Putting oneself in the story 11/20/2009
That's how Amy Tan describes how she creates her story. By imagining herself in the story she is writing, believing in the belief system of the place and people she writes about, being in the story, she is able to come to what she says are "particles of truth" that allows for some understanding of things. Here's Amy Tan's talk on Ted.com: If artists were this passionate 11/19/2009
Not just about their art but also about making a change in this world. That's exactly how Isabel Allende was in her talk on Ted.com, as she told tales of passion. And the operative definition for passion here is from its etymology -- the Latin for "suffering." Here's Allende: Is creative writing research? 11/15/2009
 Because some would say it's not. And so they require something more from creative writers. This is the question I ask myself while preparing for the first consultation sessions in CW 200b Creative Writing Thesis. On one hand some would say that creative writing is research. One of the advocates is the National Association of Writers in Education (NAWE) in UK. In their Creative Writing Subject/Research Benchmark Statement, published in September 2008, they make the following arguments:
And so in our Creative Writing Thesis class, we require our senior students to submit a collection of creative works accompanied with a critical preface. The critical preface functions as a supplementary discourse that allows students to articulate their creative writing process and practice. It serves to document students' technical and critical acumen. As one Creative Writing teacher puts it, in the final report of the University of London's English Subject Center's Mini Project on "Supplementary Discourses in Creative Writing Teaching at Higher Education Level," published in March 2003: "The supplementary discourses give students ways of discussing and understanding contemporary poetry and art -- and ways of developing their own practice as a result." (8) This is as close as Creative Writing can go -- without crossing over into Literary Studies -- in terms of the demands of "measurable" scholarly work. As another Creative Writing teacher says, as quoted in the English Subject Center's report: "supplementary discourses are the only way of persuading colleagues hostile to creative writing that it has some 'academic probity.'" (10) So is creative writing research? What do you think? The Villa-Lopez controversy 11/13/2009
 Villa with American and British writers What better way, I thought, to make Creative Writing students locate themselves in Philippine literature than to choose a side in the Villa-Lopez controversy. The exercise was basically to make the students recall what they had read and discussed in CL 150 (The Literature of the Philippines in English I) last semester. By asking students to take a side in the Villa-Lopez debate, perhaps the students would also recall the developments in Philippine writing from the pre-Spanish to the Spanish eras and up to the 1940s. So before the class would engage itself this semester in discussions on Philippine literature in English from the 1940s to the present, I thought it would be enlightening to see how students saw themselves in either the tradition of Villa's aesthetic formulation or in the tradition of Lopez and other socially-committed writers. And what a discussion it turned out to be, with more questions being asked than answered. Implicated in the exchange were such issues as:
Classes again 11/12/2009
 It's back to the classroom now. I'm teaching two sections of an Intro to Communication Theories class, a Media: History, Development and Theories class, and a Contemporary Philippine Literature in English class this semester. I also have six Communication Arts Thesis advisees and one Creative Writing Thesis advisee. Looks like this will be a busy semester for me. Reflecting on writing 11/02/2009
Why is there a need to reflect on one's creative process, one's creative pieces? That was the question I asked myself while preparing the Intro to my CW 200b class this second term. I know this is also the question foremost in my students' minds as they try to reflect on their writing.  Descartes' Mind and Body Because I know they will be thinking, aren't the stories or poems or essays we've written not enough? We struggled over those, sweated through the Workshop and the panelists' comments, and labored over the revisions we had to do on our works. Aren't those enough for a thesis? Why do we have to write about how we wrote those pieces? The way my college professors explained it to me was: you'll be a better writer if you're aware of what you do -- the effect you achieve by writing your piece this way or that, choosing this word or phrase over another, shaping the narrative this way rather than another, and so on. Of course some of my professors also argued about how too much self-awareness about one's writing kind of deadens one's enjoyment in the process of creating something, and makes the writing of a creative piece almost mechanical. But in the business of teaching creative writing, we really cannot help but demand such critical knowledge among our students. Perhaps the National Association of Writers in Education (NAWE) says it best in their "Creative Writing Research Benchmark Statement" (2008), when they reviewed and proposed standards for the teaching of creative writing in higher education institutions in the UK. NAWE points out that this critical awareness will help develop among student writers the confidence to depend on their talent and knowledge as they graduate and become professional writers.As someone who went through the same process myself, I know how important this self-awareness can be. For while having a community of other writers as one's readers will help enhance one's writing, it is finally one's self and not a teacher or a workshop panelist who decides that this piece of writing is ready to see print. But is marking students' creative writing pieces just as easy as that? The quote comes from Dr. Maggie Butt's daughter, who she cites in her "Marking: A Healthy Warning" (Appendix A of Siobhan Holland Creative Writing: A Good Practice Guide published by the LTSN English Subject Centre, Feb 2003). After all, the tedious task of marking papers should be an enjoyable task when reading creative pieces. Right? Right? Apparently not.  Photo from WikiMedia I agree with Dr. Butt, marking creative pieces can be a tricky task because:
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