writing

A can of Pepsi Max sits in front of me and gives advice.

“I know what you want,” it whispers. Beads of cold sweat roll off  its rouge et noir exterior. “I know how you can get it. Just do what you’re thinking right now. Go for it.”

I take a sip. ” It’s not a very good plan, and I don’t have a backup.”

“You don’t need one.” Chuckles coldly.

I turn Plan A over in my mind. It is possible it could work, like any scheme using brute force.  ”Perhaps,” I say.

The Moleskine chimes in. “Wait,” it says in a rustle of paper. ” Have you thought about the consequences and possible scenarios?”

The Sheaffer Balance makes marks. Numbers, words. “Holes in the plan,” it agrees,  ”here and there, where the mission could fail.”

Another sip of Pepsi Max. “You’re right – Plan A lacks finesse. And Plan B does not exist.”

The drink rallies. “Unnecessary, I swear.”

Anxious looks from the Moleskine and the Sheaffer. “This is too important to trust to chance. Preparedness is key to achieving the desired outcome. Remember how it hurt when you smacked concrete after jumping from a plane without a parachute? You need an improved Plan A. And a Plan B. And C, and D.”

I think of what I want and how badly I want it. The prize is worth waiting for.

I drain the drink. “But…!” it squeaks. “Think instant gratifica…!” I crumple the can and toss it, open the Moley, take up the Sheaffer, and think.

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Someone once asked me, “What would you be doing if you weren’t a writer?”

I couldn’t think of anything else I would rather do.

I grew up in homes full of books. Wherever we lived, there were always bookcases stuffed to bursting with my mother’s self-help books, collection of hardbound classics, and mystery, fantasy, horror, and science fiction paperbacks, or low shelves on the floor with my father’s choices in literature – Somerset Maugham, Gore Vidal, Sholom Aleichem.

My parents never consciously encouraged me to read, but surrounded by books and little else to do, I gravitated towards the shelves that were always open to me. I thrived on a literary diet of Enid Blyton and Louisa May Alcott, Nancy Drew and The Bobbsey Twins, Bulfinch’s Mythology and old-fashioned poetry, the rhyming kind like Gunga Din and The Ballad of Sam McGee.

In time, words and the putting together of them in sentences to convey meaning came as naturally to me as breathing. In school, my favorites subjects were the ones that used a lot of words – English, Social Studies. Math was anathema. In college, I took up Journalism. It was either that or English Studies, and I figured I’d have a better chance of earning through writing if I were a journalist, although my mother always said that there was no money in writing.

Today I make my living from it.

Often people ask, “Can you teach me how to write?” It’s a difficult question to answer, because the process is different for everybody. Some say that the talent is inborn. Perhaps to some extent that might be true; I believe some inclinations come naturally to people, like musical talent or athletic ability. But writing is also a skill that can be learned and cultivated, and anyone can do it. For the philosopher Jean Jacques Rosseau, “However great a man’s natural talent may be, the art of writing cannot be learned all at once.”

Some thoughts on writing that I’ve formed over the years:

1. Writing is a form of communication, just like speaking. Having problems starting your piece? Pretend you are talking to someone about it. Write it down that way. Then go back over what you’ve written and edit.

2. Writing uses language. To write effectively, you must know the language and its rules. Words are the construction materials, grammar the nails and mortar that hold them together. Immerse yourself in the language to build up your vocabulary. Even if you are writing in your mother tongue, don’t take it for granted that you know all the words or even enough of them. Read books and magazines. Watch television shows and films. Listen to native speakers and soak up the rhythm of their speech patterns. Choose a usage and composition guide – I was introduced to Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style in my freshman year of college, and have adhered to its tenets ever since.

3. Less is more. I’ve always clung to Strunk’s Rule Number 17: “Omit needless words.” Bombarded as we are on all fronts by information vying for our attention, why make it harder for your reader to decode your message? Related to this is White’s advice: “Avoid fancy words.” If there exists a simpler word that conveys the same meaning and nuance, use it. But in the end, always go by your ear – use whatever sounds right. As Matthew Arnold said, “Have something to say and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret of style.” The exception would be if you were deliberately using the fancy word or words to achieve a certain effect.

4. Organize, organize, organize. I believe this is the most important part of the writing process. It doesn’t matter that you can use big words like venustation or ptochology if you can’t put your thoughts and facts down in a sequence that will help the reader understand the message you wish to convey. Pay attention to the flow of your ideas; for your piece to be effective, it has to make sense, one thought leading to another in a logical manner.

5. Practice, practice, practice. Writing is a skill, like bicycling or blacksmithing. Write something everyday. Said Doris Lessing: “You only learn to be a better writer by actually writing.” Or take Mary Heaton Vorse: “The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.” It takes discipline, but it pays off, I promise.  Take advantage of today’s technological advances and the myriad means of self-expression. Write your feelings down in a journal, or publish your opinions on a blog. One of the easiest ways is microblogging using applications like Twitter. If you can text, you can write!

6. Edit, edit, edit. Few, if any, first drafts are perfect. Go over what you’ve written and clean up typographical errors, spelling and grammar mistakes, factual inaccuracies, conceptual inconsistencies, and sequence flow. Science fiction writer C. J. Cherryh asserted, “It is perfectly okay to write garbage – as long as you edit brilliantly.”

7. Be yourself. In the beginning, writers tend to copy the style of the authors they admire. But the most natural and authentic voice is your own; have confidence in yourself. Said Bill Stout: “Whether or not you write well, write bravely.”

8. Write from your heart. Whether you seek to persuade or inform, the reader responds best to pieces that are sincere and honest.

Winston Churchill, one of the best statemen and writers that Britain has ever produced, once declared, “Writing is an adventure.” It is a journey anyone can take. May yours be filled with the thrill of discovery and the joy of creativity!

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It’s been a while since I blogged about books, any book. Blame it on school. I’m in my first semester of PhD studies, and am feeling my way back into the social sciences after a twenty-year hiatus.

But with the sem winding to a close, and with my requirements done – well, mostly done, except for a couple of papers that just need finishing touches – I’m ready to hunker down for some serious reading. With that end in mind, I hit Fully Booked last week and carted off several inexpensive paperbacks, among them Salman Rushdie’s 2008 offering, The Enchantress of Florence.

I have admired his work ever since reading his The Satanic Verses, in 1998, which so offended the Ayatollah Khomeini. The Ayatollah’s regime slapped a fatwa on him for offending Islam, put a price on his head, and had every Muslim out for his life, forcing him to go into hiding for ten years. Nothing like notoriety to bring an author to the top of the bestseller’s lists! That and the scandal of a bald, aging writer mysteriously attracting the most gorgeous women on the planet. You have to wonder – what’s he got that isn’t obvious? Maybe if we read his books, we’d find out.

The Enchantress of Florence is pure Rushdie –  masterful use of language, deft story-telling, plots within plots. This novel is well-researched, mixing, as it does, the history of Renaissance Florence and the Mughal Empire in a rollicking tale featuring a European storyteller calling himself “Mogor dell’Amore” (The Mughal of Love); Akbar the Mughal Emperor; and the Enchantress, whom Mogor claims is his mother.

Though long-dead, she captures the imagination of Akbar and that of the populace of his city of Fatehpur-Sikri so intensely that she acquires a life of her own that makes her even more real than the other people in the book.

Indeed, the insubstantial ghosts of women are more important than those of flesh-and-blood. Akbar’s favorite queen, Jodha, is imaginary, created and sustained by the force of his will, inhabiting his palace like a shadow. Yet the resentment of his other queens against the phantasm is all too real. Later it is directed against the “Enchantress”, Qara Koz (“Black Eyes”), the sister of Akbar’s ancestor Babar, when she gains a life of her own.

Stripped of its flowery language and convoluted storyline, the novel centers around an impossibly beautiful woman and her magical effect on the men around her. Like la belle dame sans merci, she loves only as long as she wants to, but her men love her forever.

One wonders – was Rushdie inspired by a real woman – someone, perhaps, like his fourth wife, actress Padma Lakshmi, from whom he was recently divorced?

Having lived with such glamorous arm candy for three years, it isn’t far-fetched to speculate that here is Rushdie’s “Enchantress” in the flesh, and the novel, his tribute to a stunning woman who captured his heart, his fancy, and his imagination.

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From the haunted imagination of bestselling novelist Stephen King comes Just After Sunset, a collection of thirteen tales that explore the dark side of the mind. These spine-chilling stories tackle themes of obsessive-compulsive behavior, explorations of the nature of the afterlife, and the tangibility of guilt.

As a lifelong fan of “The Other King”, I believe the height of his mastery was during his earlier days, when he churned out supernatural chillers like Salem’s Lot, Pet Sematary, Christine, and It. His last short story collection, Everything’s Eventual, was written in 2002. That was a batch of underbaked literary cookies that left one dismayed over the decline of his inventive powers, a slide most noticeable in the potboilers Gerald’s Game, Rose Madder, Dolores Claiborne, and Dreamcatcher. His latest novel, Duma Key, was such a disappointment that I wondered if King had lost his mojo for good.

Just After Sunset is a more satisfying box of “poisoned bon-bons”, as he calls them, and marks a return to the old Stephen King who wrote terror-filled tales that kept you up at night and would not let you visit the bathroom alone.

The master’s magic is back – good news for all his admirers.

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Before email and text messaging, people kept in touch through letters. Penpals waited months to hear from correspondents around the world. When the letters finally arrived, they were opened like little treasures. The stamps were carefully inspected, as were the handwriting (or typewriting, but this was seldom), envelopes, and stationery. Relatives abroad sent missives scrawled on thin aeropost paper that folded over to make its own envelopes. Everyone was a handwriting expert and puzzle decoder, the skill gained from deciphering the chicken tracks sketched by friends and family.

The advances in technology have nearly killed off letter-writing. True, it is now more convenient than ever to communicate with people, yet there is a touch of soul and heart missing in the disturbed electrons that dance across a computer or mobile phone screen.

Interior decoratrix and lifestyle guru Alexandra Stoddard attempts to reverse this trend by waxing lyrical about the art of letter-writing in her book Gift of a Letter (1991).

She tells of her love of stationery, fountain pens, and sealing wax – interests I share – and how she uses these objects to pen handwritten notes to connect to people in an intimate and special way.

She makes clear, though, that you don’t need fancy pens or paper to drop your friends a line. What is important is sending something tangible – a piece of yourself that they can read over and over again, and tuck away in a box to read again later. Telephone conversations and text messages do serve the purpose of keeping people in touch, yet these methods of communication are ephemeral. They travel over the ether and vanish, leaving you with a dim memory of someone’s voice or a shared sentence or two.

Among the things I keep in my “memory box” are letters from my aunt, Araceli “Cely” Ortuoste, our clan matriarch. Her letters share stories about her parents and grandparents whom I never met.  When I visited her in her home in California some years ago, she told me the same stories. Yet the details of our conversations are forgotten; the letters, though, will always be there to remind me. My mother sends greeting cards from the Bay Area; her hand cramps and it’s difficult for her to curl her fingers around a pen, yet she manages to scribble a line or two in inks of different colors. I run my hands over the ridges on the paper and feel her with me, although it has been seven years since we last saw each other.

A letter shows that you cared enough to exert the effort of picking up a pen, writing a few lines with your recipient in mind, and mailing it. Use whatever’s at hand. A stray pentel and a page torn from a notebook are materials enough.

If you don’t like writing, why not send a little gift? A UK-based friend, Annie Merginio-Murgatroyd, mailed Ty Beanie Babies for my daughters; I sent her a signed mini-quilt. No words need be shared; the mere act of sending something that can be touched speaks volumes.

Vita is brevis. Let’s not take anyone or anything for granted. Think of the people you hold dear, and send them a little bit of your heart.

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Last Tuesday I was at UP, noh, the one in Diliman. Yeah, ‘coz I had to get my ID na talaga, kasi the ones they’re giving out this year have the UP Centennial logo, it’s really cute talaga.

I looked for the OUR pa – you know, the Office of the University Registrar – kasi that’s where we have to get the ID daw. Then I got lost trying to find it ‘coz the last time I was here in UP was antagal na talaga, noh. I don’t even know that OUR, I swear. Someone told me nalang to ride the Toki jeep.

So I waited for one near Shopping Center. Grabe, there’s a “free ride” Toki pala. So kahit it was hard for me to make sakay on the jeep ‘coz I was carrying a lot of books, I rode it pa rin.

But all the other passengers got down before I did. Tapos me and the driver nalang were left. He drove the jeep to the Math building na, gosh, it didn’t exist when I was an undergraduate, I swear! He let me down there and told me to walk.

I said, “Why naman, mamang driver, will you make me walk? I might get lost pa!” He told me, “There’s a path there. Just follow it. Then ride the Ikot to OUR.” Wow, he spoke in English, galing talaga the drivers in UP.

So I looked for the path. Wow, meron nga. All paved and everything, with lanterns pa along the way. So sosyal talaga.

So many plants everywhere talaga, also trees. UP must be vegetarian, noh? Galing the architecture, even the paths are nice, paved in a herringbone pattern and parang origami with the tuklap-tuklap, I swear.

I even saw a bridge! Wow! I couldn’t believe it!

O, see, there’s a waterfall effect pa. Galing talaga, noh!

Nice in UP, noh? Parang gubat, I swear. But you have to make lakad-lakad nga lang all over the place to see the things like this. So don’t wear high heels or wedge sandals ‘coz you might make tapilok, then you’ll be wa-poise, yaks!

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Last Tuesday, I dropped by the College of Arts and Letters at the University of the Philippines-Diliman. It seems that I had been admitted to the CAL’s PhD Creative Writing program for the second semester this academic year; inadvertently, I was not informed.  I thought I was rejected, and enrolled at the UP College of Mass Communication instead. My fault, really. I should have checked with the CAL staff when I hadn’t heard from them.

At CAL, I took a look at my acceptance letter from Dean Virgilio Almario, and noted that I was required to take only one remedial subject (Comparative Literature 121 or 122). It feels great to know that I have the option of enrolling in that program next semester.

Walking to CMC for class, I was struck speechless yet again by the beauty of the fading afternoon sunlight filtering through the leaves of the trees that line University Drive.

On the right, after AS (Palma Hall) and FC (Faculty Center) is the Vargas Museum and the long stretch to the corner, where I’d have to turn right, walking past Quezon Hall (Administration Building) on the right all the way to CMC, the first structure on the left along Ylanan Street. It was a bit of a ways.

The curb was paved in stone or concrete blocks that were mossy with age, and crooked, like the earth beneath them had taken a deep breath and pushed them out of place. Twenty years ago, as an undergrad, I walked these same curbstones and they were gray as a rainy day.

On the left, though, was an expanse of green. A park. A path cut through the grass. I took it.

There were electric lampposts in the middle of the park. Lantern Waste in the summer?

I decided to walk through, not knowing where I would end up, if I would be out of my way, lost, late for class. But the path beckoned.

Every where were trees, and shrubs, and plants whose names I did not know. Green surrounded me. In the midst of the city, I was enveloped by nature.

How come I have no memories of exploring this park two decades ago? I suppose I had never been here; my sneaker-shod feet had never trudged these verdant by-ways. Now I step carefully across a narrow stone bridge spanning a little creek, and pick my way gingerly past rocks and roots that threaten to trip me as I totter along in four-inch tall wedge sandals.

The path winds behind Quezon Hall.

It ends at the road parallel to University Drive, across the UP Theater and the Carillon. In other words, it’s a shortcut to CMC from FC.

I look back at the way I have come. I’m glad I found this path, taken late but better than never at all.

I emerge into the sunlight. I spy CMC in the distance, at the right.

In a few minutes, I reach CMC – Plaridel Hall. It is not journey’s end, but it is where I begin a new chapter of my life.

It’s an obvious parallelism, but I’m an obvious person anyway, so here it is – it’s like life. Taking paths not travelled before to see where they lead, braving the unknown, skirting obstacles, always with courage and with style. Who knows, one of those paths could be a shortcut to your destination, and worth taking, after all.

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Yes, you can, this November with NaNoWriMo!

National Novel Writing Month is an organization that encourages people all over the world to unleash their inner creative writer by writing a 50,000-word novel in thirty days. The scribbling frenzy starts November 1 and ends before midnight of November 30. Participants sign up at www.nanowrimo.org. The site tracks word count and issues a certificate at the end of the month to successful writers.

Quantity, not quality, is the mantra. The goal is output. About 2,000 words a day should do it.  Just get what’s in your head down on paper. Don’t spend too much time on polishing. Your inner editor will balk, but there is no perfect first draft, is there? Editing is for December!

I learned about NaNoWriMo in late November last year, when it was almost over (sob). I vowed back then to join this year. Having waited an entire year to do this, I signed up five days late. Sigh.

But as they say, “better late than dead!” so here I am, computer fired up and fountain pens inked. This year is the project’s tenth anniversary. What an auspicious moment for me to join for the first time. It’s meant to be.

Here’s more on NaNoWriMo, from their website:

National Novel Writing Month: The Largest Writing Contest in the World Turns Ten!

Oakland, Calif. — There are some who say writing a novel takes awesome talent, strong language skills, academic training, and years of dedication.

Not true. All it really takes is a deadline – a very, very tight deadline – and a whole lot of coffee.

Welcome to National Novel Writing Month, a nonprofit literary crusade that encourages aspiring novelists all over the world to write a 50,000-word novel in a month. At midnight on Nov. 1, more than 100,000 writers from over 80 countries – poised over laptops and pads of paper, fingers itching and minds racing with plots and characters – will begin a furious adventure in fiction. By 11:59 PM on Nov. 30, tens of thousands of them will be novelists.

2008 is the ten-year anniversary of NaNoWriMo, founded in 1999 by freelance writer Chris Baty. In its first year, NaNoWriMo had just 21 participants. In 2007, over 100,000 people took part in the free challenge, making it the largest writing contest in the world. And while the event stresses fun and creative exploration over publication, 24 NaNoWriMo novelists have had their NaNo-novels published, including Sarah Gruen, whose New York Times #1 best seller, Water for Elephants, began as a NaNoWriMo novel.

Around 18% of NaNoWriMo participants “win” every year by writing 50,000 words and validating their novels on the organization’s website before midnight on Nov 30. Winners receive no prizes, and no one at NaNoWriMo ever reads the manuscripts submitted.

So if not for fame or fortune, why do people do it?

“The 50,000-word challenge has a wonderful way of opening up your imagination and unleashing creative potential like nothing else,” says NaNoWriMo Director (and nine-time NaNoWriMo winner) Chris Baty. “When you write for quantity instead of quality, you end up getting both. Also, it’s a great excuse for not doing any dishes for a month.”

At the website, participants can fill out their profile, check out their word count meter, and join groups based on geolocation. The Philippines is represented by 510 affiliates so far, “doing NaNoWriMo the Pinoy way.”

With writers from all over the world, shouldn’t the contest be called WoNoWriMo – World Novel Writing Month? GloNoWriMo – Global? PlaNoWriMo – Planetary?

While we work on finding a better name for the contest, go write down that recurring dream you have about orangutans beside your bed eating muffins and tomato salad. Anything goes here; claim the freedom to expound on whatever you want. Don’t worry too much about it. This is, after all, the activity that birthed the book No Plot? No Problem! by Chris Baty, which advocates “low-stress, high-velocity” writing techniques, and the ‘plot ninja’, “intentionally vague” ideas that jolt your story when it’s stuck in a rut or has painted itself into a corner.

You read the magic words – “novel”, “deadline”, “coffee”, “not doing dishes for a month”. Now go sign up, break out your dictionary, thesaurus, and ten-gallon percolator, and write!

taste more:

Green gate, rust-spotted

wears a lacy coat of leaves -

Spring in Manila?

Canopy of leaves

Vines curl into cheerful springs -

echo the season.

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