My San Francisco weekend in review:

Drive to Walnut Creek. BART to Daly City. 28 transfer to SFSU. Closed J. Paul Leonard Library. Cezar Chaves Student Union. Registration for PAWA, PACE Filipino American Writers Workshop. Penelope Flores. Ed Lozada. Artist Readings: Barbara Jane Reyes, Janet Stickmon, Anthem Salgado, Robert Mann. Workshop 1: Memoir with Janet Stickmon. Lunch with James Bautista. Workshop 2: Short Story with Tony Robles. Workshop 3: Poetry with Barbara Jane Reyes. Borders. Squat & Gobble. Bird & Beckett Books. BART. Sleep. Wake. Write. Write. Write. Scrabble.

Highlights: Penelope Flores. Meeting Tony Robles. Meeting new writers. Bird & Beckett wandering. Discovering We Still Like, a lit journal out of Oakland. Grabbing a used copy of John Gardner’s On Becoming a Novelist. Chatting with friends, new and old. Leaving the city with the desire and inspiration to write.

WORKSHOP NOTES

Janet Stickmon reading at SFSU

Workshop #1 Memoir with Janet Stickmon
Honor Your Being-Own Your Story Power Point presentation: breath, self love, committing ideas to the page, structure

Writing Exercise #1:

• What qualities do I value most in myself?
• What qualities do I value most in people?
• Who have been anchors in your life?
• List pivotal moments in your life.

Writing Exercise #2: Choose one.

• Select an anchor or safety net. Show your reader who s/he is and what influence s/he has had on your life. OR
• Select a pivotal event. Show your reader this pivotal event. Show how/why it was life transforming.

Workshop #2 Short Story with Tony Robles

Short Story Handouts

• The Woman Who Makes Swell Donuts, by Toshio Mori in Yokohama, California
• Scent of Apples, Bienvenido N. Santos

Recommended reading

• Yokohoma, California. Toshio Omori.
• Oscar Penrand The Prize
• Mirror of the Roses. Marianne Villanueva
• Fires by Raymond Carver
• Principles of a Story. Raymond Carver

• You can’t have short story without poetry. It is the mortar between the bricks.
• Write with humility.

Quotes from Writers Handout

• “Writing is a struggle against silence.” –Carlos Fuentes
• “The role of the writer is to not say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say.” –Anais Nin
• “How vain it is to sit down and write when you have not stood up to live.” –Henry David Thoreau
• “Our struggle is the best part of our poetry. Our poetry is the best part of our struggle.” –Al Robles
• “We could only pick up fragments of our lives and handle them fearfully as though the years had made us afraid to know ourselves…I knew that our decadence was imposed by a society alien to our character and inclination, alien to our heritage and history.” –Carlos Bulosan
• “You’re going to ruin your life with thinking. I want you to make your life with feeling.” –Ray Bradbury
• “Writing is easy: all you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.” –Gene Fowler

Workshop #3 Poetry with Barbara Jane Reyes

• The Book of Genesis According to St. Miguelito. Miguel Pinero. Outlaw: The Collected Works of Miguel Pinero
• Puerto Rican obituary. Pedro Pietri.

Writing Exercise

• What is political poetry?
• Write  a creation story or an elegy.