Istoryan Writers

[diem]

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[color=navy]@akoyako, salamat sa article.

By the way, I read the previous posts-well at least some of them- where "emotional" writing was discussed. I think the more correct term for that literary style would be "confessional" writing. Confessional writing is the act of freeing or disgorging any objectionable emotion that oppresses.

[color=navy]Add to that, confessional writing can be simply as it states... confession via writing.

Examples of literature that falls under that are St. Augustine's Confessions, his autobiography that recounts his sin as a youth, his conversion and conviction to Christianity; and my personal favorite, [b]Edgar Allan Poe's The Tell-Tale heart.

[Rye_Star]

[color=navy]

[color=navy]Add to that, confessional writing can be simply as it states... confession via writing.

Examples of literature that falls under that are St. Augustine's Confessions, his autobiography that recounts his sin as a youth, his conversion and conviction to Christianity; and my personal favorite, [b]Edgar Allan Poe's The Tell-Tale heart.

Other confessionalist poets are, my personal favorites, Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton.[br]Posted on: April 24, 2008, 09:41:04 AM_________________________________________________I hope to make writing friends here.

[Nino Gonzales]

Other confessionalist poets are, my personal favorites, Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton.[br]Posted on: April 24, 2008, 09:41:04 AM_________________________________________________I hope to make writing friends here.

hello guys! wow, i visited just in time. I'm in the middle of Chesterton's confessional Orthodoxy right now. Plus I just wrote a confessional essay as well... I talked about my plans for a book in page 27 of this thread... i was planning to deal with identity topics like race, ethnicity, class and language... I got to write about that, but I ended up writing on a more personal level... http://en.wikipilipinas.org/index.ph...Gonzales/conyo (it's almost like a long blog)

Here are the first two paragraphs:
A few months ago my brother blogged about Gossip Girl, a show about the scandal-ridden lives of rich New York teenagers. Now my bro is a perfectly macho college guy who listens to loud music, has the built of a bouncer, and sports long and grungy hair. This disjointedness is perhaps the reason why I found his blog post extremely funny. If Arnold Schwarchenegger appears as a guest in Oprah and shares his secret Hello Kitty collection, it would probably have the same effect. My bro confessed that Gossip Girl is his “guilty pleasure,” and goes on speculate on why this is so. Is it because deep in his heart he is longing to be part of the world of glitz and popularity? (Yes, everyone thinks like a Freudian nowadays, even college guys who listen to loud music.)

His post was particularly amusing for me since just a week before that was the first time I saw Gossip Girl. I was visiting my lola and was tinkering with the ipod of my sister who is living with her. I was browsing the ipod carelessly and decided on a whim to play Gossip Girl; I heard of it in some music podcast a while back. I enjoyed the show a lot, like my brother. And like him, my enjoyment was pretty uneasy. I was immediately self-conscious about my enjoyment and a voice in my head kept gnawing at my conscience: “hey, sissyboy, enjoying yourself a lot, I see...” Like my bro, my upbringing is steeped in the traditions of Cebuano machismo—a combination of Bisaya warrior ethos, Iberian concepts of honor and Catholic schoolboy chest-thumping. My pretensions of urbanity—“I can damn well enjoy any show I want... I'm comfortable with my sensitive side, you know”—had no chance against these age-old bastions of machoness—bastions so strong that even the temptation of using an umbrella can bring the perfectly self-confident Cebuano to an agonizing cosmic morality play between pragmatism and protecting ones manly honor.

[diem]

[color=navy]Hello everyone. I hope that you had an interesting, life-enriching weekend. Just want to share the following excerpts from Butch Dalisay's blog.

Mr. Dalisay, other than being a UP professor, author and columnist, was the Director of the recently concluded 47th UP National Writers Workshop held in Baguio. Below are his words on what transpired there.

WE HAD a very fruitful and engaging time last week in Baguio at the 47th UP National Writers Workshop, run by the University of the Philippines Institute of Creative Writing. This time around, we shared the company of 12 of our best younger and newer mid-career writers: Bobby Añonuevo, Jun Balde, Ian Casocot, Frank Cimatu, Allan Derain, Luis Katigbak, Mookie Katigbak, Jun Lana, Nick Pichay, Rica Bolipata Santos, Tara Sering, and Vincenz Serrano.

I was particularly impressed by the work of two fictionists in English, Luis Katigbak and Tara Sering. Both had been my students when they were undergraduates, and even then they had shown the promise they soon realized. Luis has gone on to write science fiction, music criticism, and advertising copy, among other things. Here’s an excerpt from a story titled “Dear Distance”, the climactic scene which brings the aging but technologically-enhanced narrator into physical contact with a new girl named Jenn5:

“She turns her back to me, and I notice three pairs of metallic ridges slowly rising through slits in her shimmery dress. They push up and out, and grow. They begin as shards, then shape themselves further until they resemble swords, then expand, downwards, outwards, row upon overlapping row of shiny leaf-like protuberances, and I realize that what they are is wings. Glorious steel wings sprouting from little Jenn5’s back. More sounds of admiration from the other clubgoers. I am ecstatic. Some people seem to crowd in closer, some seem to be moving away, and in this place, it’s hard to tell which is which, really, and after a while, hard to care.

“Jenn5 spreads her wings, turns to face me again, and we continue dancing, our movements unusual and mesmerizing, a city and a seraph engaged in the oldest of rituals in this newest of places.

“We dance and laugh and little else matters for now.

“We will never really know each other, Jenn5, though eventually—and briefly—we may imagine we do. Whether you are too young and I am inexcusably elderly or vice versa, there will always be things we have in common, and things we will never understand about each other. In the end, distances and surfaces are all we can ever be sure of, and this is no sad thing. In a world that has accelerated almost beyond recognition, it may be the only comforting thought of which I am still capable.”

Tara, on the other hand, has found success as a magazine editor and a writer of “chick lit” novels. In this excerpt from her novel-in-progress titled “Good People,” she flexes her literary muscle in a paragraph worthy of Greg Brillantes:

“With adjectives she didn’t even know existed, they toss praises over his casket so relentlessly it almost makes the dead man blush. Lola Paz calls her departed husband ‘the most generous man I know’—her mind a camera panning over years of imported clothes, jewelry, allowances, houses, a farm, a roasted calf every time she turned a year older—because she does not suspect, for the time being, that two days after the funeral, the lawyer will read out the will, unrevised since 1985. It lists all his properties and to whom they should go—the houses to his wife, parcels of land to each of his children except Andoni, his old car to Fred, another farm further north to his other son, Michael and his mother, Dina. Within minutes, they will also all discover that the house on the beach had been sold five years ago to an unknown buyer, along with everything else, except the house in town where Lola Paz still lives part of the year. But for now, at the wake, not a soul suspects that the lawyer, a long time friend of the deceased, will utter the words, ‘I’m sorry, but there’s nothing left, actually.’ The lawyer will then think to himself that the formerly wealthy, when they brace for a fight over phantom spoils, are among the most tragic people in the world, and close his briefcase.”

And speaking as this year’s Workshop Director, I’d like to thank AIM’s Henry Tenedero for ensuring that we had a pleasant stay at AIM’s Igorot Lodge. We hope to return next year, with another batch of our best and brightest.

TOWARD THE end of the UP Writers Workshop a couple of weeks ago, one workshopper raised a question that, I’m sure, has occurred more than once to many a young writer: “After the workshop, what?”

Writers workshops can be intoxicating, providing writers with something they’ll be hard put to find anywhere else: the company of sympathetic souls who understand what they want to do, and also how hard it is to do it. Workshops can occasionally get nasty and end in tears (or worse), but they serve, for the most part, to reaffirm and reinforce one’s commitment to the writing life.

The kind of “mid-career” workshops we now hold at UP aren’t even intended any longer to dwell on grammar and the other basics of writing; they’re meant to focus and to sharpen writers’ attitudes toward their own work and that of others. Admit it or not, entry-level workshops do a service to writing, the individual, and the environment by discouraging the unfit from wasting any more paper (and then again, I can imagine how some workshop judgments can be spectacularly wrong; workshop panelists are hardly gods, and have their own hang-ups to deal with). In the UP Writers Workshop, we don’t want people to stop writing; indeed, we want them to press on, more resolute than ever, and surer of their own voices.

But, yes, after the workshop, what?

I wanted to tell the fellow what immediately came to my mind: “Many more years of solitary confinement and hard labor.” It’s a fair summary, in many ways, of the writing life. You can drink and talk all you want, you can bask in the afterglow of Rilke and Plath and Neruda and whoever moves you, and quote them till the cows come home; but when it comes to your own work, it’ll still be just you and the blinking cursor, and maybe a tepid cup of coffee or a half-finished cigarette. No nodding readers, no owl-eyed critics, no triumphal bouquets, no one to say, “That’s good, can’t wait for the next chapter.”

But just think: a hundred years ago there were no workshops, no writing programs, not even computers (and, in many places, not even electricity). But authors churned out 300-page books.

Writing is always a solitary act and solitude can get lonely, but the books get written and suddenly there’s more than you listening to your voice at 2 a.m.

[br]Posted on: April 28, 2008, 08:28:32 AM_________________________________________________[color=navy]Once again, notable fictionist and multiple Palanca awardee Dean Alfar is inviting writers to send in entries for the fourth volume of Philippine Speculative Fiction. Details below.

[font=Arial]
Speculative fiction is the literature of wonder that spans the genres of fantasy, science fiction, horror and magic realism or falls into the cracks in-between.

1. Only works of speculative fiction will be considered for publication. As works of the imagination, the theme is open and free.

2. Stories must cater to an adult sensibility. However, if you have a Young Adult story that is particularly well-written, send it in.

3. Stories must be written in English.

4. Stories must be authored by Filipinos or those of Philippine ancestry.

5. Preference will be given to original unpublished stories, but previously published stories will also be considered. In the case of previously published material, kindly include the title of the publishing entity and the publication date. Kindly state also in your cover letter that you have the permission, if necessary, from the original publishing entity to republish your work.

6. First time authors are welcome to submit. In the first three volumes, there was a good mix of established and new authors. Good stories trump literary credentials anytime.

7. No multiple submissions. Each author may submit only one story for consideration.

8. Each story’s word count must be no fewer than 1,500 words and no more than 7,500 words.

9. All submissions must be in Rich Text Format (.rtf – save the document as .rft on your word processor) and attached to an email to this address: dean@kestrelddm.com. Submissions received in any other format will be deleted, unread.

10. The subject of your email must read: PSF4 Submission: (title) (word count); where (title) is replaced by the title of your short story, without the parentheses, and (word count) is the word count of your story, without the parentheses. For example - PSF4 Submission: Magdalena Brings Fire 3500.

11. All submissions must be accompanied by a cover letter that includes your name, brief bio, contact information, previous publications (if any). Introduce yourself.

12. Deadline for submissions is September 15, 2008. After that date, final choices will be made and letters of acceptance or regret sent out via email.

13. Target publishing date is December 2008/January 2009.

14. Compensation for selected stories will be 2 contributor’s copies of the published anthology as well as a share in aggregrate royalties.

[i]Online Source: http://www.filipinowriter.com/philip...ive-fiction-iv

[diem]

[color=navy]One of my recent prized finds online this year is the Writer's Digest website. Though I know that the Writer's Digest Books have been around for a long long while (I even have one of their books), it's only recent I decided to look up the website to discover a treasure trove of tips for writers.

Here are some I would like to share with you.

For the poets.

POETRY: Word Choice
by Dorianne Laux
Published Online in April 23, 2008
Writer's Digest Website link here

[font=Arial]“What’s in a name?” William Shakespeare asked this question more than 400 years ago and poets are still puzzling over it. Read this exchange between the Bard’s famous star-crossed lovers (at right) and remember when you first heard it.


Juliet:
O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo
Deny thy father and refuse thy name;
Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,
And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.

Romeo:
[Aside.] Shall I hear more, or shall I speak at this?

Juliet:
‘Tis but thy name that is my enemy;—
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What’s Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title:—Romeo, doff thy name;
And for that name, which is no part of thee,
Take all myself.

Romeo:
I take thee at thy word:
Call me but love, and I’ll be new baptiz’d;
Henceforth I never will be Romeo.

By Juliet’s logic, a rose would smell like a rose even if it had been dubbed a turnip, and Romeo would still be Romeo even if we changed his name to Hank. But is this true? “O Hank, Hank! wherefore art thou Hank” It doesn’t have the same ring.

The poet I’d like to consider today is a contemporary American poet named Suzanne Cleary. She asks the question, What’s in a word? in her poem “Anyways”.

Anyways
for David

Anyone born anywhere near
my home town says it this way,
with an s on the end:
“The lake is cold but I swim in it anyways,”
“Kielbasa gives me heartburn but I eat it anyways,”
“(She/he) treats me bad, but I love (her/him) anyways.”
Even after we have left that place
and long settled elsewhere, this
is how we say it, plural.
I never once, not once, thought twice about it
until my husband, a man from far away,
leaned toward me, one day during our courtship,
his grey-green eyes, which always sparkle,
doubly sparkling over our candle-lit meal.
“Anyway,” he said. And when he saw
that I didn’t understand, he repeated the word:
“Anyway. Way, not ways.”
Corner of napkin to corner of lip, he waited.
I kept him waiting. I knew he was right,
but I kept him waiting anyways,
in league, still, with me and mine:
Slovaks homesick for the Old Country their whole lives
who dug gardens anyways,
and deep, hard-water wells.
I looked into his eyes, their smoky constellations,
and then I told him. It is anyways, plural,
because the word must be large enough
to hold all of our reasons. Anyways is our way
of saying there is more than one reason,
and there is that which is beyond reason,
that which cannot be said.
A man dies and his widow keeps his shirts.
They are big but she wears them anyways.
The shoemaker loses his life savings in the Great Depression
but gets out of bed, every day, anyways.
We are shy, my people, not given to storytelling.
We end our stories too soon, trailing off “Anyways....”
The carpenter sighs, “I didn’t need that finger anyways.”
The beauty school student sighs, “It’ll grow back anyways.”
Our faith is weak, but we go to church anyways.
The priest at St. Cyril’s says God loves us. We hear what isn’t said.
This is what he must know about me, this man, my love.
My people live in the third rainiest city in the country,
but we pack our picnic baskets as the sky darkens.
We fall in love knowing it may not last, but we fall.
This is how we know home:
someone who will look into our eyes
and say what could ruin everything, but say it,
regardless.

It’s especially enjoyable to read the poem aloud to hear the rhythms, internal rhymes and alliteration, as well as the snippets of dialogue and fascinating groupings of facts and assertions, and of course, the repetition of the word “anyways,” used no fewer than 14 times.

Most importantly though, this is a poem about identity and connection: to ourselves, to our past, to our family history and to the difficulties of including the other into our tightly knit lives. It’s a poem about relationships and about asserting who we are from the very beginning. It’s important to note that the poem tells us right away that the poet married this man, in spite of the differences between them. And it’s also important to recognize with that last word, “regardless,” that the speaker of the poem knows what’s proper usage and what’s not, but makes her own choices.

What’s in a word? This poem tells us: almost everything.

[diem]

[color=navy]And here's something for all writers of any language, I guess

[font=Times New Roman]
The Four Commandments of Writing Good Sentences
by Bonnie Trenga
Published online on April 16, 2008
Writers Digest Website link

Forget your grammar and instead focus on style.

If you want to write a good sentence, don’t pay any attention to your grammar. I don’t mean “a sentence this like OK is.” I mean don’t automatically think you’ve written a good sentence just because it’s grammatically correct. Lots of bad sentences are grammatically correct. Some of these bad sentences might even be yours.

Quick, whom can you blame? I’m pinning it on Miss Whom, your grammar school teacher. Rather than teaching students to produce clear and meaningful sentences, Miss Whom promoted grammar rules and a word minimum. I remember BS-ing my way through a school essay that had to be at least 1,000 words. My ideas weren’t fully formed, so I tried to make myself sound knowledgeable by fluffing things up. (I fluffed grammatically, of course.)

Unfortunately, many of us still write this way. Until someone shakes things up, writers—especially nonfiction writers—will continue to produce bad and boring sentences.

I’ll volunteer to shake things up. To write good sentences, you must follow these Four Commandments:

1. You shall not write passively.
2. You shall not overuse weak verbs like “to be” and “to have.”
3. You shall not fluff.
4. You shall make every word necessary.

Of course, your sentences should also be grammatical. But remember that many grammatical sentences are also terrible. The most famous awful sentence of all time—“It was a dark and stormy night”—displays superb grammar. The following sentence is even more awful, and it breaks all my rules: The usage of perfect grammar but not an active style of writing has the effect of not just the production of dull words for readers’ intake but it also has the unwanted consequence of making readers want to snooze.

You might call this style formal or academic writing, or even business writing. I just call it bad writing. The only good thing about that 39-word sentence is the grammar. If Mr. T were here, he’d say, “I pity the fool who would write that fluffed-up sentence.”

Unfortunately, Mr. T couldn’t make it. Instead, I, Mrs. T, am asking you to examine this terrible sentence one commandment at a time. Well, two phrases in our sample sentence violate Commandment 1: “the usage of” and “the production of.” These passive phrases (nominalizations) are wordy and fail to mention who is doing the action. It would be better to write that “so and so uses,” and “so and so produces.”

A prodigious amount of passive writing gets written by writers—did you catch that?—and it has to stop. Passive writing is more than just passive voice (“was written badly by”). The following two passive sentences omit “who”: “The writing of poor sentences is prohibited” and “It’s important to be specific when writing sentences.” If you did omit, you must not acquit! You must state who is doing the action, except if you’re purposely withholding that information. (Usually this is a person, unless you’re describing dark and stormy clouds.)

Our terrible sentence disregards Commandment 2 because of these two weak verbs: “has (the effect of)” and “has (the unwanted consequence of).” Bor-ing! Expend a little imagination and use more descriptive verbs. (But don’t go over the top and use fancy SAT words.) Mr. T used a great verb when he said, “I pity the fool.” If he’d said, “I have a problem with the fool,” his sentence would have lost its impact.

Now on to Commandment 3. Where’s the fluff? Sadly, our awful sentence is all fluff. It puffs itself up with wordiness that communicates almost no concrete information. Unless you’re doing laundry, you’re not allowed to fluff. The best way to cut the fluff is to realize—and admit—that your writing is wordy. In your rough draft you’re allowed to write down unfocused ideas and to ramble a bit. But your final, polished version must be much more concise. Put aside your draft for a while and then cut it down—perhaps way down. Examine every phrase and shorten, shorten, shorten.

This leads us to Commandment 4. We must examine our 39-word sentence and make every word necessary. When we rip away all the passive and wordy phrasing, we get an easier-to-digest sentence (remember, this is Writer’s Digest, not Writer’s Indigestion): Writers who use perfect grammar but not active sentence structure bore readers.

Ah, much better. Those dozen words offer substance, not hot air. Make the sentence your mantra. Likewise, make passive and bland writing passé. You don’t want to upset Mr. T.

* * * * *

[color=navy]Check out the Writer's Digest Website for tips and tutorials to begin or refine your writing skills.

[shaxyra]

^^thanks again for the tips diem...

[annapeace]

Poetry does NOT have to rhyme. Poetry does not NOT have to rhyme.
- quoted -

[galenostiel]

I found myself in the library again today.

Actually, I woke up late to the sound of rain, realized I was not going to be productive if I went to work, and decided to spend the remaining hours of my day picking up where I left off in my so-called research. So there I was at the Cebuano Studies Center in USC Main at around 2:30 PM, and after spending nearly half an hour rummaging through the card catalog, I finally went over to the counter and gave my list of books to the assistant librarian.

And then she tells me that there's a 100-peso per day fee for outsiders using the library, and I won't be getting the most out of my money if I decided to go ahead because they close in 3 hours. (Darn it!) But she was good enough to offer to prepare my books in advance so that when I came back on another day, we won't have to search for them and waste precious time.

Seeing that I still had some time, I went to the Cebu City Public Library instead (Rizal Library). Soon enough I was deeply engrossed in The Creatures of Midnight: Faded Deities of Luzon, the Visayas, and Mindanao by Maximo Ramos.

"Our ancestors had many beliefs about the creatures of midnight. A lot of our grandparents believed in them, too. But these creatures are fast being forgotten. They are getting fewer and fewer. We have to tell about them in books. Then you and I and those who come after us will know the creatures our ancestors believed in and enjoyed or feared." - Maximo Ramos

LOL, I hope I didn't bore you guys with that narrative. I got out with 4 pages of notes this time.

[diem]

[color=navy]Hello galenostiel, thanks for keeping us updated Maybe I should allot some time sa library pud. Being around a lot of books that you could read for free could be like a fountain of youth for some.

Anyway, it's been awhile since I last shared some discussion on the elements of writing. Previously, I shared some information on "Setting" and "Character", maybe it's high time we talk about the main body of any fictional piece: the "Plot". For non-fiction, this is similar to the "Topic".

The Plot is all the whats, whos, wheres, whens, whiches and hows happening in your story, article or poem, all bounded together to achieve a particular artistic or emotional effect on your readers. It's something you
want and are writing about, something you want as a writer/author/poet to read.

Let's read what established authors and writers say about plot:

[font=Arial]It seems to have had an order, to have been composed by someone, and those events that were merely accidental when they happened turn out to be the main elements in a consistent plot. Who composed this plot? Just as your dreams are composed, so your whole life has been composed by the will within you.

Just as the people who you met by chance became effective agents in the structuring of your life, so you have been the agent in the structuring of other lives. And the whole thing gears together like one big symphony, everything influencing and structuring everything else.

It's as though our lives were the dream of a single dreamer in which all of the dream characters are dreaming too. And so everything links to everything else moved out of the will in nature...It is as though there were an intention behind it yet it is all by chance. None of us lives the life that he had intended."

---- Joseph Campbell, American mythology professor, writer, and lecturer best known for his work in the fields of comparative mythology and comparative religion. Among his books are The Hero with a Thousand Faces and the Masks of God.

[font=Arial]
“A causally related sequence of events.”

“It is Aristotle’s energeia, energeic action, that is, the actualization of the potential which exists in each character and situation.”

“Ultimately, in fact, plot exists only to give the characters means of finding and revealing themselves.”

“Throughout the entire chain of causally related events, the writer asks himself, would a really cause b and not c, etc., and he creates what seems, at least by the test of his own imagination and experience of the world, an inevitable development of story. Inevitability does not depend, of course, on realism. Some or all of the characters may be fabulous—dragons, griffins, Achilles’ talking horses—but once a character is established for a creature, the creature must act in accord with it.”

“Though character is the emotional core of fiction, and though action with no meaning beyond its own brute existence can have no lasting appeal, plot is—or must sooner or later become—the focus of every good writer’s plan.”

“Plot exists so that the character can discover for himself (and in the process reveal to the reader) what he, the character, is really like: plot forces the character to choice and action, transforms him from a static construct to a lifelike human being making choices and paying for them or reaping the rewards.”

“In nearly all good fiction, the basic—all but inescapable—plot form is: A central character wants something, goes after it despite opposition (perhaps including his own doubts), and so arrives at a win, lose, or draw.”

“In the best fiction, plot is not a series of surprises but an increasingly moving series of recognitions, or moments of understanding.”

“The wise writer counts on the characters and plot for his story’s power, not on tricks of withheld information.”

“There is nothing wrong with fiction in which the plot is relatively predictable. What matters is how things happen, and what it means that they happen, to the people directly involved and to the larger humanity for whom the characters serve as representatives. Needless to say, it is always best if the predictable comes in some surprising way.” John Gardner

“Profluence—the sense that things are moving, getting somewhere, flowing forward. The common reader demands some reason to keep turning the pages. Two things can keep the common reader going, argument and story. (Both are always involved, however subtly, in good fiction).”

“Because he is intellectually and emotionally involved—that is, interested—the reader is led by successive, seemingly inevitable steps, with no false steps, and no necessary steps missing, from an unstable initial situation to its relatively stable outcome.”

----John Gardner was an American novelist and university teacher on fiction writing, best known for his novels The Sunlight Dialogues and Grendel. He also wrote The Art of Fiction and On Becoming a Novelist