Workshop crap

*written May 21

The saying that you choose whether to be a writer your whole life or not at all after you go to the Dumaguete National Writers Workshop was slapped in my face today.

We were taking up Primy’s “Fish Trip”, and panellist Lito Zulueta said that the persona was catty and chatty and too casual enough in the persona’s recounting of an expedition to get fish samples from all over Agusan to test for mercury.

After the rest of the panellists, except for Cesar Ruiz Aquino, bashed the piece (after totally reading it wrong and expecting too much from it), Pancho, Mia, Martin and Justine asked them what they had been mulling over at Memento Cafe, and perhaps for days in their minds now, if a piece had value when it was written in a confused state of mind, and written for the author’s own organization of ideas.

I was seating at a table with Pancho, Martin and Justine then, with the last two being creative non-fictionists, while they were discussing the “human-ness” of all of our works, and why the panellists from last week could not see how they were important to us as well—how we articulated our experiences at a particular mindset during a particular time or age.

The three actually brought it up to the panellists today, who were, if it counts at all, mostly gay.

The first thing Pancho asked was: “Don’t you think that with the bashing of a creative non-fictionist’s tone, style of writing, characters and presentation of events, the author’s character is the one being bashed as well?”

Mia then added that there was a fear for non-fictionists because they could not hide behind a persona. What they were presenting were themselves in the raw, which was hard when getting critiqued as not mature enough or as not acquiring a mature mindset over a past experience.

Afterwards, Martin, Justine and Khaye presented the idea that couldn’t there be an age/contextual criticism, wherein if Khaye for example experienced a trauma like breaking her camera yesterday (which she actually did) and she wrote about it today, would it be accepted as a finished piece?

I totally agree with what these people about how a certain element of art gets lost when an innocent or honest piece written with the understanding of the author’s now gets torn to bits by more experienced writers who look for meaning and closure in everything.

The panellists kept on saying we are young writers. There was an arrogance when they pointed out that this was why we were in a workshop. We submitted ourselves to this scrutiny, to this massacre, to learn and facilitate the ripening process of our writing.

I have to admit though that I unforgivably agree with them on some level.

Fine. I get it. We write to be read, at least in the workshop and more real out there level. The raw material, as what Atty. Ernesto Yee pointed out, was to be kept in a journal, never to be read by anyone unless of course the author dies a celebrity after which the journal will become published as part of a memoir.

And fine. I get it when I realize that even if I myself appreciated the beauty of Primy’s childlike fascination that she was taken seriously by the governor which led to her mercury-seeking expedition, I found myself left hanging because I was instinctively looking for the realization and the closure I could not find in her essay. The same goes for Justine when she commented that she couldn’t get anything out of “Fish Trip”. I felt the same way with her psychology and feminism non-fiction piece.

Lastly, I get it when Atty. Yee said that even in some cases in award-giving bodies the best writer does not necessarily win. It was the best one who could talk about a past experience with a mature presence of mind, who could articulate a higher truth that the reader could leave with, who could not waste the readers’ time with works revolving on their lives alone.

To sum up, I appreciate the art and style of an “intentionally wrong piece”, of an honest piece that is not necessarily perfect in the eyes of icons and giants in the literary world (i.e. those who are more experienced).

But if I want to write for the best reader, which will be my goal after this workshop, I should consider that when I write and put my thoughts or ideas out there, it should have a purpose. I should expect it and my character to be criticized, because there is a vast difference between writing for myself and writing for the rest of the reading community.

However, I would like to recommend that the panellists of the Dumaguete National Writers Workshop, especially the panel of the last week of the 46th one, be more open-minded to young writers’ ideas—like those about the importance of our works to us—and, to not harshly break reality to us with such gleeful malice on the first day, but on the third day, when we have formed our opinions of them and what they can offer to us and our writing as well.

Because if this is what will happen, if disillusionment about writing will keep on going hand in hand with the supposed Post Dumaguete Depression (farewell to three weeks of drinking and having fun after sessions), then more and more workshop products will cease to become greats in their own rights in the future literary world.

That should never be the goal of any writing workshop.