What I was in for I really didn't know, until I threw myself into the sometimes shattering and sometimes enriching---depending on one's own experience---world of the writing workshop.
In the early morning of May 3, the first day of the workshop, I arrived in the conference room of Lispher Inn where the Davao Writers Workshop would be held. There was only one person present yet. By my estimate, he's somewhere between seventy and eighty. He's wearing floral long sleeves; his attache case was placed on the table.
The old man turned about, and when he saw me, he greeted me and offered me a seat near him. When he began to talk, I thought maybe this old man is a writer because writers are generally talkative.
It's not in my book to ask people's name first lest they'll get offended, but the old man saved me the burden of having to ask his name because he introduced himself.
"I am Satur," he said in Bisaya. "Satur Apoyon."
I just sat there with amazement. I couldn't believe that I was seating beside a real writer. All these years, I have not met a real writer, he who makes writing a living. But now there was something in me that told me not to let this opportunity slip by me, and so I tried as hard as I could to get the conversation between us going.
Satur and I talked about many things, from the difference of Cebuano and Mindanao Bisaya to the seven-year ordeal he had while completing his fantasy novel, "Ang Karibal ni Pilemon," from the difficulty he finds whenever he reads today's writings in Bisaya to the dearth of writers in Bisaya.
Not long afterward, people started to crowd the conference room, and then the workshop started (without a prayer), and Jhoanna Lynn Cruz, the Workshop Director, welcomed everyone. Then Rick de Ungria, being the president of Davao Writers Guild, gave a message. And so did Gilda Rivero, UP Mindanao's Chancellor. Then Dominique Cimafranca introduced the fellows and the panelists.
Four men and a woman served as panelists: Dr. Anthony Tan, who has the loudest voice of them all and was asked by Tita Lacambra-Ayala "Are you going to die?" when he told us, as a preface to his lecture, that he's going to retire from sitting as a workshop panelist; Mac Tiu, who, if not mean, was mild; Ric de Ungria, who was either the fellows' tormentor or defender; Genevieve Quintero, whose curly hair is as memorable as her positive comments; and Tim Montes, who was at one time very serious and at another naughty---he once said that poems must sometimes have the comic punch of this Bisaya verse: "Ay kakapoy/ Naay bata gatutoy/ Naay o**n gataroy/ Ay kakapoy."
There were also those who served as guests panelists: Satur Apoyon, who received the "Ug-Og" Palangga award, a parody of the Palanca award, for his emphasis on the difference between the words "ug" and "og"; Arnel Mardoquio, director of Hunghong sa Yuta, who just went to the workshop to critique the plays of Hiyasmin Espejo, the lone fellow for play; and Jhoanna Lynn Cruz, a Palanca awardee, who once took the place of Tim Montes.
15 slots were allotted for this workshop, but there were only 12 fellows who attended: James Pascual of ADDU, fellow for poetry; Gino Dolorzo of Xavier Univerity, poetry; Reymond Pepito of ADDU, poetry; Hiyasmin Espejo of UP Mindanao, play; Fred Layno of UP Mindanao, poetry; Ella Ismael of UP Mindanao, essay; Erika Navaja of UP Mindanao, poetry; Jayson Parba of Capitol University of CDO, fiction; Freeda Ko, granddaughter of Tita Lacambra-Ayala, fiction; Iryne Kaamino of Mindanao Medical School Foundation, poetry; Seneca Pellano of UP Mindanao, essay; and I, who came from Holy Cross of Davao College and was damn fortunate to have been chosen as a fellow for fiction, though I should have applied for essay because I like to style myself as an essayist.
Before the workshop, while looking at the roster of panelists and imagining the prospect of being inside a room full of writers of no mean achievement, I felt as though I were a speck whose presence would not make anyone budge, or whose absence would not be sorely missed by everyone.
And then Ms. Jhoanna introduced our keynote speaker, Dr. Anthony Tan, who would be giving a lecture on "Tension in Poetry." Oddly, while he's discussing tension in poetry, there was also a tension in me. That tension, I was sure, was due to the fact that my first piece, "The Young Sultan and the Plague," was slated to be critiqued first in the afternoon of that day.
The moment it was critiqued, all I did was prepare myself for the worst of comments. I didn't hold any illusions that it would come out unscathed. And true enough, it did come out strangled, stabbed, sliced, torn, lacerated, and hacked into pieces.
Sir Tim Montes called it "hilaw." The plot, he said, was not clear. Neither were the characters. Rick de Ungria said it's an "ambitious" piece, as though the writer wanted to cram so many things in so limited a form as short story.
It's hard to keep up with the pace of the panelists and take notes, but whatever they say, it only led to one irreversible conclusion: My piece didn't make it.
My second piece, "Badge of Honor," didn't make the grade either. Sir Mac Tiu said it's "novelistic," whose scenes "flits from one to another." He said, too, that the point of view needed to be fixed. There were so much background information that should not be included. Ms. Gen Quintero prepared to like the story because it started with the history of an indigenous people, and the IP is her area of interest. But she was left with no choice but to dislike it, for while reading it she had more "Huh?" moments than "Aha!" moments. Sir Rick de Ungria said my story is a good example of a story...that needed revision. There was, he said, a story, but no plot. The two, he reminded, should go together. He also said that I have this tendency to show instead of tell, and tell instead of show. Ms. Jhoanna was peeved by my use of triple asterisks to signal the reader of the new scene. It shows, she said, that the writer is immature. She suggested that I should read more, and even added that I ask a syllabus from Sir Tim Montes.
Their comments are enough to make you loathe them, and loathe them till you run out of cuss words. They can be so brutal that there was, in fact, one time that one fellow left the next day after his piece had been critiqued. They said the fellow wasn't just feeling well at that time, but it could be that the fellow couldn't stomach anymore the things the panelists were saying of his work.
To me, however, their comments are secondary; the experience itself primary. Not that I'm downplaying or belittling their comments, which were fair and well-thought-out in the first place, but the wonder of this all is that the utterly harsh comments are balanced and obliterated by the refreshingly congenial experience that the entire workshop provides for a novice writer.
Today, our society has little appreciation for writers. It is discouraging to writers, if not outright hostile. In school, students are mocked as "Emo" for turning their passions into prose. They are scoffed at if they keep a diary. At home, a son's or daughter's plan to be a writer is nipped right in the bud.
But at the writing workshop, there was not a slightest rebuke. Talks about writing are not discouraged; they are encouraged. It's as if writing is just like any other things in the world. Like PBB, like Rubi, like FB.
It is at the writing workshop, too, where I felt that I can be Arvin The Writer. It's there that I found it not strange to talk about writing being my passion. It's there where I was not questioned why I write. It's there where I was not considered quirky just because I see myself as a writer.
But the whole thing, after all, may be put very simply. The genius of a writing workshop does not lie in the panelists ability to issue an advice to young writers---sometimes it helps, and sometimes it thwarts, if not destroys, the writer's development. It lies in its ability to gather like-minded individuals, who are as passionate about writing as you are.
It sometimes get so frustrating when you find little support for the things you are most passionate about, but being in the company of such kindred spirits as the fellows and panelists, who think just what exactly you think, who feel just what exactly you feel, and who do just what exactly you do---it somehow buoys me.
