I have all this free time, and I haven't been blogging. Forgive me. It costs money to go online in this here Metro. Having been unemployed since May 28 (exactly), I have taken on a Scrooge mentality. But in one glaring moment of enlightenment, I have decided to write weekly. It remains to be seen, but I will try my darndest to contribute to this tangled Web we weave.
Blogs are to be thanked for broadening horizons. Mine are becoming increasingly familiar and I'm sick of them.
I clicked on Misteryosa.com and came upon a most stimulating post on a new writing adventure. Shari takes note of all the important stuff, and more goodies and details can be found on the Philippine Genre Stories blog. The Digest of Philippine Genre Stories advocates for literacy among Filipinos and seeks to highlight a little-explored style of expression among local writers.
I'm glad for the information and grateful for the little nudge. I have 9 hours of class every week, leaving me with 159 hours of free time. My past transgressions have come back to haunt me, I have begun questioning my existence (where for about two minutes, I decided I wanted to become such an exceptional human being that when I died, the world would be a sadder place. Haa. Sure.), I wonder if being back in school is truly what I want, I'm engaged in a war with the creative bits of my brain (which seem to be trying to claw out of a very dark place), and sunderings are occurring here and there. I've been accused of overthinking.
I don't know if I'm still capable of writing a short story. Creative writing has recently been absent from my life. The last time I wracked my brain for story ideas was with a wolf. Most of my story ideas are squeezed out of my brain by hungry direwolves. The hunger is there. It is patiently forming into something palpable: I WANT TO WRITE. Ngrwar. It will probably be a while before I come up with something worth showing, but it's good to know that there's a place I could pester to get published. The important thing is, there will be notebooks again. And there will be direction.
I love short stories. I'm not sure if it's just something I agree with from somewhere or I came up with it myself, but I've always thought that the real worth of an author is most apparent in the short stories they write. They have only a couple of pages to convince you that the shit they're selling is the good kind, and the ending has to be pitch perfect. The whole point of a short story is to leave the reader stupefied. It has to evoke feelings that cannot be shaken in a mere number of hours. A good short story will take you out of place and out of time that when you look up from the last word, you are a little disoriented (Where are you?). A good short story will leave a gaping hole in your chest because of how it ended and that it is over. A good short story will be the last thing you think about before going to sleep.
Let's all write to make the world a better place.
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kubs:
writing to make the world a better place? really?
well, you're kind of right about that one. i always write about terrible things so that people would feel better about their miserable lives. ;)
@marck: it boils down to objectives. i like to think we write to exact change - be it in the form of an exposition or a brilliantly constructed short story. and to want to exact change is to want something better for the world.
i'm generalizing. try this:
Let's all write to change the world.
there. so it can swing both ways :D
i agree with your comment on short stories, i also use it as a basis for writing since i have such short attention span. if you can make me stick beyond the 3rd paragraph, chance is, it's worth it.
good shorts are hard to come by. you should write kubs, you're one hella good writer naman eh. ^_^
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