UST PUBLISHING House authors on Friday urged aspiring writers to continuously develop their craft through practice and discipline, during a panel discussion at Raffles Makati.
Chuckberry Pascual, fellow at the UST Center for Creative Writing and Literary Studies, said a strict routine in writing would help a writer develop ideas.
“Sometimes even if you find yourself being unable to write, you still have to sit and play with the words. You have to force yourself, then the ideas will come out. Keep those ideas and maybe you can use them soon,” Pascual said in Filipino.
Poet Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta said a writer’s mind should always be active to absorb everything in his or her surroundings.
“Just practice writing whether a stanza, a paragraph, or two sentences in a flash fiction story. Everything around you is soaking in and ideas eventually [come] up when you least expect it,” Katigbak-Lacuesta said.
Acclaimed playwright and lawyer Nicolas Pichay, on the other hand, likened an aspiring writer’s mindset to an aspiring lawyer’s, which requires persistence in practicing the profession.
“Ganyan din ‘yung sa writing. If you really want to become a writer, you have to be a writer 24/7. If you cannot, then you are not a writer,” he said.
Other speakers in the panel discussion were Angelo Lacuesta, Esquire Philippines editor at large, and Joselito de los Reyes, UST literature department chairman.
The event, titled, “At the Core of Craft/ Sa Ubod ng Sining,” was part of this year’s Philippine Readers and Writer’s Festival, a three-day celebration featuring international and local authors, book sales and signing sessions.
