Write of passage

There was a reason that fellow Philippine STAR columnist and the director of the workshop, Butch Dalisay, brought us to BenCab’s cloud-shrouded hideaway at the postcard-perfect mountaintop setting of the BenCab Museum in Baguio for the 53rd UP National Writers Workshop.

No, it was not to admire the erotic gallery (although security was called in to prevent the League of Dirty Old Men and No Girlfriends Since Birth from abusing the sculptures). And no, it was not to grovel in the presence of the writing gods who had descended for the weeklong workshop (although you are welcome to grovel as long as you wipe up after yourself).

I found that reason mounted on the display of headhunting implements inside the gallery of Indigenous People’s Art. It read: “The long spear serves to wound and bring down the opponents in battle. The shield’s curved bottom is used to pin down the struggling victim by the neck. The heavy flat blade of the double-sided axe performs the actual decapitation, and the sharply curved opposing side is used to skin the skull.”

We were brought to the BenCab Museum in preparation for a literary slaughter. But despite that, my pink parts, literal, literary or otherwise, were quivering to be lopped off. 

You see, my three female readers, I have longed to be part of the institution that is the UP Writers Workshop. According to the description on their website, the workshop is only for “advanced writers” (I am unsure if “advanced” refers to the number of years you’ve been writing or the number of works you have written or the amount of hair you’ve lost because of writing). These advanced writers from around the country compete for 12 fellowship slots in the workshop by submitting manuscripts of their works in progress in Filipino or English. During the workshop, the manuscripts are reviewed by both the fellows and panelists (a.k.a. writing gods) and there is an exchange of views on the craft and their current literary projects. And these exchanges involve some sharply barbed tongues, some alcohol (drinking, rubbing or otherwise) and some sacrifices of non-essential body parts.

When I was in college, I toyed with the idea of becoming a fiction writer. However, aside from the 10-pound business thesis that I wrote for graduate school, the only work of creative merit that I produced were two short stories that I wrote for a creative writing class under Dr. Isagani Cruz. I submitted both works to the UP Writers Workshop in the following year. Unfortunately, I was flat-out rejected for the workshop. 

With that stinging rebuke, the testicles of my 20-year-old writing ego had shrunk to a size visible only through an electron microscope. At that point, I decided to abandon fiction writing and focused my attention on a career in business, media and world domination.

Fast forward several years: I asked writing god Butch Dalisay to pen the foreword to my last book, Playing With Pink Parts. While reading the manuscript of my book, I may have tickled enough of his pink parts to the point that he invited me to apply for the workshop. Although I was very flattered by the invitation, I informed Butch that the only fiction I had attempted in recent memory were the excuses I made to my editor for failing to submit a column. However, Butch informed me that I could apply under the Creative Nonfiction category. Wait.. “Creative Nonfiction”!? Did that mean that all the columns I have written on evolutionary biology and pickup artists and premature ejaculation and DOMs and yayas had a germ of literary merit? Or even a virus!?

With the specter of my 1995 application still haunting me, I submitted the manuscript of my next book to the workshop and waited for the results. And, lo and behold, 19 years, a wife and two kids, five books, several hundred columns and 68 hair-loss prevention treatments later, I finally had the privilege of calling myself a UP writing fellow (Or as my fellow workshoppers more aptly describe it, “felon”).

I realize there are many aspiring felons like myself who — whatever the age, whatever the level of literary accomplishment, whatever the amount of hair left on your head — still aspire to break into the workshop with a desire to improve their craft. Given this, let me share with you some bite-sized gospel truths that the writing gods are looking for when they review manuscripts:

• Writer and professor of Philippine Studies at UP Rosario “Chari” Cruz-Lucero says she is looking for that elusive “tingle” when reading someone’s work (I have been looking into my hard-to-reach body places for that tingle. If you find it, please alert authorities).

• Vim Nadera, award-winning poet, fictionist, playwriting, essayist, the “father of performance poetry in the Philippines” and the Vice Ganda of the UP Writers Workshop, furthers the point of Chari Cruz-Lucero. He is looking for the “singleness of the project” because that means the writer knows what he or she is doing. I quote verbatim from Vim: “Tingle sa Ingles ay c%^&*(@s Kapag kiniliti, nakakalimutan mo ang pangalan mo.”

• Aside from mastery of the language, award-living novelist Charlson Ong is looking for “Precision. To write correct sentences that are almost like equations. (I want works that showcase something) new, exciting and ambitious about the language.” He also answers the most important question of the workshop, “Hindi ako si Bob Ong.”

•  If you want to pleasure poet and critic J. Neil Garcia, I’ll have you know he is looking for “the pleasure of ulteriority — because literature is about layers. The pleasure is about going underneath. Form becomes realized content. Originality and awareness of social self versus the solipsistic self, which is the inevitable trajectory of the writer.” (I nodded furiously while Neil was saying this, hoping Neil would not realize I had no clue what he was talking about. But I think my nosebleed gave me away.)

• Award-winning fictionist, critic, publisher and pioneering creative nonfiction writer Cristina “Jing” Pantoja-Hidalgo is looking for work that “raises the bar” and helps “grow the readership of Philippine literature.” Writing that is filled with “great imagination, originality and (demonstrates) that the writer is conversant with what has been published in his or her chosen genre.”

• Multi-awarded poet, critic and co-founder of the Philippine Literary Arts Council Gemino (“Everything I say is quotable”) Abad shared that “the bottom line (of writing) is language. Language is not a given, it is forged. It is molded and remolded, made fresh again. It is only in the writer’s hands that the language comes alive. Language endows form to a perceived reality by which the reality is also perceived by the reader. Every good work is a miracle of language for me. (With regard to) ‘subject matter,’ you may have the subject of the matter, but not the matter of the subject. You might have surface reality, but nothing else. It is endowing with form by means of language that realizes the inner content of the work. Just do it and persevere.”

• And finally, multi-awarded fiction, poetry, nonfiction and screenplay writer Butch (“James Earl Jones voiceover of the Philippines”) Dalisay added that, on top of technical competence and execution, the writing he is looking for likes to takes risks. “Works that don’t play it safe. (In gambler’s parlance), it’s going ‘all in’ at the right time. Make it difficult for yourself. A risk taken that didn’t work (is better) instead of a risk not taken at all. To borrow from Franz Arcellana: ‘Write the story that only you can write.’”

Despite my initial fears, the panelists did not totally massacre our manuscripts. In fact, some of my fellow felons were still able to reconstruct what little they had left of their dignity. But after the blood was shed, after the limbs were reattached, and after the manuscripts were used for a bonfire, both felons and panelists gathered for the culminating activity at Mt. Cloud bookstore in Casa Vallejo: a poetry slam between Baguio-based writers and the UP Writing Workshop (yes, there is a lot of violence involved in creative writing). While the rest of the contestants were slamming poetry in the first round, I was slamming prose from a piece I wrote entitled “Smells Familiar” — which waxed poetic about pheromones, body odors and hamster vaginal secretions. Somehow I made it through to the second round.

For my second piece, I read “See Through” a thoroughly dramatic piece about DOMs, ogling and cardiovascular exercise. To give my piece more gravitas, I spontaneously included the names of our judges — Gemino Abad and National Artist for Literature Rio Alma. However, I’m not sure if they appreciated being included in a piece that involved DOMs, ogling and cardiovascular exercise. Maybe that’s why I didn’t make it into the final round of the slam.

But despite that performance, which now belongs in the anals, este, annals of the UP Writers Workshop, I can finally say that I am a creative nonfiction writer. Welcome to pogi from a parallel universe.

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For comments, suggestions, or some literary foreskin, please email ledesma.rj@gmail.com. or visit www.rjledesma.com . Follow @rjled on Twitter.

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If you want a blow-by-blow commentary of what went on during the workshop, check out this link:http://upworkshop2014.wordpress.com/2014/04/10/summary-rj-ledesma-moderated-by-butch-dalisay/.