 I'm going to talk about creative writing in the age of computers, creative writing in a digital age. The first question that people normally ask me is that, what is creative writing? For poet Ophelia Alcantara de Malanta, writing is like kite flying. You should know when to hold it back and you should know when to let it go. National artist Francis Carcelliana, fictionist, said, write what you know, write something that only you and only you can write. And the national artist for literature, Idi Tiempo, said that writing is quite often the tension between technique and one's raw emotions. Before we try to understand creative writing in the age of computers, we need to understand some basic writing tips, what makes good writing. The first point is that you have to have a very interesting main point. Without an interesting main point, there will be no interesting piece of writing. You should also be aware of structure that writing must have a beginning, a middle, and an end. And the third quality is sincerity that if you're not very honest with your feelings, the readers can see through the heart of the writer. Number four is don't edit as you write. Just write what you want to write and you edit later on. In the end, writing must have this tension between what is concrete and what is abstract, what is specific and what is general, and what is an idea vis-a-vis what is an image. In addition, when you write, you have to use strong verbs and less adjectives. Make your private world more accessible to your reader. You follow the rules before you break them. So for instance, if people play basketball and the medium is the basketball, with words, you make poems and narratives and plays, et cetera. In addition, you shouldn't plagiarize. You should learn how to cite your source if it's necessary. Even if it's a creative piece, you must learn how to cite your sources. You must research, but you don't overdo it, and research involves field research, interviewing people, doing intense archival work, and read, read, read, write. But before you write, you watch good films, listen to good music for inspiration, and you will possess this influence by bringing in your own unique personality when you write. Like fabrics, creative writing can be conceived by weaving with threads into which a very strong twist must be determined. Usually displaying an aura of pastness, each thread in creative writing is invariably an explicit product of one's autobiographical memory. Creative writing texts are often swayed with chronologies of grief, longing, fear of loss, and a passionate desire to memorialize personal history in a public space. To write well, there are five things that you need to consider. First is mastery of form. Second is great emotional power. The third is taking the reader to a journey. Number four is it has to be groundbreaking, and number five has to have the X factor. I'll try to explain it very briefly. Mastery of form would mean that in writing poems, for instance, you worry about how lines are cut, what specific words mean. When you write a story, the traditional story has plot characters setting a theme and so on. A non-traditional story normally has a key moment or a moment of illumination towards the end. You are aware of the rules of the genre that you have chosen, and most importantly, you use the language that you feel you can express your feelings a little more authentically. So, for instance, if you are writing in Filipino, you have to use Filipino very well and you address your audience the best way you can. If you're writing in English, you have to think of a particular audience in mind, and you have to make sure that you have mastery of English. If you're writing in Hiligaynon, you have to know the context, the nature of Panayalan and so on. So, which means that form involves that only the use of the language, but you know the different aspects of the genre that you're getting into. Number two, great emotional power. I think the best quality that good writing should have is, despite sometimes there will be lapses here and there, it's very important that you actually connect to the reader, that the best pieces of work stand out because you actually allow yourself the private world of the author to be accessible. So, when Scarlett O'Hara says, with God as my witness, I shall never go hungry again, so there is always this great impact that it has on the viewer. So, good writing has something like that, that you actually connect to your audience. Number three, you take the reader to a journey which means that a writer has a private world and you allow that private world to be accessible to your readers. For instance, if you are reading a book, let's say Gabriel Garcia Marquez or let's say Jose Garcia Villia, they have their private world every time you read their particular books. For instance, in the case of Love at the Time of Cholera or Hundred Years of Solitude, when you read the book, it appears that you are not in the Philippines but you're in Latin America. So, you should allow the reader to be able to gain access to your private world. There's always this tension between the physical world that you're in and the metaphorical private world where you can be alone, that people usually have a private world, that there is a world where we deal with people every day and there is a private world where you can be alone. At this very moment, it's possible that somebody here is actually looking at me, listening to my lecture but is actually thinking of what to eat or thinking of a long, probably think of the first love or probably thinking of what to do after this class or this session. So eventually, a writer, a good writer must be able to gain the confidence of the reader and be able to expose the reader into the world that he or she is into, the inner world that he or she is into. Number four, ground-breaking. The writer Charles Sanong is one of the first Filipino writers to write about the plight of Chinese Filipinos and as a result, he was able to win many awards here and overseas, get recognition from critics and be read by a lot of people because Chinese Filipinos were never represented the way Charles Sanong did for Charles Sanong. When they're in China, they're not Chinese enough but in the Philippines, they're not Filipino enough and that tension made him a very popular writer. In other words, a good writer has to do something like it has to fill in a gap and that is you have to be a little bit more ground-breaking in your choice of subject and do things like no other writer has done before. And most importantly, number five is the X factor. It's possible that you have mastered the rules of good writing but despite all the rules of good writing, it's like somewhere out there, there's always a person who is probably reading a book that he or she wouldn't want to tell anyone, largely because that book is considered badui. For instance, there's somebody here who probably in his or her playlist has a badui song that he or she listens to but he doesn't admit it. So similarly, with all the rules in your hands, it's possible that when you write, you will not follow what the teacher will say or you will not follow what the experts will say. At the end of the day, you end it the way you want to end it and sometimes that risk will take off. In the end, writing is a big gamble and that's what Edith Tiampo said and as I mentioned earlier, it's always this tension between raw emotions and poetic or literary technique. But to measure good writing, usually writers begin by having a teacher discover you as a writer. Usually you come from a classroom and you're asked to participate or take exams in the school paper. Eventually, you become part of a literature or journalism, a communication or a creative writing program. Subsequently, you go into fellowships. You compete for fellowships such as the most prestigious in the Philippines is the Silema National Writers' Workshop. There's also the UP Writers' Workshop, the UST Writers' Workshop, the De La Salle University Workshop, Ateneo Workshop, the Illigan Institute of Technology in the now State University Writers' Workshop, major universities across the Philippines have Writers' Workshops. But eventually, as a young writer, you take this experience in stride, you allow yourself to be influenced by different types of people. There's this question that people would normally ask of me. National artist F. Senol Hasewan said that traditionally creative writing workshops will not make you a great writer, but it allows you to develop a sense of community to meet other writers, to be exposed to a variety of subject positions, and be able to create readership for your works and you read the works of other people as well. Subsequently, that National Writers' Workshop experience will make you a good writer. In so far, as you'll be more aware about what other writers would say, what other writers would think. At the same time, you support each other's writing careers. Number four, there's always this awards and prizes that writers would aspire for the most prestigious. It's usually the Carlos Palangta Memorial Awards for Literature. And then there used to be a cultural center of the Philippines price on these days. There's also the NCA Writers' Price. There's also the Philippine Graphic Price. In so far, as awards are concerned, what is my take on this? Basically, creative writing awards are important. In so far, as they give encouragement to young writers to write some more. But prices should not be considered as the only barometer of good taste or good writing. Ultimately, the test of one's writing is 15 years after you've written a piece of work or years after you die, people still read your work. Or when you write, people read your works despite the fact that you do not have an award. For example, there's this guy named Bob Ong. He's been selling a lot of books. He's almost outselling the Bible. We don't know who Bob Ong is. There are rumors that he is a faculty member from the College of Arts and Letters. Or he is probably one of three faculty members from the College of Arts and Letters. But he's selling 300,000 copies of books. People read him. He doesn't know we do not know who he is. We do not know whether he is actually a living person. But his works are being read by a lot of young people. So in other words, ultimately, it doesn't matter whether you win a prize or you don't win a prize. The most important thing is you write the best way you can and people read your works. So after we talk about how creative writing is actually achieved, now we go into creative writing in a digital age. But before the digital age, we used to write using typewriters, correction fluids, the frequent use of typewriter ribbons which leads to poor quality of print. We used heaps of carbon paper. We were often slowed down by the use of dictionarity sorrows and reference materials before we write. And we used longhand before we type. But after the digital age, there were a lot of technological advancements in the sense that we used user-friendly software programs. Initially, we had huge floppy disks. We had WordStar and WordPerfect before it got into MS Word. But during the digital age, it's very easy for people to write because the computer deletes and corrects mistakes. Computers print after editing the text and corrections can be made before printing. There's no need for carbon paper and computers can print as many copies. And there's an online dictionarity sorrows, no need to retype and you encode directly using computers. That's an example of a Smith corona typewriter which we used to use years ago. And that's the no color screen, the monitor screen. This was the 486, 386 computers that were available in UP during the 1990s. And then this is the Apple Mac Classic, which was very popular in Europe during the 1990s. I'll give you an example of how different it is when you're writing before you use computers and after you started using computers. When I was a younger poet, I wrote in English and in Filipino, but my poems smelled of rooms. They're not bad poems per se, but it spoke of an experience that it was largely confined to a very, I would say, parochial and very limited experience. So I'll read some excerpts. The title of the poem is Ulan. Malakas ang Ulan kahapon dahil dito na dulas ka sa taas ng ba habang tumitirik ang mga sasakayang bumubugan ang sama-sama usok, alikabok at grasa. Tila malalim ang sugat sa iyong tuhuran pagkatapos ng ilang oras halos gadaigdig pa rin ang iyong mga sigaw dahil sakit ka rayom na humahata o sa iyong balad. Sa lakas ng Ulan, maraming bulaklak ang asalanta sa iyong isipan. It was a young Kapili writing those poems. But ultimately I realized that when I got to travel and had been very fortunate to be in different types of place and you grow older a little bit more, your poems stop smelling of rooms. But there's another example of a Rumi poem. So, but before that, this was inspiration for Ulan. Espana corner Arsenio Laxan used to go through that street despite the floods I was able to cross the streets and nothing happens to me, very interesting. Another poem spilled ink allergy a poem that I wrote when I was a teenager it's about my grandmother who passed away. Black ink spills over grandma's footprints deeply, slowly, impensive streaks. When monsters were scary, grandma cuddled me against regressive veins. She caressed the alphabet with gears of dog-cout motion, carving gold for mother goose music in half ascending tones. Now, I must cry a little. Let's cry slip a punch back into the old cradle. Ultimately, I got to travel and one of my favorite places around the world the secret garden in Seoul, Korea where many Korean novellas are actually being shot and they're being shown on GMA and ABS-CBN. And there's this Koshimiro Ryokan in Odawara, Japan at the foot of Mount Fuji. It's the oldest Japanese inn dating back to the period before Meiji Emperor Meiji, Meiji period. Around the time, I wrote a poem when I was studying in Tokyo University in 1993 to 1995. The title of the poem is Resentment. I will read the poem and you can compare with the earlier poems. This one has a little more maturity and sophistication because of traveling and the experience of being able to do research. Like when I was writing before, I was very instinctive. But when I was writing this poem, Resentment, I was using not only my own personal feelings on the subject, but I was also consulting websites regarding certain motifs of leaves and trees and gardens and so forth. At the same time, I had an online dictionary to make sure I used the most appropriate word if I failed to capture it during my first draft, my first writing of the draft of the poem. So I will read the poem Resentment. I have waited for the years to melt down your overgrown nettles, sweet dew, magic flowers stretching to 100 leagues on paddies and green mountains. This is how the wind flies up to my ears. Midnights are always sad. Nobody recites the sutra of clouds glistening with rain. They stood for promises you did not keep for all the mindless gazing at my aloneness, my shameful ways, the absence of roots, leaves, and branches in my family tree. This mystery takes me to a point of death ruffling down huts, clustered in the dusk. Perhaps I can fish on the next sea, push open the morning door, and emerge like petals from a shower. There's a running joke that this poem is actually a poem about love and it exists in a collection of Hemino Abad called 100 Filipino Love Poems. But between you and me, it's actually about some people from the College of Arts and Letters. I wasn't sure if I was going to get 10 year in. So I wrote the poem for them, but some people interpreted as a love poem. Actually it's not. So, but during the digital age, from a creative vantage point, the author writes and reads in front of the computer. The creative process is now mediated by the internet, social networking sites and so forth. The creative process then was impulsive and more romantic. You don't need to do research. Outburst of emotions you can write. But these days, writing has to be premeditated and calculated. You have to be more precise. You have to do research before you actually do your final draft because when you put an image or an idea it has to be consistent with a time frame. You're writing about a particular subject. You have to be very consistent with your time and space. You have to verify historical facts or you have to verify current events for instance just to make sure that what you're writing is actually very accurate. To summarize, using computers I'm even more compelled to conceive each writing text. This is a latitude of metaphors, ideas and images with a design and a system. Writing must have a structure that a writer has to be very conscious of the beginning, the middle and an end and this has to be communicated back to the reader. In attempting to write a good article or a good poem or a good non-fiction piece using computers I must also carefully attend to dramatic unfolding of my memories which means that it's the duty of the writer not just to communicate his ideas but the writer is duty bound to articulate his thoughts and feelings bearing in mind that he is taking the readers to his personal journey hoping that the reader will be able to be moved and find ways of sharing that experience with him or her. At the same time there are ways to find ways of interrogating and transfiguring a profound quietude to bring forth what otherwise has evaded consciousness that it is the duty of a writer to make sure that he or she has a third eye to communicate an ordinary thing for other people which the writer is duty bound to transform as something extraordinary. At the end of the day you try to write not because it's for I me myself you write because you're hoping that a piece of your imagination a piece of your private world will move somebody else. At the end of the day there's this saying that poet Ophelia Alcantra de Malanta would all often say that we're all brothers and sisters in pain that writers write because we all feel pain and we try to share each other's pain and we use that pain to transform the imbalances of our everyday life. Consequently, computers afford me opportunities for every recollected detail to live dramatically inside the reader. And at the end of the day during digital age we have to write using technology because without the use of technology I think we will be able to survive good writing. Ultimately good writing has to have a combination of passion and compassion, technique and raw emotions and the use of technology. Without technology these days it's very difficult to do good writing.