In 2005, I wrote an article detailing the first N.V.M. Gonzalez Workshop. At the time, I had just acquired my B.A. in English, had written all of two—count them, TWO—complete stories, and was, by no means secure about my writing chops (though I’ve learned since then that I am definitely not alone in this regard). This might have been reflected in the article as I discussed very little about the actual workshop and rather, went into a bit of an existential rant on my artistic proclivities and my struggle with cultural identity. Nevertheless, the good folks at Filipinas Magazine were kind enough to publish the piece.
Since that time, I’ve attended three of these workshops, all of them facilitated by a writer I now have the privilege of calling my friend: fellow boxing aficionado, and craftsman of some of the best dialogue I’ve read in print, the prolific and very tall Peter Bacho.
Craft
It’s one thing to be in class, with, say, a published novelist as your instructor, to see them perambulate about the room before you, or sit on the edge of a table—casual but sage-like, dressed in scholarly tweed or maybe in eclectic bohemian garb, and have them dispense writerly wisdom... and then quite another to have that person across from you at breakfast in a cafeteria-style mess hall, or lounging next to you in a rec room, and then toss story ideas back and forth with them over coffee. Nothing wrong with the former, but surely, one can appreciate the perks of simply inhabiting the same space as someone you perceive to be a wellspring of creativity as they peruse their options within a box of donuts. One can’t help but entertain the following thought: “He likes donuts...I like donuts... I can do this.” And that’s what I got from the N.V.M. workshop—the sense that I could in fact, do this. I could create. I could write.
Seriously, though.
For the beginning writer, I can’t recommend a better environment than the one the N.V.M. Workshop provided for us. Participants of all stripes, of all experience levels got to put pen to paper and create. Peter did his best to meet us where we were. He facilitated exercises in which we developed characters, experimented with point of view, constructed scenes carried by dialogue. We discussed issues of structure, of plot; we shared frustrations on how to achieve verisimilitude, how to make a narrator engaging, how to make a flat story “rise.”
I suppose, if anything, what we the participants learned, if some of us didn’t already know this, was that any good art, any art worth the endeavor, is rarely ever mere “self-expression.” Real art involves craft, and craft involves work. Successful application of technique. Trial and error. All that good stuff. If any good art is to emerge out of our community, it’s going to come from individuals who know what it means to sit down, and word by word, line by line, construct literary artifacts whose very coherence may at times seem improbable. And then, after seemingly infinite reconfigurations and combinations, deletions, additions, they will attempt to tease out of the mess something that is maybe, just maybe...good. And then, they’ll continue to agonize over a word here and there, a comma, a space, to turn their ears, as it were to the mysterious cadences of the marks on the page, to listen for any discordance, because by this time they will have understood that for the artist, the only imperative, the commitment that transcends all others, is to make one’s piece as beautiful as it can possibly be. Taking this all into account, who can blame the writer if, before the first stroke, the hand hesitates. The art of the written word is hard and doesn’t get easier. Don’t believe otherwise.
[caption id="attachment_598" align="aligncenter" width="350"]<img class="size-medium wp-image-598 " src="https://oovrag.com/oovnew/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/santabarbarawkshp-350x262.jpg" alt="NVM Writers Workshop in Santa Barbara, 2009" width="350" height="262" /> NVM Writers Workshop participants in Santa Barbara, 2009.[/caption]
Filipino Story
As mentioned earlier, the workshop was open to just about everyone. There were some in attendance who had a lifetime’s worth of stories behind them, who were present during some of our country’s seminal moments, who felt the weight of Martial Law, who fled the homeland, who could locate their place in history and now, a world away, draw from their experience. Then there were those who would come to call this place home, and for whom the Philippines was the foreign land, who would soon find that inevitably, their skin tone, their last names, would set a peculiar course for them here, in a country where, like it or not, we all bear the burden of “race.” Their writing would emerge out of their need to make sense of a world they are only beginning to come to terms with. Or not.
Recently a quote by the man after whom the workshop was named was brought to my attention:
When people ask me how I write my stories, I tell them, ‘I don't write, I think in terms of images.’ This was especially interesting to me as one of my last stories, one which, modesty aside, has opened a few doors for me, had just a beginning: the image of a girl running with impossible speed, down my old street in Quezon City. I’m hardly suggesting that stories ought to be conceived in this way (ask five writers what their process is like and you’re likely to get five different answers—and each offered with varying levels of conviction too). That’s not at all why I bring it up.
I mention it because over time after three workshops attended mainly by Filipinos and Filipino- Americans, I still cannot help but wonder about the “Filipino Story.” I can’t help but wonder about what our community can and will produce, and whether or not it will reflect the soul of our people. But then, I realized long ago that no artist of color wants to feel obligated to write from a place of culture or race. It can be stifling. Artists hate that. So perhaps writing a Filipino story has less to do with being and more to do with seeing. What is it our mind’s eye captures, and what does that image tell us about our place in the world? After all, that to which we are blind, and that into which we have special insight become aspects of identity as well.
Obviously, there are no easy answers to this. Maybe there are no real answers, only ones we choose for a particular place and time. Or maybe we should just let things be, let things unfold on their own, and perhaps the answers will reveal themselves...or come into being along the way. Maybe all there is for us to do is write. So write.
© Marco Paolo De La Fuente
NVM Writers Workshop participants in Santa Barbara, 2009.