Writing from The Heart: A Valentine's Day Eve Memory

Writing from The Heart

"Writing from The Heart" is a workshop on creative writing, creative drawing, and creative drama. There are three available versions of this workshop: one for beginners on the secondary, tertiary, and graduate levels, and another for practitioners. A third version of this workshop is designed as an outreach program to disadvantaged and underserved audiences such as the disabled, the poor and the marginalized, victims of human trafficking, battered women and abused children, drug rehabilitation center residents, child combatants, children in conflict with the law, prisoners, and gang leaders. This third version incorporates creativity and problem awareness, conflict resolution, crisis intervention, trauma therapy, and peacemaking.

Saturday, February 13, 2016

A Valentine's Day Eve Memory

In 1993, approximately a year after the release of my book Cubao 1980 At Iba Pang Mga Katha, I received a letter from a Chinese man named W. who said he'd read my book from cover to cover and wanted very much, in so many words, to meet me. No one had ever written to me like that before, and so I agreed. As it turned out, he took me to restaurants and to movies and showered me with all kinds of gifts. The whole thing, however, was a mess. I never liked romantic commitments, and it eventually became clear that his image of me in his mind was that of Tom, the protagonist of my novella who was some kind of male prostitute. I felt so sorry to end our friendship, and, wherever W. is now, I hope that he is happy and well and has found the love of his life. He had no idea at the time that he was actually up against a well-read intellectual whose interests were quite esoteric and far from Tom's. This episode in my life may have made me feel subconsciously guilty, and that may be why I am extra kind and generous to my Chinese friends.

I am sharing this with you because you will inevitably come across people who think that they love you--you as a person--and only because they love your work, and therefore you must always be wary of your falling into awkward situations.

Many readers think that they know their favorite writers so well. They cannot conceive that writers' works span the entire heights and depths and breadths of life, and sometimes cannot believe that, while we are indeed writing from The Heart, we are also creating worlds populated by entirely fictional characters with fictional lives.