Finding First Love

For anyone to say or wish that she or he would like to find a “first love” is quite unnecessary, if not inappropriate.

Often expressed with an anxious tone–as if not to have a special someone marks the person as an ugly duckling, a desperate loser among friends–excited kids new to the fleeting game of love blurt it out without a thought.

Seeming always in a hurry to find a cuddly cute one to call their own, they ignore altogether the caution and willingly embrace the stress, apprehension, and peer pressure that accompanied the search. All of which, bring the eye bags, pimples, skin rashes and acne, not to mention the resulting worry of concerned friends and those within the family.

But for young individuals who have already felt and savoured early the joy and intimacy of the emotion, finding, or securing another one, becomes the source of the anxiety–a love problem that leads to romantic daydreaming, frequent masturbation, lost of appetite, and lack of sleep.

Or worst, the redirection of the tension to compulsive eating behaviour, painful self-abuse, experimentation with alcoholic beverages, predilection to drug use, and unsafe sexual adventures, paid or otherwise. All common and natural things that stoked more serious personal and family problems later on.

Yet, only for the guilty to brag later among friends and everyone else, that he or she, finally found love–no matter how elusive and sticky–either the hard way or the messy way, and without guarantees, of course.

For what is first love but a tease of exuberant possession, of selfish and prideful ownership of someone’s heart?

First love answers a person’s strong intoxicating need for personal affection, a tug of sincere and honest sharing aching for truth and respect, and which, each of us at an early age have already nurtured in our private little “crushes”.

We have all been privileged to participate and experience the excitement of the moment–even though we do not understand or appreciate it yet. Yes, it is exciting to be in love!

And anyone who says he or she has not experienced it, one way or the other, is already dead…had forfeited her or his soul to destiny, and is only waiting to be buried soon, alive.

First love, they say, is the most memorable, unique, and unforgettable, that if one is honest and sincere with what was felt–it is the most precious, most cherished. Even if it does not always works out well in the end, most of the time.

But of course, the real thing–true love–is the one hardest to find later in our lives. Yet for some, it happens quite easy and fast like magic, sparkling in a fairy tale romance.

First love is not to be found, since it presents itself without warning: a sweet smile, an unexpected phone call, an invitation, a visitor, or a twist of timing where one bumps by accident with someone you do not know or expected to know.

My first love happened when I was only five, and I have included the moment in a romance novel I am challenged to write:

The sweetness of the memory would drop on him unexpected, light as rain.

It would be pleasant, vivid…pure. As distinct and clear as it happened during his childhood–even now, already in his advancing years. He is forty four.

Yet the joy never diminished, faltered. Tiny droplets of thoughts sprinkled through the years, melting in his eyes.

In his mind, he would see her again, with an eagerness filled of boyhood anticipation, of wonderment, a joyful disbelief of admiration mixed with the innocence of infatuation. Real things he would remember, would retain and recall often, after all the years.

For occasionally, it would dawn on him like the unexplained sprinkling from the heavens–a delicate moment of outpouring, reminiscing, absorbing–settling softly in his heart; a passion of sensual exuberance he had experience as a boy, silently awakening in his senses. It was a reality so vivid he knew he will not forget.

He saw her like a multicolored vision; a beautiful creation of a dream that materialized before his eyes, ambling in a casual stride as if in slow-motion, the fog of consciousness covering, enveloping everything all around them…He is in love; alone with her in a romantic wonderland.

Wrapped in a rainbow dress, colours glowing brilliant after the rain that highlight the whiteness of fair skin–soft, smooth, and delicate. Her fragile air intensified by the smallness of her waist, swaying gracefully as her skirt swirled in the wind, a style that accented well the promise of budding breasts below the round, sloping shoulders. She was beautiful in his eyes. Indeed, she looked at him, and he was devastated by the pounding of his heart.

Excerpts from “The Heart”, a novel started in 2004, and remained unfinished.

My first true love happened by accident: My cousin, after working in a school assignment, dropped by the house for some snacks and brought with her a girl classmate. And I fell in love with her as soon as I saw her at the door.

I promised myself I will marry her when time and circumstance allow. I had no doubt or felt fear she will not accept me, nor where there qualms about who she is.

I saw her, let them in, and we are already friends–as if I have known her from long ago or times past. The relationship lasted for two years. She went abroad to stay permanently with her family. I was seventeen, and the memory remained still vivid and clear, like our theme song, jolting me from the present to the past whenever I heard it played on the radio.

And since first love always happens in our youth, we are still careless, vibrant and care-free, often overwhelmed by the emotion of being special in the heart and mind of someone. Thus, we also have the tendency to lose it easily.

Yet, it is a lesson learned that will guide and shape our whole being when love comes knocking back at our hearts again. For there will always be a next time, whether we make an effort of it, or exert the least of efforts finding one.

Of course, there are more misses and losses in finding the real thing, since true love is as ephemeral as it is for real.

Thus, I believe it should not be a part of our worries, whether or not we have already experienced it, not unless we are bedridden or extremely ugly or incapacitated or in a comma not to have a chance of having one.

Yet, exquisite true-life love stories proved these claims were untrue, and not a hindrance at all. I may be exaggerating things, but my point is simple…Just let it happen, and grab it when the time comes.

And if you find sincerity, a serious truthfulness attached to the expression of an honest heart offered in the love, then hold on to it. Be extra careful not to break or shatter the bond of friendship, and allow it to mature and become a true love relationship.

For being in love, and finding one, is a wonderful privilege not to be taken for granted or ignored, and that which all of us must handle with extreme care and caution…Remember, he or she is special!

Let the universe flow, and as my Chinese friend in college once said: “Each one of us has someone waiting for us, only for us, even at the end of time, if not in this lifetime.”

(Dedicated with all my heart to my young blogging frheend with the beautiful, soulful eyes, whose heart starts and grows aflutter, now that she is seventeen. May you tell me about him…soon.)

Note: Pic was downloaded from random Google images.

Classics and Past Bestsellers: How Relevant for Today’s Aspiring Writers?

“How relevant are the Classics and past Bestsellers to the present aspiring authors/writers?

Beginners/aspiring writers were often given several good and helpful pointers on writing, including the business side of it, through articles, magazine author interviews, and some profound essays on the craft.

One of them was about the “good opening sentence that must hook the reader” in every story. Yet, as I opened for the first time the first page of War and Peace, the first sentence greeted me with a drab and dull dialogue in one long paragraph that kept me wondering after plodding through those first lines, how it became a CLASSIC.

Another was the famous “show, don’t tell”. Gorky Park, a contemporary bestseller by Martin Cruz Smith, had several long rambling “tells” disguised as dialogue—quite unusual for anybody to talk that long unless it was a lecture—although the story was good and intricate in its plot twists and recreations of life in Communist Russia.

Last observation, even though I like both authors, The Talisman by Stephen King and Peter Straub, meandered and rambled along, becoming obvious that both writers were enjoying the lilt of their voices created on the written page. The rule was to “be brief and exact in telling a story”—do not bore the reader. In short, it was overwritten. And yet, this was such a popular bestseller that the two even wrote a sequel. (About the meandering thing, Peter Straub seemed to have a knack for it as shown as early as the prologue in Ghost Story, another bestseller.)

So, is it safe to say to leave the classics and bestsellers of an era and concentrate on one’s style? Or do we have to accept these popular literary examples of success as the yardstick to measure our own style and worth before developing our own?”

This was the whole question (edited here for better clarity) I posted on an online writers’ community forum in the United States where I’ve been a member for the past year. It was an honest question that came out from the situations mentioned above, where, after my daily dose of writing advice and suggestions gleaned from articles, essays, and blogs, I wondered why the so-called Classics and past Bestsellers would err on the contemporary standards of good writers’ rules.

There are ten accepted rules, as featured in an article of a popular writers’ magazine that also owned the online community. (I wrote an essay about these rules, and made a parody as if the publishers created their own, too. It is still posted in this blog page: “Publishers’ Rulebook: Wassup, Doc?”)

The popular accepted Writer/Authors’ Rules are:
1. Write What You Know.
2. Hook Your Readers on Page 1.
3. Show, Don’t Tell.
4. Write “Shitty” First Drafts.
5. Write Every Day.
6. Kill Your Darlings.
7. Develop a Thick Skin.
8. Silence Your Inner Critic.
9. Read What You Like.
10. If You Want to Get Rich, Do Something Else.

Indeed, I was thrown back by the opening line of the first paragraph of the first page of the highly revered and popular War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. It was the start of a dialogue in one paragraph, drab and dull to even encourage me to continue reading. Thus, I dropped the book and began to question the high literary validations made on the Classics.

Did it suffer because of the translation? How much of the original were lost? Was it caused by the standard of English used at the time, which made it looked tedious and dry if compared to our present popular style of literary works? How much of the rules did it violate yet still claimed its reputation as Classic?

I have read some Classics in school, and I must admit I didn’t understand much of them: It was a requirement I must complete, and did the report without any interest. Later on, when my desire to aspire to be an author grabbed my hands and imaginations, I started to read and devour varied titles including bestsellers that interested me most: from Dracula, Moby Dick, Grapes of Wrath, The Naked and the Dead, 100 Days of Sodom, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, The Lord of the Rings, The Alchemist, to Foucault’s Pendulum and more.

Except for a handful that veered to my favourite popular genre—horror, adventure, thriller, and crime—the rest scattered my attention I had to stop for long periods—months, sometimes, and had to re-read it from the beginning again!—before going back to finish them. Without question, authors of the Classics and past Bestsellers—Mailer, Steinbeck, Updike, Fleming, Stoker, Melville, D.H. Lawrence, King, Dick, Crichton, etc.—were meritorious in their own individual ways. From story, dialogue, plots, style, to the actual telling or narration, each of these admirable authors established the excellent worth of their works.

As a beginner/aspiring author, education led me to believe that what I struggled with in school as literary masterpieces held the keys and secrets to a successful career in writing. And yet, working now in earnest to earn my reputation as an author, the faults of the past are revealing themselves slow but unavoidable and sure—something unthinkable for me, like seeing Gandalf the White was really Ian McKellan. I guess, the innocence and honesty of childhood still in me carried more creative power of imagination in my maturity.

But many seemed to have missed what I implied in my sincere inquiry, my frank dilemma in the forum as an aspiring/beginner writer with regards the Classics and past Bestsellers:

Have we placed so high an indiscriminate regard for works done in the past that we allowed ourselves to fold and lay prostrate at the brilliance of the literary achievements—losing sight of their glaring mistakes? Admittedly, there were numerous exceptional ones with almost beyond human comprehension of staggering creativity in literary accomplishments, which made them sterling masterpieces on their own.

And yet, are we to consider ourselves always “blind and respectful”, and thus, ignore and swallow with a smile the unintentional misgivings—errors or faults discerned in the writings of these outstanding writers and authors of the past—as based on our present standards that we have to shut our mouth?

Were these unarguable works of excellence, which their “era” considered masterful, and therefore, classic literatures of our present time—exemplary works that become accepted tools and examples in the craft of today’s writing (a required reading and study in fact, in colleges and most creative courses)—of paramount necessity and importance to us, the current crops of aspiring authors, aside from enjoying the ephemeral aura of having read and understood the Classics?

Are we not permitted to examine these faults as we read, and avoid it as a choice to improve and hone our craft? So that in our age, we can be proud to say that we used and understood their “mistakes” by not making them ourselves?

Are we not supposed to react, to question our surprising findings regarding its relevance to our own aspirations, and just absorb everything, with utter respect of the persons and their achievements involved?

Are we to continue ignoring these so-called “broken rules” (can anyone argue with a Tolstoy, a Stevenson, a King, a Stoker, or a Clancy, including their Editors for that matter, at the time?) and keep our peace with a bowed, quiet acceptance?

The Forum answers were mixed, but highly favoured the indispensable worth of understanding the Classics: closing a left eye to their faults, misgivings, and styles by supporting its worth in substance, content, and the power and longevity of the story themselves to survive in our contemporary times—as they set and challenged the writing standards also, during their time.

As for the Bestsellers, they earned their rights to “break rules”—their hordes of avid, adoring readers always behind every effort to support them, no matter how trivial, miniscule, or redundant the stories were—and thus, set their own standards, too, in our present time.

How relevant are the Classics and past Bestsellers for us? The answers lie in the individuals’ present needs—whether story inspiration, plot direction, dialogue style, character development, or a jarring twist in the ending that hooked and captivated readers all over the world—sifting through the jungle of accolades that distracted and clouded parts and portions of it, using our own creative heart and mind to decide what for us remains best.

Thought flow, copy flow…

She was a tease.
I knew it the moment she stepped in late for my class. Her boobs bobbing up at attention in front of her, proud and arrogant as if commanding everyone around to look at her and stoke their lust; her smile, inviting and full of malicious fire… “Hi, sir!” she said, eying me with a delicate, seductive pout.

A few girls giggled. I was in the middle of my lecture when she came in, bare of any semblance or image of a college student in her Sophomore year. No books, no paper, not even a pen either…Only her oozing sexuality brimming in the soft smoothness of her creamy skin, ripe and ready for the picking at a young age of eighteen.

This is Cheryll. One of the few hot teases fermenting with their sexual urges and ready to accept any challenges to prove to any body that they are ready; steaming cauldrons of potential troublemakers and yet–ooh sooh sexy!–proffering invitations to their fellow students, or sometimes when they are lucky, to unsuspecting professors who have gained quite a reputation–malicious, unscrupulous, or obnoxious…just like me.

I was known in the campus as the “monster” and not because I am a terror prof, but because I am ugly. Yes, it’s true…Even my mother admits to her friends that she didn’t know how I came to acquire such a lovely personality, so that my classmates in grade school christened and called me “Gorgo” after the Japanese film monster, even before Godzilla reached its make-believe popularity. Yet, as I grew up and became conscious of myself and matured, I knew they were all wrong, and had been wrong all along…I had a number of sexual relationships to boast of, and with my hot students to top it off.

I was teaching in college for a semester already, when to my surprise–no, it was a disbelief, really–I got sexually involved with Cheryll before and after she graduated from her Course in Mass Communication. I was thirty two and bored with my professional pursuit of playing around in the media, when I made a decision to teach. And it was then, after less than a year of enduring the giggling and snickering of the students in my classes, that I found out there was something more to the teasing than ordinary classroom jokes: they felt challenged by me!

My students, mostly the hot, sexy ones, were intrigued as to who among them will be able to catch my attention, or what could an ugly person like me would be like, in bed. If you’re wondering who told me all these, why, Cheryll of course, after our first sexual, intimate encounter inside a taxi cab.

These train of thought started when I woke up one morning with only a sentence buzzing in my mind: She was a tease. It wouldn’t leave my consciousness, asking me to write it down or the idea would fade without me knowing how the whole thing ended.

Before noon, I was writing the story. It may be a short story, it may be a novella, or who knows, it may turn into a hybrid of something else as long as I can sustain the flow. I don’t know where it is leading me: an erotica, a mystery, or a crime story, but whatever it is, this is how I write my stories. A flash of one word, a sentence (like this one), or an image that would not go away, even after several days; the images and situations presenting themselves in a rapid, clear fashion that if I do not commit them to paper, I know I will lose them altogether.

There are several paragraphs more following this initial draft. Yet I wanted to hold on to it, or else reveal much of the free-form plot. If there is anyone who write like this, or has already experienced this type of creative revelation, I wish you would let me know. At least, I would feel I am heading in the “write” direction towards my desire to start a career in writing.

The moment, a precious moment…

How many of us have experienced that blissful moment when everything seemed to fit perfectly in its place, when every word comes rushing down to be written, or when every brush stroke is perfect in its predetermined color and measured pressure of hand on paper? How many can say they have been inspired when they wrote it, or when they created a piece of art?

I am an artist by profession, and I know what it feels like to seize a floating inspiration, grabbing its wings gently or pulling it by the ears, and not letting go as long as you can hold on to it. For once that moment is disturbed, its fleeting existence distracted like the stillness of water broken by a gust of wind, it would fly away never to come back again…Not unless it had smiled on you, winked a seductive promise in the first instance, a lover demure and proper in the initial embrace, yet hot and willing the next time it comes around.

Feel blessed then if that happens, if it returns to you with a passion the following day, hour, or moment, for it will stay awhile and grant you a clarity of thinking unknown to you, or a vivid visualization so accurate in every detail that the masterpiece or bestseller you have been dreaming to create or write–depending only if you are an artist or a writer–looks finished already in your mind.

Your work will glide with the ease and smoothness of flowing oil in an hour glass, without the time to count, confront or measure, or the outside world taking part in the bliss and joy of that very personal situation.

In my experiences as an artist, I can say that I have been granted only a few moments–about a handful times–to create a work of art while inspired. My muse it seemed had turned its back on me, hurt by my procrastinating actions…For how many times have I delayed the completion of an artwork, savoring still very morsel of the intoxicating inspiration gestating in my being, when it truth, it came so easily and clearly to me?

Practice laziness often and the feeling of being inspired goes away for a long, long time. But nurture it, cuddle it, and it will stay and be there for you like a friend on the other line.

So how, you may ask, can inspiration be on call at all times?

I have one answer, and it may work for you or it may not: immerse in the moment without any negative thoughts or doubts that it will not be on your side when you wake up the next day. You may be surprised that it will come to rouse you from your sleep even in the middle of the night, or keep you from taking a nap, urging you to put down on paper a line or two, or if you are an artist, a quick note or a thumbnail of what you have to do to complete a masterpiece. (I remember having read that the Beatles in the early days when they were not yet a phenomenon, would write inspired lyrics of what will soon become a Billboard Top 40 song at the back of cigarette foils, so they will not forget). Continue the process then of doing what it is asking you to do and remember–without doubt or fear–and the experience will continue uninterrupted for many days, piling up thoughts, ideas, and creative concepts that you will soon doubt if you’re the one who did the artwork when it’s finished, or how it had been possible for you to ever think of such a situation, connection, or flow of wonderful harmony in your writing.

Forgive me if I speak as if I am a writer already. But what I have read about the processes of writing voiced out by many well-known authors, I have in parts and parcels experienced already. And the truth is, I enjoyed every moment of it tremendously! Writing has given me another creative outlet, and it has sustained my sanity, my confidence, my self-worth as a human being, and as always, encouraged by my intuitions to believe that everything is possible if you only put your mind and heart to it, especially, if you are inspired and immersed in the moment.

Do not count the hours, do not measure the efforts, and do not procrastinate as we often tend to do when in the middle of a creative awakening, but instead, enjoy every moment the pleasures of creation.

one word, first word

I wonder sometimes how difficult it is to write, how the great best sellers were written and given substance; how unique concepts were translated into words on paper and given meanings and accolades all at the same time. And yet, there were instances when a nicely written, well researched book would be ignored for some time, until a twist of fate brings an unsuspecting reader to admire the work and later on, raised the book into the public’s eyes. I wonder if these simple steps can be repeated by anyone; if these same unobtrusive punching of the keys or strokes of a pen or pencil on ruled paper consist of mystical formulas or skills honed and perfected in isolated rooms to write a wonderful line.

I am one of those who write on paper first, a draft, as most people interpret it. But I have a tendency to clean my drafts when I have completed about six to eight pages of a large ruled notebook. (I never find writing on legal pad harmonious to my style of writing as some best selling authors do, what with the large spaces in-between the rules.) I write in small quick strokes, almost calligraphic, and I have a habit of repeating it until I have a feel of correctness in both the writing and the content. You see, I am an artist–an advertising designer by my old profession (I teach part time now in a Fine Arts Department in college) and a painter still in hibernation–and the craft of writing intrigues me. Again, I think it was all because both disciplines–art and writing–use a great amount of imagination: one uses color and visuals to give form and substance, while the other, uses words loaded with creative imaginings to describe a form and give it meanings.

In one of my leisurely browsing in the bargain bins of most book stores, I discovered Stephen King’s On Writing, and it immediately changed my perceptions with regard to the art of writing: it was both inspirational, and at the same time, very challenging in a way. It opened new avenues for me to learn, to try my skills and tinker with my artist’s hands, it made me follow another one of my intense desires, and that is to write a novel. And as Mr. King most humbly declared: it always start “…one word at a time.” I started to write, and kept at it since 1989, with a purpose and an ambition I would like to come to fruition more soon than later: I made a challenge to myself which I cannot refuse, and I must fulfill the dream no matter what. That “challenge” has slowly turn from a short story into an epic, and I am still at it, trying to complete a series of forty nine books (or novellas) that will be one whole big epic tale. At present, I have completed in clean rewrites or drafts, twenty six of the novellas, all ready for typing. If you think I am too slow, blame it on my job, my other interests, my other artistic diversions, and other writings–essays, commentaries, and some personal random thoughts that cannot wait to be written down on paper. (Now that I have been given this chance to blog, I plan to post some of them here to sort of test the waters.)

But I am digressing…The real intention of the challenge to write was for me to prove a truth–or if it is–really a truth.

Someone told me a long time ago that those who died and became great after or during their lifetimes, still watch over us, the living. And if you truly believe that, really honestly, sincerely believe that (Oops! Mr. King would have shouted in my face to watch those adverbs!), they would lend a helping hand, literally. And I do…the twenty six books (and counting) are my proofs of that belief.

Here is how it happened. I am not telling you a lie or pulling your leg.  It was on a Christmas day, an evening in 1989 that I did the experiment.

Right now you might be thinking of some special religious significance that I have attached to the day but there is none. The simple reason was I just felt like doing it. Before the clock strikes twelve, I arranged my ballpoint pen and my loose notebook sheets. I was told that to tests or try the veracity of occult occurrences is to do it at midnight–a bit of a cliche, but I followed it (I have faith in tradition, you know). There is no ritual or incantations prepared; no prayer or pentagram drawn to protect me. It was pure concentration and the intense desire to prove (or disprove) that the hearsay is nothing but, well, true. I closed my eyes and concentrated on the person I want to invoke to help me write: none other than the great Marquis De Sade. (I have read some of his prolific writings, and though it was only suitable during the age of his lifetime, it was still a tremendous achievement to consider and for me to admire.)

When I felt it was already twelve on the hour, I opened my eyes, pen in hand and on paper, and started to write whatever word came to mind. And I continued writing, until almost two in the morning, when I finished my first draft. Needless to say, since I have already in mind the Marquis as my guide, the story I have written is pure erotica–but in my dialect! Although this was planned (I wanted to do something that would put my country in the literary map, as some great writings in French, Russian, and Italian did and were translated in English and became discoveries in themselves) and the subject matter also intrigues  me. Suffice it to say that the erotic book is now an unfinished epic, and which I myself was surprised to know that I have sustained the topic writing it: it has diversity and not redundant, or even repetitive in the stories it continues to tell. It consists of seven volumes with seven novellas each, with one letter to represent and complete the title: “E. R. O. T. I. K. A.”

Soon, all my special friends would be the first ones to lay eyes on it.