The 13th Ateneo-Heights Writers' Workshop (Part 1)

Yep, I was there.

Actually noong una medyo napilitan lang ako. A bit of pressure from the old members (Yes, you Vip!) and the new EB that required it for Fil Staff and English Staff. Not that I never wanted to write before this point, just that I always had some excuse for whisking myself away. I spent a couple of nights in front of the computer screen cramming my stuff. Poetry was out of the question, it's a deathtrap for me with all its conventions. I'd been reading fiction all my life so that seemed an appropriate choice. I managed to write the first, "Rooms" with manageable effort. It's the kind of the fiction work that I'd always wanted to write. But by the second piece, I was going emo due to the fact that the work simply refused to write itself and the time before the deadline was getting exhausted. I slept on it and went to church the next day (It was a Saturday then). During the service I began to feel better about missing the workshop when I received a text informing me that they were requesting that I submit my second work! I did send in "Rooms" that morning and it seems that they liked it so much (don't ask me why :P) that they gave me another day's extension to finish. I spent the Sunday doing "Dead on Arrival" and by 12 midnight had run out of ideas on how I wanted to end the work. An hour later, I was pissed enough that I was able to give it an ending, and it was the kind of ending that you could only come up with if you were pissed.

So yeah I got in. The thing took place at Sacred Heart Novitiate (a good hour from Ateneo) in Novaliches from July 27-30.