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Saturday, March 03, 2007

People!

Thank you so much to those who have submitted soft copies of their works. I have gone through all of them na. Mary and Leia, please submit na. :)

I need Cheky's e-mail address, does anyone know what it is? She needs a soft copy of your works too, unless you want her to type all of it again. 0_o

So far, here's a list of what's going into the folio. Again we have decided on having a theme for the folio after all: Beginnings and Endings. Almost everything falls under that anyway.

Beginnings (not in order)
When Mankind should by Bea
Blue Beard by Aya
The Bender and the Mystic by Aya
The Place I'll Return to Someday by Aya
Little Miss America by Karen

Endings (not in order)
Not have been by Bea
Cantata by Aya
Lullaby for Andrea by Sarah
Dust Creates a Picture of the Distant Future by MJ
Undefined by MJ

I'm still deciding on the others.

If you wish to say something about your piece in the intro, please e-mail me at r0nnie_bass@yahoo.com (that's ronnie with a ZERO). I would be more than happy to tell the people about: a)Why you wrote what you wrote b) What you want people to know about what you wrote or c)Who you're dedicating your work to.
vbass ♥ 7:13 AM link to post 0 comments


Friday, March 02, 2007


hey guys,

here's the call for submissions for the dumaguete national writers' workshop. i hope that some of you do submit.

Call for Submissions to the 46th Dumaguete National Writers WorkshopNational Artist for Literature Edith L. Tiempo has announced a March 31 deadline for applications for fellowships to the 46th National Writers Workshop to be held in Dumaguete City from May 7 to 25.

Panelists this year are Gemino Abad, Alfred Yuson, Susan Lara, Anthony Tan, DM Reyes, Marjorie Evasco, and others. They will compose the revolving panel of writers together with National Artist for Literature Edith Lopez Tiempo, and resident panelists César Ruìz Aquino, Bobby Flores Villasis, and Ernesto Superal Yee.

Fifteen (15) fellowships are open for young writers all over the country.

The first screening panel, composed of the workshop's resident writers, selects the writing fellows for the summer based on the manuscripts submitted by the applicants. These selected manuscripts are forwarded to the Director of the Workshop, who does the final screening and formally approves the final lineup of writing fellows.

The writing fellowship covers lodging for the full 22 days of the duration of the entire workshop, a modest stipend, one-way fare reimbursement, and workshop manuscripts and reading materials.

The applicant must submit original manuscripts consisting of at least three to five short (3-5) stories, or three to five (3-5) essays/creative non-fiction, or two (2) one-act plays, or seven to ten (7-10) poems. Stories, poems, plays, and essays in English are preferred. Only unpublished manuscripts are accepted. Works which have previously won in literary contests will not be accepted.

Other requirements include an application letter addressed to Workshop Director Dr. Edith Tiempo; a diskette or CD containing the various submitted literary works encoded in Microsoft Word; a recommendation letter from a renowned writer or literature teacher; two 2x2 pictures; and a brief biodata or résumé.

These must be sent before the 31 March 2007 deadline to Dr. Edith Lopez Tiempo, National Writers Workshop Director, c/o College Assurance Plan, 2nd Floor, CAP Building, Rizal Boulevard, 6200 Dumaguete City, Negros Oriental, Philippines.

Accepted fellows are usually notified by postal mail, or email, or by phone call, although the announcement is usually published by major Philippine dailies. Interested parties may also apply for sit-in or auditing privileges.

The National Writers Workshop was established by Edith and Edilberto Tiempo in 1962, making it the longest-running creative writing workshop in Asia. The 2007 edition is sponsored by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, Silliman University, and College Assurance Plan, in coordination with the Creative Writing Foundation Inc. and the Dumaguete Literary Arts Service Group, Inc. Donors to the fellowship program include Senators Edgardo J. Angara and Mar Roxas as well as former NCCA Chairman Jaime Laya and Ms. Erlinda Panlilio.
merchant of menace ♥ 5:54 AM link to post 0 comments


Friday, January 19, 2007


Azrael At Dawn by Aya Dela Cruz

The man in the bright suit told you that if you stepped through the door, the questions of your life would be dealt with, one by one. No more wondering. No more what if I could have, would have, or should have. Hopefully, no regrets.

It shall be all yours, and within a knob's reach.

Don't you wish for answers? He asks, and you are compelled to reply in your head. Yes, you say. I wish to know the logic behind every fucked up disaster, every life-altering event. I want to know what happened if I had been five minutes early for the job interview. I want to know what happened if I didn't meet my wife. I want to know if I might have been richer, happier, healthier, more traveled, had a better life.
He nods, slowly, as if he heard you. All you have to do is open the door, he coaxes. Open the door. Open it.

You do, and you find yourself on the other side. No glitzy man, no door back. Nothing. Soon you find yourself plunging to some endless depth. You claw at nonexistent rocks, and when it doesn't work, you shut your eyes and pray for the shattering thud—nothing happens.

All you do is fall, down, down, down, down.

You've probably been falling for days, but you can't tell night from day. Is there even night and day in this place, you think. Suddenly you remember a conversation with a friend, about the cycles of the sun and moon. You enjoyed that one, you say to yourself.

How did it go again?

You wrack your brain, but you can't think of the exact words. And you normally have an excellent memory. You try to piece it one by one. Your friend—wait—which friend was it again? You can't remember.


Panic grips you and you grow cold. Why can’t you remember? Who was that friend? And why are you so bothered about not being able to bring a certain conversation to mind? Shouldn’t you be worried about where this endless plummeting would lead you?

You try to bring back some more of those times you talked with this friend. But every time you get a glimmer of something back, it is snatched from you. Exchanges, phone conversations, whole days escape your recollection.

There's probably a cause for this, you think. Hysteria, yes, that would be an apt explanation. When it ends, your brain, jarred from its normal environs, would be able to adjust.

You settle for another memory to keep you busy. But this one too slips from your mind like silt through fingers, and the one after that, and the one after. Even madness wouldn't account for this, you think. When you see that gaudily-dressed man you would really make sure he gets it.

The darkness was probably the only thing keeping you sane at the moment. At least you couldn’t see how you're falling, or where. You couldn't even hear yourself falling; the wind just rushes past like how it does when you are on top of a mountain.
You laugh at this, but you can't hear yourself.

Afraid to focus on any one memory, you are worried it will all pass through and you'll fail to remember them. But you can't help it. Soon you flail around in your mind. You've forgotten something again.
Would you ever get out of this place? You curse the man who tricked you into falling in this abyss. And then, as soon as you think of it, you forget how he looks like. Your memory's drastically worsening.

Will you remain like this forever? This is horrid, you think to yourself. Why can’t you remember certain things? It's like something's missing, only you don't know what, because you've forgotten.

Your palms are sweaty, and you wipe them on your pants. Your heart beats twice as fast, your breathing ragged and heavy. When was the last time you felt like this, you ask yourself. A horrible feeling pushes against your stomach. You can't recall.

Faces flash in your mind, and you hold them for as long as you could. You worry that if you push them away this time, they might not return. You manage to do so for a few minutes, and you even remember things you have done with them. You laugh with them. You cry. You smile. And then their faces die into your mind's darkness.

After a while you get used to this cycle, of remembering someone or something, holding it for as long as you could, and watching it fly away, never to return. But you never liked a minute of it. Those are your memories, you should be able to decide what you want to do with them.

The memories come before the more important ones, you hear yourself reciting in your head. And a cold dread fills you.

You cannot see it happening in the void, but you feel images draw off of your head. Your mother. Your father. Your friends, the schools you went to, your loves, your passions, all gone. You are no one.

Who are you?
Where are you going?
Are you even going to try to remember?

Now you understand everything. No more of it. And you are not willing to expend your feelings lamenting that you opened the door. You're content with what you don't have, thank you very much.

And as soon as you have thought this for yourself, you see a fleck of light. You focus on it, hardly believing what you are seeing. The spot grows bigger, and faster than you expected. You are rushing towards it at breakneck speed, and all the blood flows into your head, your temples throbbing because of this.
You try remembering something, and you can't.

Wind whistles in your ears, and you see your hands flailing, your clothes rippling in the currents of air. And when you least think it would, It swallows you whole.
Aya ♥ 6:13 AM link to post 0 comments


Tuesday, January 02, 2007



creativewritingrocks ♥ 5:27 AM link to post 0 comments


Friday, December 29, 2006

Lament Blind Girl

vbass ♥ 3:50 AM link to post 2 comments


Tuesday, December 26, 2006


About the Folio:

I was really hoping that we would have a literary folio to show our output at the end of the year. However, it seems that as it stands there hasn't been much written in class, so there isn't enough to fill a folio with yet. If we really want it, it can be done. The hard part of course is the writing, and that's what I expect you all to be doing, writing, submitting stuff, us discussing things in class. So if you want the folio, then I should be seeing more work posted here and submitted to me.

So here are the things due. I hate to have to do this, but if it's what it takes:

1. sitcom scripts
2. pieces on the places where you grew up
3. horror stories

And you can submit whatever you want us to see and talk about whenever, regardless of genre or form. Please guys, we've got a quarter left and I hardly know your writing. Anyways, enjoy the rest of the vacation. I hope you all come back rested up and ready to write. Also that by the end of the vacation I see your horror stories here.

For workshop:

Here's a horror piece. Please make comments. I don't have a title yet, so I'd accept suggestions.




She knows the situation. She has seen it too many times that it is impossible for her not to know what is happening and what will happen. She knows fear.

Just out of the shower, her hair still in a towel, she is wearing a pair of her skimpiest underwear. She is not so sure why she has put them on, in fact she wonders now as she walks down the stairs to the living room to investigate a creaking noise, why she had the impulse to put them on when on any other night she would have put on an oversized T-shirt and gone to bed.

She is home alone. Her parents are somewhere. It is raining hard out, the pellets of rain relentless; she could swear that it sounds like countless dead children’s fingers stabbing at the roof. Her house allows for this situation. It matters little if it’s a house in an American suburb or a Filipino subdivision. What matters are the glass doors, the back door that leads out to the lawn, the large rooms, high ceiling, the way that there is darkness cast everywhere as if the architect intended for these shadows, this eeriness; what matters is that there is a sense of isolation.

She sees that the back door is ajar. She could have sworn that she had locked it, had locked all the doors before taking a shower. First she thinks it must have just been the wind, that she hadn’t locked the door and it had merely swung open. But then she knows that she has seen this, that it is impossible for her not to recognize this motif.

She knows that if someone were watching her now, they would be screaming for her to run, to get out of there, go run, go now, what are you waiting for? But she does not. It feels as if she cannot. It feels as if she has a role that she must follow. And thus, she moves to the kitchen.

As she walks, she calls out, Hello, hello, is someone there? though she already knows that she will get no answer. There is a blur she glimpses just at the corner of her vision, some movement that barely registers. Fear grips her, and she thinks now of all the times that she has watched something like this transpire. She could not understand why the girl in her situation did not run.

She knows now, because like the girl, she cannot run. She cannot move, in fact. The fear has petrified her. It is no longer some imagined viewer she hears screaming run, it is her own mind screaming run, run out to the lawn, make your way to the neighbors, find help, just get out of that house. But loud as her mind screams, her body fails to obey. Her spine shivers and feels as if it has hardened, her feet become rooted to the floor.

Then another creak. It is the back door closing. She hears the door swing. And then, in the silence, in her stillness, she can’t help but hear the deadbolt being turned. It sounds sickening to her, a lurch then thud as the lock slides into place.

There is a flash of lightning and a crackle of thunder and she leaps in fear. She can move again.

She finds herself still heading to the kitchen. Again, she does not know why she is drawn to the kitchen, but she goes there. She cannot bear to turn on the lights. She knows that if she opens the refrigerator door, the light will splash out and reveal that thing that she fears most at the moment. She is not ready for that yet.

She calls out again, hello, this isn’t funny anymore. She laughs, like in the movies, calls out to her friends, maybe her boyfriend, says their names and says, come on, this isn’t funny anymore, you’ve had your laughs, I’m scared now, okay? so you can come out now. As she says this she reaches for the phone that is in the kitchen. By now she knows that the phone line will be cut, or if it’s up, that by the time she manages to dial and connect with help, the phone line will go dead.

She picks up and turns on the cordless phone, and sure enough, the line is dead. There are only two ways that this could end, she knows. The first is that she will open the refrigerator door, allowing the light from there to reveal a shadow. She will scream, run, a chase will ensue, and she will feel the blade rip through her flesh when she has made it to the lawn. The last thing she will feel before the last slash is the impact of cold mud and wet grass against her skin. The rain will continue to fall as she dies. The second is that she will continue calling out, she will keep asking for whoever is there to reveal himself. Afraid, her voice will start breaking, and it’s very likely that this will cause her assailant more pleasure than he expected. Then there will be one last flash of lightning, the last she will ever see. In that last flash she will see him, and before she can run, he will be upon her.

She wants neither. She knows, and still she cannot accept the situation.

She puts the telephone back on the counter. She sees another flash of lightning, hears another growling of thunder. The sliver of light reveals nothing. She knows that she only has until the next lightning strike to do whatever it is she plans to do. In the dark her hands crawl across the countertop searching for the cutlery holder.

She takes a knife and waits for the lightning to strike.
merchant of menace ♥ 4:15 PM link to post 1 comments


Tuesday, December 19, 2006


Hey guys here's a poem i read recently that i really like and thought you might have fun reading. I look forward to seeing your submissions here (impatient teacher taps fingers on the table and looks sternly at class). In the meantime, a fun poem from Mark Halliday:


Refusal to Notice Beautiful Women

I don't know why I didn't think of this before.
It's so simple: I just won't notice.
Twenty years ago the hormones would have exploded this idea
but now I'm-now I have the wisdom of-anyway
I'll just be like "What? Oh, I didn't notice. Where?
Over there? Nope, didn't happen to see her."
Life is going to be a lot easier. I'll read more books;
I won't keep looking up when someone comes into the cafe`
because who cares? I mean,

to hell with them! They want to be so impossible?
They want to be so many versions of sublimity on two legs?
Let them go watch each other, whatever, let them go tantalize
lurching iron pumpers who wear backwards baseball caps.
Or let them go get engagement rings from suits that wear cologne,
vice presidents with tickets to Jamaica. I'm very vague on all that
because I'm so devoted to other values. Like,
art's endless campaign to represent the mysteries of the spirit's
passage through the realm of time and change. That's
what I'm all about-but I get distracted I mean till now I did
get distracted by BWs but that's over. Finito.
Let them shimmer and slink in Jamaica,
let their bikinis be murderous-
that's only flesh! Flesh is nothing but-you know, it's only meat
.It's only physical substance. With whatever warmth and smoothness
ultimately it's-well, the seventeenth-century guys called it dust
and they had a point. Were they happy? Well,
that's not my problem. I've got very large bookstores I can go to
where a thousand books are shiny and smooth-

I abjure Jamaica. I extract Jamaica from my heart
with the tweezers of mature sobriety. Not that I had any actual access
okay okay anyway I have this life now: I embrace it.
My jeans are wearing through at the knees. I embrace this.
My hair, to the extent that it remains, points northeast in a peculiar way
since my last haircut by Dawnette who is much less sexy than her name
and who calls to mind a vat of mashed potato-but I don't say that
because she' s human, plus I'm not thinking about how any woman looks.
Yesterday I spilled ginger ale all over the seat of my gray Mazda-
all right. It's my life. I accept it. The thought that a BW is unlikely
to ride in an old gray Mazda coated with ginger ale does not come up.
I read books. Oh,
perhaps on occasion I recall that in 1967 Kathy Farley smiled at me
on Thayer Street but I know that has become fiction, she is fictive,
and I'm off now to a very large bookstore,
and once I've got a tall mocha and some slim volumes in the cafe`
even the Michelle Pfeiffer of 1983 couldn't make me look up.

by Mark Halliday from Michigan Quarterly Review
merchant of menace ♥ 6:46 PM link to post 1 comments