Writers Meet Up on July 6 at Starbucks Katipunan

Hey guys! Are you guys still writing stories? Do you need writing buddies to motivate you to write? I sure need some because it’s been a while since I last wrote a story.

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Immersion Journalism in the Philippines?

Recently, I’ve been reading the book New New Journalism  by Robert S. Boyton, and I got interested in immersion journalism, a method where journalists spend a year or years with their subjects in order to come up with a non-fiction book that reads like a novel.

I want to do this too. I want to shadow someone and know all of his or her idiosynchrasies. I want to observe even the most ordinary details of that person’s life and painstakingly describe it. I want to create a realistic painting with words.

The problem is I don’t know if these book deals exist in the Philippines, and plus I am not sure what I want to write about. I have a bagillion and one ideas, but I don’t know which one commands me enough such that I will obsess about it for a year.

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I Want a P50,000 Monthly Income

Money, money, money! Money? Nope, just my crappy drawings. Wish I had some talent, so I could sell these things.

After writing My Life Plans As of Right Now, a lot of the goals I set up came true. This is why I’m writing an updated life plan with a specific monthly income: P50,000. It seems pretty unrealistic, but that’s what I thought when I was writing My Life Plans As of Right Now, but in a span of a few months, many of them became real. Here’s to hoping that this one becomes real as well.

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Wishing for a WordPress Only Stumble Upon

I really like Stumble Upon because with a click of a button you can get random cool articles. How I wish though that you can set it to search through one particular website, specifically WordPress, so you can just Stumble Upon the blog entries here.

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3 Simple Happiness Boosters

No matter how trendy, deep, or powerful sadness is, I’ve always kept it out of my creative life. Unlike other artists who thrive under near-death depression or achieve cathartic release by ranting, I experience paralysis. I can’t write. I can’t think. I can only get creative when I am in a state of happiness–a condition that ranges from euphoria to peaceful contentment.

Now that I work as a writer, it has become more important to maintain my positive state of mind. That is why I’ve come up with three quick fixes to any bad mood:

1. Happy writing

As I said in I am a happy artist, writing about happy things gets me through sadness. It lets me shift my attention to something more positive, reminds me of all the good things I have in life, and eventually helps me to recover.

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