buses and poetry

[Naisip/nasulat ito habang nakasakay ako sa bus kaninang umaga. Buses and I go way back, and the trip allows me time to think, wallow, muse, and like this morning, write. :D Comments are welcome, don’t be shy. And don’t be afraid to bash.]

I remember
The mere thought of you
Was an invitation,
A temptation, and surrender
To fire,
Of needy kisses and burning embers
Of me breathing you in
Taking you inside
And relishing each draw,
And each release.
Each tryst ending with you
Consumed.
You lie there spent
Discarded
With your taste lingering on my lips
Only a memory

His kisses replaced yours,
Now bittersweet and telling
Of an end beginning
And I
Needing something for my hand to hold
Have come back
To you
To contemplate
As smoke curls up and embers dissolve
To ashes

chasing dragons with plastic swords

So last night I started feeling off and under the weather, and thus I have been running on half (mental) capacity. At the time of this writing, I am high on bioflu. Have you ever tried doing any smart activities while on flu meds? Everything is a blur, so even the simple activity of getting from point a to point b somehow becomes an exercise in retardation (one foot in front of the other Rio yes that’s it now the other foot). Amidst the blurring lines and squiggly surfaces, it’s a little disconcerting to mull over some things since I consider mulling, wondering, thinking, and considering activities best done when not on flu meds.

This morning I have been arguing with Mabie regarding a trip which will pretty much require me to figuratively jump through flaming hoops, crawl under barbed wires, and climb every mountain, ford every stream. Wait, what? So while arguing – which is basically her typing furiously at the other end and me with my arms crossed and grunting at every point she made – she used a card I have never seen before. It’s the “Nag-iiba na ang demographics natin” card.

beating a 15-storey Block with nothing but spit and automatism

Writing used to be a morning habit, a ritual before starting things that are regimented and are stamped with deadlines. Lately, writing for myself has been feeling like a chore, something that can be put off until it is forgotten in the daily grind. This happens, I guess. It’s a phase. It’s a phase though that I don’t want to eventually get used to, I want it to be a phase that I’ll always dislike the way people dislike constipation.

I used to write humor and sarcasm (or so I’d like to think) but finding humor these days seems tedious, forced. It’s fascinating how I used to find something funny in bus rides or in Chucks, how I can stop and think about things that interest me or annoy me. I don’t think the humor in little things escape me, I can see them perfectly well now as I did then, it’s just the writing that escapes me I think. That’s not a good image: words evacuating from my brain en masse, slipping through my fingers, landing at the tip of my tongue.

Dear Amazon,

WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU CAN’T SHIP THIS?

Sige na please. Huhuhuhu.

Love,

I-WANT-IT-NOW.

sometimes, i'm barely sentient.

So last night, I was with Rem at Eya’s office. They were filling out forms while I was providing background noise. As they were doing that, guy passes by and Eya looks up. “Hey, (name). These are the people from The Antithesis Collective. This is Rio, the editor, and Rem, the partner. They’ve received your manuscript.”

Have you ever been caught with your pants down in public? I guess the 5.5 people who read this blog think that I am generally glib, witty, and fast on my brain cells (or not, but whatever, right?). So yeah, as soon as Eya said, “Rio, the editor” and “your manuscript” my brain froze in its tracks and automatically went into flight or fight. In this instance, my language centers fled and my tongue made a valiant attempt to continue speaking. While the effort was noble, I’m sure my own nanay would disown me if she saw me that way.

I remember thinking, HOLY SHIT ON STILTS, DID SHE JUST INTRODUCE ME AS AN EDITOR.

6 Reasons You Will Never Be A Writer

6 Reasons You Will Never Be A Writer

Guilty as charged.

the-write-idea:

Wondering when you’ll reap the fame and fortune that come with your dream of being a writer? Well, probably never. If:

1. You don’t read

At least, not the right things. You read all the books on writing and polishing and publishing, and all the books that literary critics are praising, but nothing of any real value. You don’t read books that light a fire under you, you don’t read in your genre, you don’t read non-fiction for fun and inspiration.  You don’t have an Audible membership or a library card and you couldn’t name a book that has meant anything to you since you turned 20.

If you were learning to be an accountant you’d study accounting law. If you were studying to be a doctor you would read medical books. Stephen King, in On Writing calls it the Great Commandment: Reada lot, write a lot.

“Read, read, read, Read everything — trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it.”

-William Faulkner.

2. You’re too busy to write

You’re not independently wealthy: you’ve got a job, a family, commitments, a social life, a pressing engagement with the cast of Glee! You can’t possibly squeeze any time out of your day to write.

Jon Scalzi, current president of the Science Fiction Writers of America puts it bluntly and truthfully:

So: Do you want to write or don’t you? If your answer is “yes, but,” then here’s a small editing tip: what you’re doing is using six letters and two words to say “no.” And that’s fine. Just don’t kid yourself as to what “yes, but” means.

You can make time to write, but something else is probably going to have to give. It might be sleep, it might be ‘watching Ellen in the afternoon’, it might be having lunch with the same people every day in the dreary work cafeteria. It might be ‘feeling bad about yourself because you’re not getting any writing done and eating ice cream instead’.

But, chances are, you can make time to write.

3. You have no original ideas

Every time you sit down to write you are paralyzed by the overwhelming feeling that everything has been said before. Well, you know what? You’re right. But it hasn’t been said by you, in this time and place, at your age, and in your circumstances. Agent Donald Maas talks a lot in The Breakout Novelist about the difference between ‘original’ and ‘unique’. You don’t have to be original, but you do have to be ‘unique’.

I once interviewed Daniel Pinkwater and he said the same thing: only you can speak in your voice, and if you write for a while you’ll discover what that voice is.

I love that what my readers need, they can only get from me. It’s riskier, but much more ego-gratifying
-Daniel Pinkwater, 2003 interview

He also said,

Ideas are everywhere. I have 60 ideas a day. So do you. So does everybody.
-Daniel Pinkwater, 2003 interview

The trick is paying attention, taking those ideas and developing them into the story only you can tell.

4. You have no qualifications for this. You don’t know what you’re doing

No writer does. Every artist is engaged in creating something unique and new. Experienced writers say this all the time: I don’t know what I’m doing until I’ve done it. Here’s a little evidence:

The only way to write is to write… Stupid b*****d job.
-Russell T. Davies, Doctor Who: The Writer’s Tale.

Very few writers know what they are doing until they have done it.
-Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life.

You can’t completely understand what good writers do until you try it yourself…Write from the very beginning, then, and keep on writing…The next story will be better, and the next one after that still better, and eventually—
-Isaac Asimov, Gold

5. Your Writing Sucks

When you do make the time to write, it’s hard. The words do not come dripping off your pen easily; all the elements in your story don’t come out in the right order; your characters are flat and uninteresting and they speak in cliches; you want to give up.

And that is what Anne Lammot calls your ’shitty first draft’. It has to be got through in order to get to the second draft, the third, and the polished end result. If you are too scared to suck, too scared to fail then you will never be a writer, because all writing involves putting some truly terrible prose on the page — and excising it later or, like William Faulkner, throw it out entirely and start again,

Write. If it’s good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out the window.
-William Faulkner

Sure, it’s scary but even the great and prolific Isaac Asimov says, of the writer’s daily task:

We sit there alone, pounding out words, with out hearts pounding in time. Each sentence brings with it the sickening sensation of not being right.
-Isaac Asimov, Gold

Can you allow your first drafts to be less than perfect?

6. You’re Too Nice

In real life it’s nice to be nice: people like you, you offend nobody and your mother is proud of you.

In literature, being nice doesn’t pay. It’s boring if nothing happens, if no-one gets upset, if no-one is threatened, insulted, shamed, murdered, even. Your writing can be your playground. Be nice in real life if you must but, in your writing,

Embrace your inner sadist.
-Donald Maass, The Breakout Novelist