From the UP Creative Writing Program:
Tips on How To Become A Successful Writer as of 1996 – 2003
I. You enroll in Creative Writing classes for you to (obviously) learn how to write poetry, essays, short fiction or whatever.
A. In each writing class, you would be asked to read certain texts which are called “models”.
You have models for poetry, models for short fiction, models for essays, models for whatever---even writers as “models”--- depending on what you’re supposed to learn to write in that subject. You should be able to write something close to the way these models were written if not by the end of the semester then someday. After all, these texts are deemed the best because it is said so in the books and by your professors.
Sometimes you won’t understand what’s so special about them because they were very difficult to read or understand or you found them boring. That’s okay but it’s not okay to say it out loud because people will think you’re stupid. The cue: they shake their heads, roll their eyes, or laugh at you.
If you really want to say it out loud, then you should be prepared for a war of words with your teacher, classmates, and their friends. If you do this, it means you already know a lot of stuff about critical theories (like those words ending in “--ism”) and literary history, in addition to a lot of names, book titles, and quotes being dropped like bombs. Otherwise, it’s just an act that would ensure that you get a very low grade and branded as an idiot forever.
B. Each model is of course discussed.
You will be asked about what you think of the text, what you like or don’t like about it and why--- your critique--- and your teacher and classmates may or may not agree with you. You will hear very bright and not-so-very-bright comments, and they may even come from you.
Don’t worry so much, it isn’t a technical discussion i.e. you wouldn’t have to hear or say “the dominant literary device used in this text is diacope…” What is expected is that you should already know basic things like what is an iambic pentameter; or how the plot, setting, characters etc. are differentiated in a given short story; or the most basic requirement like how to write essays. You should also already know what people mean when they would use words like juxtaposition or framework or deconstruction or say “it’s not quite there” or “the language needs work”.
It’s okay to think that these people are speaking an alien language: just nod, take down notes, and pretend that you understand. If you’re serious about writing, you will have to understand this alien language and someday you will speak it, too.
C. While reading and discussing these texts, you would also be given writing exercises---
---like you have to keep a journal. You will be reminded that a journal is not a diary and you are expected to already know the difference.
You may also be asked to write reaction papers (to a painting or a song or whatever your teacher feels like you should trip on) sometimes or a simple report of your holiday or your day. You are expected to be creative when you write about it, though not that creative that no one and not even the psychosomaticaddictinsane would understand your work. As to how you can be creative: your problem, go figure.
And sometimes you would even be asked to begin writing from a given line like “When I woke up, the dinosaurs were still there.” So you write something and then you are asked to stop. After, you are told that the first line is already a story and is in fact the story and you don’t get why. You don’t get what’s so goddamn cool about Italo Calvino (and who the hell is he anyway). You even feel a little angry, a little like you’ve been punked.
Again, that’s okay.
Don’t cry: it will all be okay.
D. You are required to write a poem/story/essay that you will submit for the class workshop.
Really.
You are told this in the beginning of the class.
Really.
So all throughout the readings, discussions, writing exercises and whatever else shit is happening in your life, you should have already been thinking about what you’re going to submit and how you’re going to write it. In fact, you should have been writing it already.
Really.
That’s why your teacher is not smiling at you when you don’t submit your work on the deadline or when you submit crap on the deadline.
Really.
You are expected to at least turn in something really good, something unique.
Really.
What is definitely expected is that you will have zero grammatical errors in your work.
Really.
You didn’t know this?
Really?
What do you think the whole class was for?
Really.
E. During the writing workshop:
Given that the class is required to use pseudonyms, it is expected that everyone would want to guess who wrote which. After all, some of your classmates are scary and you don’t want to offend them and die by saying that you think what the person wrote was crap. Also, some of your classmates are so sensitive so you don’t want to make the sensitive-classmate cry or be the cause of the sensitive-classmate’s suicide. Then of course you have classmates who think that you have no right to say anything at all about what they wrote because you have no idea what they went through in life just so they could write. These classmates and other kinds of classmates exist in every workshop, you know.
But whether or not you know what, it is expected that you give constructive criticism, meaning you praise what you think the writer did well in the text but also touch on the weaknesses and don’t forget to elaborate on both. Of course you have to point out the bad things but don’t just point them out: make suggestions on how to make them better (which they would think is just mean bullshit).
Then you do the writing-cheering-squad-chant: Keep writing! Looking forward to reading more from you! You can write! Believe in your writing! Ra-Ra-Ra! Write! Write! Write!
What usually happens though in writing workshops are these: If you don’t like someone in class, lambaste his/her work. If your friends don’t like someone in your class, lambaste his/her work. Or be fair and simply lambaste everyone’s work. After all, you think that you’re the best writer in class and you know more than your classmates and sometimes even your teachers.
And the general sentiment in these writing workshops is: if you didn’t like or get what I wrote, that means you’re stupid and you don’t know anything about creative writing and literature.
After the workshop, you may gain friends because you people like drinking a lot or doing whatever vice a lot and bitching about the universe a lot. These friends may also help you more on your writing and someday may help you in getting writing gigs, therefore published. But mostly you gain enemies who will never forgive you and will make it their purpose in life to call everything you’ve written from there on after and until you’re dead as crap.
F. All these are supposed to make you write well, keep on writing, and then become better so that you get published and develop concrete composure for the many rejections you will experience before you finally get published.
II. You get published.
So, after all those writing classes you supposedly already know how to write and you think that your writing is good. It’s time to share your good (but you secretly think amazing) writing to others--- other than yourself and your teachers, classmates, boyfriends/girlfriends/friends, and even families.
In short, be published, that’s the whole point and they tell you that in writing classes too. Sometimes they don’t because again it’s one of those things that you should have already known.
But to get published, you have to submit your poems/stories/essays first, to put it out there for an editor to accept or reject. If you have rejection-issues, don’t submit because it’s part of the business to get rejected and you will likely kill yourself or die of a broken ego in the process.
You have to know where you can submit it, too. You can submit and get published in a college paper/magazine/newsletter--- this is okay for a start but not that impressive. Some are impressed though when you are published in a literary folio in your school which means you are, for the student record, one of the best writers enrolled. And really, you can’t submit your warrior-story-in-an-alien-planet when the magazine wants love/sex stories.
You also have to know who will do the accepting or rejecting and their certain tastes. Sometimes you agree with their tastes and sometimes you would think that the editor has gone crazy or stupid for publishing a text that you don’t like or understand (especially when you’ve been rejected by these editors). You would rant, call them names. But if you keep writing and submitting, one day you would finally get accepted and then you will say that these editors are smart after all.
It is also a secret fact that it helps to get published if your teacher or an established writer would recommend your work to editors. Lucky you and if others think this is something bad, well, they’re really just jealous, you know.
You are considered “published” if your work has been published in national periodicals [like the Young Blood section of the Inquirer] or magazines that would have these literary sections [like the Philippine Free Press]. Or that one of your works has been included in an anthology or a collection of poems/stories/essays with a certain theme or agenda, take your pick.
For a successful writing career, you should have accomplished these while still in school.
And once you are published then you are deemed as a good enough writer or part of the “young writer” group. It doesn’t matter if you’re already 40 years old. If it’s your first time to be published, you’re part of the “young”.
Of course being published once isn’t enough. To make sure you get published again, don’t offend these editors (and offend means you say anything truthfully bad about their person or persons) because, well, some of them make sure you don’t get published again.
And for a successful writing career, you have to keep writing and keep publishing until and after you die.
III. You get a fellowship in a National Writers Workshop
There are only two writing workshops you should apply for (and get!) a fellowship: the UP National Writers Workshop in
In UP National Writers Workshop, you won’t need a teacher, writer, famous person or your mother to recommend you--- which will make you feel (if you get accepted) that whole warm feeling of not owing someone your success or innards, that “utang na loob”.
Also, in this workshop, “experimental” writing is accepted. As to what that is, it is when the panelists have a hard time putting a label on what you wrote but they think that you are good and that you have potential to be great [with the help of the workshop]. You just submit samples of your work and then you wait…wait…wait…waiting sucks but it ends.
If you get a fellowship, you are officially welcomed by and on your way into being inducted into the magical circle of writers.
If you get rejected, you can get drunk, rant, call them names, look like a giant bitter grape, and even console yourself with “Heck, the panelists are/were my teachers anyway so no difference. And I’ve been to
Yeah, you just can’t do anything about it.
You hit the jackpot in the Silliman National Writers Workshop: three weeks in Dumaguete, away from the real world with free allowance and lodging, and you are free to have love, sex, booze, drugs, and rock and roll (or reggae). It is three weeks of being with people with the same interest (i.e. writing) and who wouldn’t think you’re crazy or weird for doing all the crazy and weird things that writers do. You can also talk about writing and life issues the whole three weeks ‘til you croak.
But really, it’s the best because you get to learn from the best in the whole archipelago. You can even get to talk to them, drink with them, and breathe the same air they’re breathing. They may even give you tips on how to improve your writing. And because they’ve met you and your writing (and if they like both), you would probably be invited for writing projects and more publications.
You just have to submit a portfolio: an application letter, recommendation letter, letter of authentication, resumé, and 3-5 sample works. Everything has to be done the right way, of course. The application letter has to be worded the right way--- humble but not begging, confident but not arrogant, and it has to give them the right reason why they should accept you. The resumé also has to have something right, like it states that you’ve been published already or that you’ve won an award. And all the sample works should be right and nothing that experimental--- texts that the panel will accept.
Let’s put it this way: the right way is something that only God and the panel evaluating the applications will know.
And the recommendation letter has to be from an established writer. Of course any of your Creative Writing teachers can give you a recommendation letter but it will be better, they say, if you get a recommendation from a literary canon--- those writers you see included in anthology textbooks for Philippine Literature (in English) classes.
Lucky you if you know how and where to find them, and they have time and are nice enough to give complete-stranger-you that letter. Really, how can they recommend you if they don’t know you or your work?
But Dumaguete is a life-altering experience, they say, and you should experience it.
What are the chances of your getting accepted in these workshops?
0 : 100.
What are the chances of your getting rejected in these workshops?
100 : 0.
Yeah, it’s just like that and you just can’t do anything about it.
IV. You go to graduate school
Besides people being impressed with an MA or a PhD as an appellation to your name even if it’s in what some people think as “strictly academic and useless fields” like Creative Writing or Comparative Literature:
- It’s necessary if you’re pursuing an academic career
- It keeps you known and in contact with people who are in the literary and publishing business
- Therefore you get invited to submit your work and get published (again and more)
- It makes you write better
- It helps your qualifications for fellowship or scholarship grant applications (if you’ve been rejected all this time)
- It helps you become the most adored person in the writing business: the critic.
V. You win awards
These are the awards you have to win: the writing award in your school, the Palanca, the Philippine Free Press Award and basically any writing award here or abroad. Second place, Third place or an Honorable Mention is an award but you have to win the award(s).
This is important because in addition to the Published/Fellow/MA/PhD appellation, you have officially earned the title “award-winning-writer”. It doesn’t matter if some people think that you shouldn’t have won because some other writer or work was better. See, the judges fought it out with their words and numbers: poetics and politics. Again, poetics is one of those words that you should have already known way back to Item I of this document. And politics is one of those things that you should really know because you’re alive.
Anyway, you won: you can even now write whatever you want (which may even be what-the-fuck-crap) and get away with it.
And for a successful writing career, you have to win all the awards and keep on winning awards even when you’re already dead.
VI. You write a book
After being published several times, the logical move is to publish a collection. It can be a collection of your all-new-stuff or some that had already been published and just add two or three new ones. This is most applicable for short fiction and essays.
As for poetry, well, that takes a longer time but if your brain farts poems that are all brilliant and themed--- bravo! Go ahead and publish a collection every year. You have our support and prayers (that your brain continues to fart poems and not crap and that you don’t have a nervous breakdown or commit suicide).
Now, you can simply submit this collection to a publishing house and because you have the prerequisite appellations, of course they will publish it. And for a successful writing career, you just can’t publish one collection. Maybe one collection every three or so years is adequate.
But really, what you should write is a novel.
Can you?
Can you…
Can(ned)!
VII. You work while doing II-VI
Listen, the best job for someone to be a successful writer is to get a writing job. It would be good practice for your craft and you get to do what you love to do everyday. Of course, you won’t be paid well (like you should know that by now) but you get to do what you love to do.
Or you can be an editor for something. You’re familiar with deadlines and correcting texts anyway. You can do this, write at the same time, and earn enough.
But the best way to become a successful writer is an academic career: teach.
Yeah, teach for a school, the school will even send you to graduate school and will likely own you for the next minimum four years of your life, and as a bonus: you have time to write. So what if this is bullshit. Yeah, you will hear from some of these writers/teachers that they don’t even have time for a life. But never mind and never mind how much the school would pay you because writing/teaching is never about the money (like you should now that by now, really).
And remember, the success you get from writing is all in the writing itself.
Really.
VIII. (Is the program still running? I’m so going to be adored for this. Anyway--)
HEY!
*clap*clap*clap*clap*
U.P. GO!
*clap*clap*clap*clap*
U.P. FIGHT!
*clap*clap*clap*clap*
HEY HEY U.P. GO U.P. FIGHT!
Keep writing! Looking forward to reading more from you! You can write! Believe in your writing! Ra-Ra-Ra! Write! Write! Write!
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