.

14. The decision of the majority of the Board of Judges for the contest is final.

15. All parties submitting entries to the UP Sarsuwela Writing Contest are deemed to have accepted all the rules of the contest, and agree to abide by them.

Please download .doc attachment for the Official Entry Form.

[Von!-x]

I just found this in the web. 50 tools which can help you in writing, dated in 2006

Fifty (50!) Tools which can help you in Writing - Stepcase Lifehack

But I'm not sure if the links are still working as these are links to archives of poynter.org

[cheeeryl]

pwede pa moapil diri? are u open to "writers" who use cebuano in their works?

[diem]

^^Welcome cheeeryl, of course we wholeheartedly support pud writers who write in the Cebuano language. It's part with our ideals to support efforts in promoting the local Cebuano identity to the world.

Here's an article regarding the recently held Dumaguete National Writers Workshop held in Silliman University from the point of view of one the panelists who attended and lectured to the next batch of Pinoy literati.

The workshop that never ends
By Susan S. Lara
Monday, June 30, 2008
The Philippine Star

In an interview just before her death in 2004, Susan Sontag was asked if there was something she thought writers ought to do, and she said: “Several things. Love words, agonize over sentences. And pay attention to the world.”

Half a century ago, Edilberto and Edith Tiempo started saying just that to young writers. The Tiempos founded in 1962 the Philippines first and now longest-running National Writers Workshop at Silliman University in Dumaguete City. For 46 years, hundreds of aspiring writers have been to the workshop, to learn the craft of writing at the master’s feet.

There have been rough patches: the workshop has always worked on a shoestring budget, but there had been summers when funding was extraordinarily meager, and could support only six or seven fellows. Yet the workshop kept going, summer after summer, even after university funding
stopped in 1992 and former workshop alumni had to band together to keep the flame alive.

Over the past 13 years, the workshop continued through the efforts of the Creative Writing Foundation, Inc. founded by Krip Yuson, Marj Evasco, Jimmy Abad, Ricky de Ungria and me; CAP College; the Dumaguete Literary Arts Service Group, Inc. (DuLA, Inc.) headed by poet-lawyer Ernesto Yee; the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA); and various groups and individuals who value our literary heritage.

This year, the 47th National Writers Workshop came home to Silliman University, thanks to SU president Ben Malayang, who recognizes the prestige the workshop has given the university all these years (most people, in fact, have never stopped calling it the Silliman Writers Workshop).

It was a coming home of sorts, too, for Rowena Torrevillas, who sat in the panel of critics for the second time since she left for the International Writing Program of the University of Iowa in 1984. The first time was in 2005, when she and Robin Hemley, director of UIs Non-fiction Writing Program, brought 10 graduate students from Iowa for the First International Creative Non-fiction Workshop in
Dumaguete, which ran parallel to the 44th National Writers Workshop.

This summer’s sessions were held in Katipunan Hall, which used to be the Silliman University Mission Hospital, where Rowena was born. Much of the building has not changed, and one can still make out the initial floor plan and layout from the emergency room to the morgue. This has given rise to many
ghost stories, of wheelchairs rolling down the corridors on their own, of eerie
sounds emanating from the restroom cubicles.

DM Reyes, Lito Zulueta and I joined Rowena and Ernie Yee in the panel during the third week, replacing second-week panelists Butch Dalisay, Cesar Aquino and Dave Genotiva. Myrna Peña Reyes and Butch Macansantos made up the first-week panel, with Rowena and Cesar.

The third week panelists were luckier than Butch Dalisay. We left a rain-drenched Manila, endured a bumpy plane ride, and were rewarded with the spectacle of unclouded Dumaguete, luminous on a Sunday morning. Like Butch, I was dismayed by the shabby condition and service of South Sea Resort last year, so DM and I opted to stay in La Residencia Almar, a Spanish-inspired hotel owned
by my cousin Baby Hilado and his wife Olet, while Lito stayed in Bethel. We were given a room with a view in Almar, overlooking the sea, where I had the luxury of watching, without getting up from my bed, Dumaguete’s stunning sunrise the only thing that could take the place of caffeine for me.

We met the fellows the following day: Lawrence Anthony Rivera Bernabe (UP Visayas), Noelle Leslie G. dela Cruz (DLSu), Ma. Celeste T. Fusilero (Ateneo de Davao), Rodrigo Dela Peña (London PR Consultancy, Dumaguete), Arelene Jaguit Yandug (Xavier University), Bron Joseph C. Teves (Silliman University), Marguerite Alcarazen de Leon (AdMU), Dustin Edward Celestino (UP Diliman), Joshua L. Lim So (DLSU), Liza Baccay (Cebu Daily News), Fred Jordan Mikhail T. Carnice (SU), Ma. Elena L. Paulma (XU), Anna Carmela P. Tolentino (DLSU), and Lamberto M. Varias, Jr. (UP Diliman). They were positively glowing, still under the magic spell of Siquijor, where they had spent the weekend.

As usually happens by the third week, they had already bonded well, were already feeling at home and dreading the impending end of the workshop.

Mom Edith, heeding doctor’s advice, refrained from attending the sessions, entrusting the workshop to the capable hands of Rowena. Like Mom in workshops past, she always gave the opening salvo, pointing out a work’s major strengths and weaknesses, sometimes reading another poem that achieved what the assigned piece was trying to do. Ernie, Lito and I followed with elaborations, more suggestions on how the piece could be improved, a little nitpicking when necessary. By unspoken agreement we let DM have the final word, as he could always be depended upon to give the discussions a satisfying closure.

What do we usually look for in a workshop piece? In poetry, we take pleasure in heightened and symbolic language, a startlingly new insight into something familiar and quotidian, and craftsmanship in articulating the poems concept. In both fiction and nonfiction, we invariably look for sharp and complex characterization, motivation, significant details, consistency in point of view, the change that occurs in the end, the human universal truth — the why behind the story, a question of a higher level than what happens next. We remind fellows of John Cheever’s statement: “I lie to tell a more significant truth.”

We were sorry we missed Mom Edith’s lecture at the end of the second week, where she clarified the ways of enhancing poetic content: 1) through reverberation, achieved by the inclusion of details or situations that echo the meaning of the poem; 2) the use of indigenous wit, sharpness and humor; 3) the use of classical allusions; and 4) a startling idea or concept to serve as the core
of the poetic content.

Everyone agreed that the 47th Batch is a great bunch. There is a good deal of fine writing. Most of the fellows’ works already hold the evidence of other writers’ workshops attended, and the promise that they are in it for the long haul. We were hard-pressed to think of ways to improve “Cross,” Margie de Leon’s metafiction, or “In His Own Image,” Lambert’s science fiction. We delighted in Igor dela Peñas ekphrastic poem “Whitewash” and Leslie dela Cruz’s poignant “Terminal.”

The panelists know the value of encouragement. But we also know that fellows can’t be helped by lenience, by saying a piece is a deferred success when we simply mean it has flaws. So we didn’t pull our punches either. Some gems:

• Arrive late, plunge into the action immediately.
• Leave early; dont overstay your welcome.
• Whose story is this? Whose point of view do we have access to?
• Show, don’t tell.
• This is a crucial point in the story and should be rendered in scene, not summarized.
• This is not poetry; it is cut-up prose.
• The poem doesnt rise above the literal level. The literal level is unclear, so the metaphorical level totters on shaky ground.

Paul Engle, Dad Ed and Mom Edith’s literary father, and therefore our literary granddad, was invoked several times:

• Writing is like making love: it is astonishing how far pure instinct (if it really is pure) will carry you. It is also true of both these lyrical forms of expression that a few things consciously learned will push toward perfection what might otherwise be an ordinary act.

• You can’t grow hair on a billiard ball. You cant make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.

We perceived no churlishness, even if we tended to bear down too much on fustian writing or plain exposition. This is a group that can take criticism with grace, and can dish it out, too, with aplomb. Leslie noted this as early as the first week: I was astounded by the high level of discourse that we regularly achieve in the workshop. I’ve never been in a discussion with this many scintillating people, never had such powerful mental orgasms.

And this, from Liza: They could read me my electricity bill and I’d still be raptly listening. And they even came to the sessions on time!

The most pleasant, gratifying gesture, however, was the fellow’s surprise gift to the panelists, to the SU English Department, headed by Andrea Soluta, and everyone who made the Workshop such a magical experience for them: Sea[sic], an anthology of prose and poetry written by the fellows in and about Dumaguete, with Dustin and Margie serving as midwives. Jordan called it our
baby, our little token to all panelists who endured our ignorance, our clean-slatedness as youngsters in the world of literature. For Igor, it is simply proof that they didn’t spend every night drinking: only every other night. The other evenings were spent writing, and the result merits a treasured spot on my bedside table.

Definitely, there were no billiard balls in this batch. No sow’s ears either, and we’re all looking forward to a good harvest of silk purses pretty soon, from our newest brothers and sisters in this ever-growing writing family.

[diem]

Call for manuscripts for 2009 storybooks

Adarna House is looking for storybook manuskcripts bearing one or more of the following themes:

• first day of school,
• honesty, health,
• Chinese-Filipinos,
• classroom situations,
• death,
• music,
• children with working parents,
• rhyming / repetitive style of writing,
• legends,
• fathers,
• grandfathers,
• citizenship values,
• peace and tolerance,
• diligence (sipag),
• personal hygiene,
• sportsmanship,
• value of reading.

Submissions may be in Filipino or English.

Call 3723548 local 122, or look at our FAQs for the submission guidelines.

[diem]

Below is an interview from Writer's Digest of JAMES SCOTT BELL, author of Final Witness, a 2000 winner in suspense genre of the Christy awards. The Christy Awards are an annual awards, recognizing writing excellence in Christian literature.

Q: What piece of advice have you received over the course of your career that has had the biggest impact on your success?

JSB: To write a quota of words each day. I heard this early on, and have stuck to it ever since. Writing is a discipline as well as a craft. The only way to grow is to put those words down, day in, day out.

Q: What message do you find yourself repeating over and over to writers?

JSB: Honor the craft. Too many times I see new writers with a passion for the story they’re working on, and thinking editors or agents will automatically share that passion. They won’t unless it is in a form that readers will respond to. That’s what the craft is all about.

Q: What’s the worst kind of mistake that new writers, freelancers, or book authors can make?

JSB: Stopping the learning curve. Thinking they’ve “arrived.” You have to keep growing as a writer, the rest of your life.

Q: What’s the one thing you can’t live without in your writing life?

JSB: Starbucks.

Q: What does a typical day look like for you?

JSB: Starbucks.

Q: If you could change one thing about publishing, what would it be?

JSB: A shorter time from completion of the manuscript to the bookshelves. It’s roughly 18 months from idea to appearance in the stores. That’s too long.

Q: In what way (if any) has your writing/publishing life changed in the past 5 years?

JSB: It’s gotten busier. That comes with the territory if you continue to publish books. You answer more mail, speak more, travel more. Sometimes all that gets in the way of the writing itself. I try not to let that happen.

Q: Do you have any advice for new writers on fostering a strong author/editor relationship?
JSB: Be professional. Don’t waste their time. Know what they value in a writer and give it to them. If you have a complaint, make it objectively. Don’t burn bridges. The days of the prima donna are over.

Q: What do you see as your biggest publishing accomplishment?

JSB: That I’ve been able to do what I love for as long as I have, and been able to help a great number of younger writers along the way.

Q: Any final thoughts?

JSB: I like what author Michael Bishop once said. “One may achieve remarkable writerly success while flunking all the major criteria for success as a human being. Try not to do that.”