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SHS CREATIVE WRITING MODULE
Quarter 2 – Module 11: Writing the Art of Writing
Writing a craft essay demonstrating awareness of and sensitivity
to the different literary and/or socio-political contexts of
creative writing.
Republic Act 8293, section 176 states that: “No copyright shall subsist in any
work of the Government of the Philippines. However, prior approval of the
government agency or office wherein the work is created shall be necessary for
exploitation of such work for profit. Such agency or office may, among other
things, impose as a condition the payment of royalties.”
Borrowed materials (i.e., songs, stories, poems, pictures, photos, brand
names, trademarks, etc.) included in this book are owned by their respective
copyright holders. Every effort has been exerted to locate and seek permission to
use these materials from their respective copyright owners. The publisher and
authors do not represent nor claim ownership over them.
Regional Director: GILBERT T. SADSAD
Assistant Regional Director: JESSIE L. AMIN
Development Team of the Module
Author:
PAMELA G. GARCIA
Editor:
JOE-BREN L. CONSUELLO
Reviewers:
JOE-BREN L. CONSUELO
SDO CAMARINES NORTE (headed by EMMA V. DASCO)
Illustrators:
JOHN LEONARD P. CUIZON
KENNETH OCAMPO
Layout Artist:
CRIZ T. NUYLES
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Introductory Message
For the teacher:
Welcome to the SHS CREATIVE WRITING MODULE!
This module was collaboratively designed, developed and reviewed by
educators from public institutions in Department of Education Region V (Bicol) to
assist you, the teacher in helping the learners meet the standards set by the K to
12 Curriculum while overcoming their personal, social, and economic constraints
in schooling.
This learning resource hopes to engage the learners into guided and
independent learning activities at their own pace and time. Furthermore, this also
aims to help learners acquire the needed 21st century skills while taking into
consideration their needs and circumstances.
As a teacher, you are expected to orient the learners on how to use this
module. You also need to keep track of the learners' progress while allowing them
to manage their own learning. Furthermore, you are expected to encourage and
assist the learners as they do the tasks included in the module.
For the learner:
Welcome to the SHS CREATIVE WRITING MODULE!
This module was designed to provide you with fun and meaningful
opportunities for guided and independent learning at your own pace and time.
You will be enabled to process the contents of the learning resource while being
an active learner and at the same time an adventurer. Diego your learning
companion is with you as you embark in this learning journey. You will transport in
the different realms to learn and perform noteworthy tasks.
If you encounter any difficulty in answering the tasks in this module, do not
hesitate to consult your teacher. Always bear in mind that you are not alone.
We hope that through this material, you will experience meaningful
learning and gain a deep understanding of the relevant competencies. More so,
use your notebook or a separate sheet of paper in noting significant details and
pieces of information in the different modules and even in accomplishing the
tasks given to you. You can do it!
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You are back where you started.
You have become engrossed preparing your Creative Footprint for
Everyone to see that you must have overlooked that your journey has led you
back to the two-way hall with glass walls. You were quite sure that it was your
room behind it, but now you are mystified by what you witness on the other side
of the crystal wall: the world.
Diego takes a deep, long breath and starts to explain. “We often write
about so many topics and prompts, but we seldom write about the art of writing
itself – its highs, lows, and in-betweens. The major challenge to any writer is the
work itself: getting the work started; making characters believable; allowing
subject and form to work together; and creating authenticity.”
You can feel anger and frustration taking over. All you want is to get this
over with, go back to your room, put things back to normal, and have some rest;
yet you sense that this is far from over.
Perceiving your exasperation, Diego calmly says,” Before you can show
your Creative Footprint to Everyone, you were chosen to live the pages of The
Creative Writer so you can look at some significant challenges – and opportunities
so you can bend to the purpose of your writing, including cultural and social
pressures, quality, translation, experiment, design and your own mind’s workings.
Let me provoke your mind and ask you some questions that will link Creative
Writing to the facets of yourself, your environment, and your community:
● What makes you a writer?
● What are your challenges as a writer?
● What are the Challenges of Creative Writing in the Community?
● What is the future of Creative Writing?
● What is your Craft Story?
It was only after listening to Diego that the whole picture is painted. All you
needed to do was take a step back to complete understanding the totality of
this last task.
There, above the glass wall of the two-way hall, was a fixed signage of what
the place represents: Speculum Orbus Est Partum.
“Creative Mirror of the World, dear writer. That is what it means,” Diego smiled.
This is the last piece you need to complete your Creative Footprint. Confident
and certain, you are now ready for this final task.
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SOME REMINDERS:
1. This module contains three (3) Learning About It discussions and
activities which can be accomplished in four sessions.
Session 1:
Session 2:
Session 3:
Session 4:
Warm Up, The Importance of Reflection in Creative Writing,
Lesson Attachment 1, Keeping You in Practice 1
Creative Writing and the Freedom of Expression, Lesson
Attachment 2, Keeping you in Practice 2
Challenges to Creative Writing, Keeping you in Practice 3
Cooling down, Points to Ponder, Learning Challenge, Lesson
Attachment 3
2. It is recommended for you to observe the learning management
schedule so that we can avoid information overload and mental
fatigue. You can also create your own schedule as long as it fits your
schedule. As to the pacing of the sessions, it totally depends on your
time management, resources, and capacity.
3. Coordinate with your subject teacher regularly. During these times,
efficient time management and effective communication is key!
4. The chapter also has external links and sites which you can visit for a
video tutorial of some lessons. You can just copy the URL to your browser
if you are holding a printed copy. If you are viewing this module via PDF,
just click the URL and it will direct you to the site.
Look up your dictionary or thesaurus and give as many synonyms as you can for
the following terms. I will use them in sentences to help you out. You will meet
these words along the way as we learn about this module. As a creative writer,
you should have a chest of words ready to use in your works.
WORD
SENTENCE USED
CONVERGE
Perhaps our paths will part momentarily but I know the lines of
our lives will converge not now, but soon.
His context of life is gloomy; mine – joyous.
CONTEXT
FLEDGE
GAUGE
PERSONA
IDEOLOGY
With writing, we fledge our flight to creativity.
How do you gauge success?
A writer develops his literary persona over time.
Our ideology shadows our principles and reflects our integrity.
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SYNONYMS
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APOLOGIST Let us not be apologists of mediocrity; when we write our works,
we create with excellence.
What is your study dogma and how do you stand true to it?
DOGMA
INDIFFERENT Do not be indifferent and insensitive to your reader’s responses.
DISSEMBLE If we get intimidated by critics; we might dissemble our true
VOLUBILITY
HOMAGE
INEVITABLE
beliefs and purpose in writing.
Do you miss your friends’ volubility? Your squad can talk for
hours!
As writers, we make it a point to give homage to our roots.
In the writing process, it is inevitable to slip into a writer’s block.
KNOWING THE WRITER IN ME
Why do you write and how do you write? Are there pressures in your life that
force you into a writing silence?
Answer these creative writing slam questions which describe your current
reasons and methods. Think of it like those slam books being passed around
friends to know themselves more.
We write for many
reasons; sometimes those
reasons converge into writerly
purpose. They might include a
desire to: play with language
and/or form; share a part of
yourself; describe an emotion;
communicate with the world;
bring a character to life;
express your opinion; or simply
tell a story.
Who/What
have
influenced your thinking and
direction?
What drives you to write?
What hinders you to
write?
How can you improve
your writing conditions?
What is your writing
purpose?
Do this in your notebook. Please be utterly honest with yourself. Do not pretend to
How will you describe
achievements or ways of speaking which are not yet your own, or with which you
your writing
persona?
feel uncomfortable.
Writers
must not fool themselves – except when they are
writing.
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THE IMPORTANCE OF REFLECTION IN CREATIVE WRITING
You reflect on the aims of your writing and the process – for example, of
drafting – by which it arrived at its final form. You also give critical attention to your
own writing like the connections you may feel it has with the work of other authors
– and by placing your work in any intellectual, aesthetic, social or other context
you feel it should be seen in.
The warm-up activity emphasizes that as a writer, you ARE a student not of
the classroom, but a student of the world. It gives you an awareness that is
essential in creative writing: self-knowledge.
Reading lends you knowledge; knowledge offers you power; but selfknowledge helps you understand the shaping and fledging of your abilities. It may
even help you realize them, and to fly alone. At the very least, it helps you to
gauge where you are at, and where you want to get.
This process begins with REFLECTION.
Reflection does not happen just by thinking about it, but by carefully
analyzing what happened and pointing out ways for improvement. A model that
I can highly recommend for guided reflection is Gibb’s Reflective Cycle. It was
developed by Graham Gibbs in 1988 to give structure to learning from
experiences. It offers a framework for examining experiences, and given its cyclic
nature lends itself particularly well to repeated experiences, allowing you to learn
and plan from things that either went well or did not go well. It covers six stages:
1.
Description of the experience
2.
Feelings and thoughts about
the experience
3.
Evaluation of the experience,
both good and bad
4.
Analysis to make sense of the
situation
5.
Conclusion about what you
learned and what you could have
done differently
6.
Action plan for how you would
deal with similar situations in the future, or general changes you might find
appropriate.
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Watch and Explore: Learn more about the Gibb’s Reflective Cycle by
watching this video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gbczr0lRf4
Read and Explore: Check out our Lesson Attachment 1 about the Gibb’s
Reflective Cycle.
CREATIVE WRITING AND THE FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION
Creative writers both have a power and responsibility on their shoulders: the
freedom of expression. Us writers are usually “out of the box thinkers” and it totally
reflects on what we write. Opinion is voiced with freedom. At first, we find it hard
to get used to this power because in our past, those opinions have either not been
voiced out, they have been ignored, or they have been shamed as foolish or
worse, stupid.
There is an undeniable tension between the art of writing and the science
of politics, government, and progress because the language of writing is its
number one critic. Political regimes and government organization find the
freedom of expression in writing as their ally and target. But mostly, they have
found to to target creative writers and intellectuals into bending them to the will
of their ideologies, and into using them as apologists or celebrants of dogma.
Should writers prove uncooperative, they are, at best, humiliated publicly, exiled,
marginalized, and silenced, say, by banning publication. At worst, they are
murdered. History has its album full of writers who were silenced because they
tried to oppose the “freedom” leaders of society have shaped.
As writers, we need to be careful of the language we use and the freedom
we express. We need to be alert of words/terms that we put in writing that may
put us in danger of defamation.
Defamation is the oral or written communication of a false statement about
another that unjustly harms their reputation and usually constitutes a tort or crime.
Libel is a form of defamation where the action or crime is making false
written and published statement that is damaging to a person's reputation. Libel
is a written defamation.
In the Philippines, Cyberlibel or e-Libel has been made legal through the
Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012. When you make a any written or spoken
statement in any cyber form, it qualifies as cyberlibel.
Slander is a form of defamation where the action or crime is making a false
spoken statement damaging to a person's reputation. Slander is an oral
defamation.
Watch and Explore: Watch this video for more explanation on the
differences between Libel, Electronic Libel, and Slander at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGbPBJhImic
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Read and Explore: Check out our Lesson Attachment 2 about the Gibb’s
Reflective Cycle.
It is though writing that we are given the power to express ourselves. But it
also through writing that we are given the responsibility to choose the language
we use in the power that we possess. This is where the role of careful selfknowledge and awareness as a writer plays crucial.
THE CHALLENGES TO CREATIVE WRITING
The major challenge to any writer is the work itself: getting the book written,
making characters believable; allowing subject and form to work together; and
creating verisimilitude. In this chapter, we look at some significant challenges –
and opportunities – that we might be able to bend to the purpose of our writing,
including cultural and social pressures, quality, translation, experiment, design
and your own mind’s workings.
These can be personal and general challenges that we can summarize as
follows:
1. Challenges to Writers (you as a writer and your connection to other
writers)
2. Challenges to Translation (creating your own version of others’ works)
3. Challenges to Experiment (introducing something new and how the
general will accept it)
4. Challenges to Form (going against the prescribed form of a genre as
a form of expression)
5. Challenges to Social Context (writing about social issues safely)
Challenges to Writers
Sometimes, the best and worst critics are not the readers or intended
audience of your work, but you yourself and the fellow writers who might think
indifferently of your piece. The world’s indifference to your writing is remedied by
the corrective action of producing and publishing only your best writing, and
even then nothing is guaranteed. Slowly define one’s self-purpose and practice:
to think yourself forwards into the kind of writer you want to become (or to cease
to be the writer you have come to dislike). Like creative reading, this is one way
to find allies to your own promise in yourself. You then find other allies, such as
mentors, teachers of writing who are practicing authors, your fellow student writers
in workshops, and the circles for survival that grow around you as you edit and
publish.
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Displacement Activity
Talking it away
You provide the
New writers like you dissemble when they should
chief alibi for inaction:
displacement activity. act and, worse, new writers develop a bad habit of
You do a thousand ‘talking away’ their work, instead of writing it down. The
things to avoid writing: creative reservoir inside you will dip as you talk about
tidying
up, your ideas for stories, poems and articles. Instead, have
rearranging the files a notebook always ready with you and scribble away.
on your computer. If Writers can fail on the rocks of their own volubility and
you have distractions, sociability.
they are Conversation
usually of is expensive oxygen.
Do not talk
your
making.
By about your work beforehand; write it, do it.
allowing and even
Challenges
to Translation
encouraging
distraction, you award
Many
writers
use translation as a means for taking an internal vacation from
yourself
your
own prize
their
own
processes;
to collect ideas and borrow verbal energy from other writers;
for quitting.
and to pay tribute to writers in other languages whom they admire. If you believe
in writer’s block, then translation is a temporary cure to it, in that one writer leans
on another to walk a line of words across a blank space of paper. There are two
translations that can challenge creative writing: Translation of meaning, and
translation of language. Of the two, language translation is less demeaning and
less serious than translation of meaning.
What is Lost in Translation
For creative writers, translation shares the continent of writing. What
is lost in language translation? Interpretation. Writers have often seen
interpretation as an enemy of creativity. For example, a piece of poetry
being translated and re-made versions to versions has lost its original
interpretation. As we have discussed, language is a shifting and evolving
system. Some words are charged with meanings in their host language, but
that does not entail their carrying those associations into another tongue.
Artistic Theft
Some creative writers practice the adaptation of an original work by
a dead author. However, some writers mix the colours in the palette of
otherness-translation: adaptation → equivalence → version → imitation →
variation → artistic theft → plagiarism.
As creative writers, you work across this spectrum by exploring it, even
exploiting it. Some writers steal, without quoting their source. When done
well, critics and readers consider it an act of homage; when done badly,
they cry plagiarism.
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Challenges to Experiment
Sometimes, the challenge to creative writing is not to make something final
or assessable, but to make something potential, a kind of audition with language,
or even a playful confection of words and letters – art for art’s sake; play for play’s
sake. When you try to introduce something new, it is always a challenge and
stressful to know how the audience and your fellow writers will receive it.
Sometimes, this goes to mind too well, that instead of the novel potential, writers
lean to how acceptable the work can be. It then loses its identity and instead,
conforms to the norm.
The point is not to produce a new and great work of literature, nor is the
purpose to subject existing work to ridicule. The point is to play, and to yield fresh
ideas and connections. The approach is clever and charming, but it is not an
ideology as some followers think; it is the opposite. Nothing might come of it, but
the potential is there, as in scientific and thought experiment.
Do not cease to try something new.
Challenges to Design
Form is design. A paragraph, a line, a verse, a meter, a rhyme. For new
writers, form is a chain that limits them to ultimate expression. The more constraints
one imposes, the more one frees one’s self of the chains that shackle the spirit.’
We design our writing using form, of formal patterns and devices, and by various
patterning, shaping and restrictive literary devices. The challenge to creative
writing on form is this: do not let form use and shape you. You use and shape form.
Form provides a pattern or shape for prose fiction or poems but is usually
most effective when it is the least obvious. So: form must seem inevitable. In stories
and poems, form must also be near-invisible, a presence in dialogue with the
writing. A work of fiction or a poem must not be completely driven into being by
its desired form. A self-conscious creative writer can sometimes over-emphasize
their formal ability so that what the reader sees and hears is ‘all pattern’.
Form is also elemental; it is a human and social invention. For example,
poetry’s origin is oral; its presence today is still partly oral. Storytelling as an oral
form is at the root of fiction. Form was made so that the poem or story is easier to
remember by making it more memorable to the ear. It is easier to memorize
sentences that use repetitive devices and reprises as in storytelling; or sentences
that are in metre, that have a certain step and dance to them, and rhyme is a
means to jog the memory for what line comes next. Rhyme and rhythm are
mnemonic devices. Form has therefore performed a strong function in helping
literature’s survival and adaptation. It creates language’s music in the audience’s
head, a dance of language.
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Challenges to Social Context
As I have shown you in the previous lesson about creative writing and the
freedom of expression, most problems on writing about social issues are with the
choice of language used. With proper reflection and enough background
knowledge, you can freely use your power to express through Creative Writing
without compromising your integrity as a new writer.
Practice Task 1. MY REFLECTIVE CYCLE
Following Gibb’s Reflective Cycle, create your personalized reflective cycle that led you
to the discovery of your writing persona/style/voice. In answering, reflect on a particular
moment in your writing journey the process by which it arrived at its final form; and you
give critical attention to your own writing, and the relationship you may feel it has with
the work of other authors/writers. Use a separate sheet in presenting your work.
My Reflective Cycle to Creative Writing
1.
Description of the writing experience
2.
Feelings and thoughts about the writing experience
3.
Evaluation of the experience, both good and bad
4.
Analysis to make sense of the writing situation
5.
Conclusion about what you learned about your style and what
you could have improved
6.
Action plan for how you would establish your writing
Practice
Task 2. WHEN MY FREEDOM ENDS
persona/identity
How can we become accountable when it comes to being free?
Read about the Libel Law in the Philippines found in Lesson Attachment 2. Then
create your Pledge of Integrity that exhibits your oath as a writer in using your power of
expression. Present your work in a separate sheet.
The Creative Writer’s Pledge of Integrity
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Practice Task 3. EXTRA CHALLENGE
What if you only have 100 words to use in writing a story?
This task will show how well you take on the challenges to creative writing. Use a separate
sheet for your work. (15 pts)
● Challenge to Style and Translation: Write a 100-word prose or poetry that will
translate the classic story of “The Three Little Pigs.” It should be strictly 100 words no
more, no less.
● Challenge to Writers: Time yourself how long it took you to finish the task. (Be
honest!)
● Challenge to Social Context: In your 100-word story, translate the story in a way
that it attacks a social issue in our community today.
(Title)
Inspired by The Three Little Pigs
Time Started: ___________ Time Ended: _____________
For all the Keeping You in Practice Activities, you will be using this rubric for
assessment:
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Identify if the following statements are TRUE or FALSE. If FALSE, provide an
explanation in 1-2 sentences that will correct the statement. (30 points, 2 pts/item)
1. Self-reflection is a process in Creative Writing that helps the writer find one’s
writing style.
2. In the Gibb’s Reflective Cycle, results and reflection is much optimized if the
action plan is ideal and ambitious.
3. Displacement Activities are those that help the writer achieve and focus on
the writing goals.
4. Artistic Theft is essentially plagiarism.
5. The choice of language is only a writing style/ accessory that one can use
to show a writer’s freedom of expression better.
6. In translation, the original meaning is carried from one version to another.
7. It is advised that the writer talks to a mentor or another writers when a writing
idea comes to mind.
8. Writers are safe from libel if they use metaphors or hyperboles when
describing a person.
9. Writers are not punishable e-libel if they did not publish anything
electronically.
10. When evaluating experience in the reflective cycle, it is best to focus on
the positive points than the negative.
11. Form limits a writer from freely expressing what he/she wants to write.
12. Once you have concluded about what you learned and what you could
have done differently, the reflective cycle is complete.
13. In the early ages, form has helped writers, readers, and audience in
remembering pieces easier and faster.
14. Critics to one’s writing must be ignored.
15. Freedom of expression is scary and dangerous if your language choice is
inappropriate.
WRITING THE ART OF WRITING: MY CRAFT STORY
In the start of The Creative Writer’s last chapter, I have these guide questions
that helped you bring together your thoughts about you as the writer and
Creative Writing as mirror to the world.
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• What makes you a writer?
• What are your challenges as a writer?
• What are the Challenges of Creative Writing in the Community?
• What is the future of Poetry, Drama, and Prose?
• What is your Craft Story?
Now, you will exhibit your understanding of the topics by “writing about the
art of writing” and expressing your personal creative process by making a Craft
Essay.
A Craft Essay is
an
essay
that
discusses matters of
creative construction
that
may
include
reflections on writing
strategies,
genre
elements,
and
contextual influences.
Check out our Lesson Attachments to read some Craft
Essay samples.
Limit your thoughts to 800-1000 words only and
use a separate sheet to present your work. This will be
the last Learning Challenge you will add to your
portfolio. Be ready for Everyone!
Surf and Explore: Be guided with more samples of Craft
Essays.
Go
to
https://www.cleavermagazine.com/craft-essays/ for more.
Read and Explore: Check out Lesson Attachment 3 for samples of Craft
Essays.
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Please be guided with the rubric that will be used to evaluate your work.
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Writing is so absorbing and involving that it can make you feel more alive –
concentrated yet euphoric. The process focuses at the same time as it distracts;
the routine of its absorptions is addictive. It can also recreate your sense for
wonder. Certainly, the process of writing is often more rewarding than the
outcome, although, when you capture something radiant, that sense of discovery
and wonder swims through the words and leaps in the page. There is a pleasure
in precision; in solving and resolving the riddles of your style, identity, and voice;
and in the choices of what to lose and what to allow.
• Self-Reflection is the start and end of the finding your identity as a writer. The
Gibb’s Reflective Cycle can guide you in the careful and introspective steps
to take.
• Despite the immense freedom of expression the writer has on their pens, an
inappropriate language choice puts an end to this freedom.
• You are a responsible creative writer. Therefore, you should avoid libelous
remarks and statements. It is also part of their responsibility that have a basic
knowledge of the Libel law the Philippines has.
• You will be astonished at how much time we waste through displacement
activities and distraction. Create a new schedule that excludes self-made
enemies of promise. Keep to this schedule. It will become natural and less of
a pose (for pose is also an enemy of promise).
• All writing is rewriting to some degree. The danger with translation is the loss
of meaning, a deliberate raid on another writer’s material in order to
generate new work.
• Do not let form use you, use form to your advantage. Do not be restricted
in your writing possibilities just because you are shaped by form.
With the ultimate stroke of the pen, you have achieved plunging the pages
of The Creative Writer. You fix the last details of your Creative Footprint and ask
Diego to take you to Everyone. All your tasks and challenges have led to this
moment.
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Merrily taking your hand, Diego leads you to the end of the two-way hall.
You can see a tiny room with its door closed. On the door reads a sign that says
“Everyone”. He lets go of your hand, faces you, and says, “Throughout this
experience, I have met a friend full of ingenuity, wit, and passion to express this
craft. It has been my honor to be with you up to the very end. This is where your
Creative Writing adventure ends. The Creative Footprint you will show Everyone
will immortalize the skill you have acquired in this magnum opus. This time, you
must do it on your own.”
You take nervous steps towards the door. You knock lightly. Whoever inside
knocks back. You muster courage and open the door.
Everyone’s room is filled with mirrors from ceiling, walls, and floor. The most
confounding thing is the mirrors reflects the different events of your life! From
childhood laughs to first tears, all the treasured moments that led to where you
are. Everything.
You come closer to one mirror that shows you in the room reading this novel.
You touch the mirror and you hear it crack. Crack! All mirrors in the room start
breaking. The broken fragments from the ceiling start to fall. You protect yourself
with the Creative Portfolio you have brought. Closing your eyes, you brace for
what happens next.
The alarm goes off.
What a dream! You fell asleep on your laptop and your head has been
pressing the next button of the software you use in reading The Creative Writer.
You fix your messy table and put your writing materials away. “It was
definitely a good dream,” you thought. You place the gadget on your lap and
read how the novel really ends. Its last page reads:
Writers are no one. They are Everyone.
We work and write within our social and educational communities –
we are those communities. Sometimes, we are misunderstood because our
lives can be somewhat radical. Creative writing is a discipline that slides
and slices across knowledge, thereby cutting across the normality and
convention.
Writers are players on a stage; they are players in that society, and
we do not always have to play the clowns. We do not have to take
ourselves too seriously, of course, but we can take our discipline more
seriously.
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Writers carry a community’s story in the voice of their memory. Think
of creative writing as an open space, a world of languages and memory.
In the hustle and bustle of life, we hear and see each other at distance,
sometimes not at all. Too often, we are preoccupied with our own lives, and
this allows us to ignore each other; letting our attention, tolerance, and
respect die. Creative writing – even clear writing – closes these distances
between us. It makes us wake up.
You hold your mouse and hover to the close button.
Your point your mouse to the power button and it leads you this dialog box, “what
do you want to do?”
With a click, the screen dims and mouse’s red light stops its glow.
Shut down.
You now leave the room, saying “I am Everyone.”
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Lesson Attachment
No. 1:
GIBB’S REFLECTIVE
CYCLE
Gibbs’ reflective cycle is arguably one of the most famous models of reflection
leading you through different stages to make sense of an experience. It was developed
by Graham Gibbs in 1988 to give structure to learning from experiences. It offers a
framework for examining experiences, and given its cyclic nature lends itself particularly
well to repeated experiences, allowing you to learn and plan from things that either went
well or did not go well. It covers six stages:
1. Description of the experience
2. Feelings and thoughts about the experience
3. Evaluation of the experience, both good and bad
4. Analysis to make sense of the situation
5. Conclusion about what you learned and what you could have done differently
6. Action plan for how you would deal with similar situations in the future, or general
changes you might find appropriate.
Stage 1: Description
Here you have a chance to describe the situation in detail. The main points to include
here concern what happened. Your feelings and conclusions will come later.
Helpful questions:
● What happened?
● What was the outcome of the
● When and where did it happen?
situation?
● Who was present?
● Why were you there?
● What did you and the other people do?
● What did you want to happen?
Stage 2: Feelings
Here you can explore any feelings or thoughts that you had during the experience and
how they may have impacted the experience.
Helpful questions:
● What were you feeling during the situation?
● What were you feeling before and after the situation?
● What do you think other people were feeling about the situation?
● What do you think other people feel about the situation now?
● What were you thinking during the situation?
● What do you think about the situation now?
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Stage 3: Evaluation
Here you have a chance to evaluate what worked and what didn’t work in the situation.
Try to be as objective and honest as possible. To get the most out of your reflection focus
on both the positive and the negative aspects of the situation, even if it was primarily one
or the other.
Helpful questions:
● What was good and bad about the experience?
● What went well?
● What didn’t go so well?
● What did you and other people contribute to the situation (positively or
negatively)?
Stage 4: Analysis
The analysis step is where you have a chance to make sense of what happened. Up until
now you have focused on details around what happened in the situation. Now you have
a chance to extract meaning from it. You want to target the different aspects that went
well or poorly and ask yourself why. If you are looking to include academic literature, this
is the natural place to include it.
Helpful questions:
● Why did things go well?
● Why didn’t it go well?
● What sense can I make of the situation?
● What knowledge – my own or others (for example academic literature) can
help me understand the situation?
Stage 5: Conclusions
In this section you can make conclusions about what happened. This is where you
summarize your learning and highlight what changes to your actions could improve the
outcome in the future. It should be a natural response to the previous sections.
Helpful questions:
● What did I learn from this situation?
● How could this have been a more positive situation for everyone involved?
● What skills do I need to develop for me to handle a situation like this better?
● What else could I have done?
Stage 6: Action Plan
At this step you plan for what you would do differently in a similar or related situation in
the future. It can also be extremely helpful to think about how you will help yourself to act
differently – such that you don’t only plan what you will do differently, but also how you
will make sure it happens. Sometimes just the realization is enough, but other times
reminders might be helpful.
Helpful questions:
● If I had to do the same thing again, what would I do differently?
● How will I develop the required skills I need?
● How can I make sure that I can act differently next time?
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Lesson Attachment
No. 2
BASIC PHILIPPINE LAW
ON LIBEL
1.
What is libel?
Libel is a public and malicious imputation of a crime, or
a vice or defect, real or imaginary, or any act, omission,
condition, status, or circumstance tending to cause the
dishonor, discredit, or contempt of a natural or juridical
person, or to blacken the memory of one who is dead. (Art.
353, Revised Penal Code)
2. What are the means by which libel is committed?
Libel is committed by means of writing, printing, lithography, engraving, radio,
phonograph, painting, theatrical exhibition, cinematographic exhibition, or any similar
means. (Art. 355, RPC).
3. What is slander?
Oral defamation is called slander. (Art. 358, RPC).
4. Is defamation made in a television program considered libel?
Defamation made in a television program is libel. While the medium of television is not
expressly mentioned among the means specified in the law, it easily qualifies under the
general provision.
5. Who are the persons liable for the crime of libel?
Any person who shall publish, exhibit, or cause the publication or exhibition of any
defamation in writing or by similar means, shall be responsible for the same.
The author or editor of a book or pamphlet, or the editor or business manager of a
daily newspaper, magazine or serial publication, shall be responsible for the defamations
contained therein to the same extent as if he were the author thereof. (Art. 360, RPC).
Proprietors and editors of periodicals are responsible for the appearance of
defamatory matter contained therein, as likewise are all persons who participate in the
publication of such matter. It is not necessary that the libelous matter should have been
seen or read by another. It is sufficient that the accused knowingly parted with the
immediate custody thereof under circumstances which exposed it to be read or seen by
a person other than himself.
6. What are the penalties for libel?
a. For committed libel: Prison correctional in its minimum and medium periods or a
fine ranging from 200 to 600 pesos, or both. This is in addition to the civil action which may
be brought by the offended party. (Art. 355, RPC)
b. For threatened libel: Arresto mayor or a fine of from 200 to 2,000 pesos or both. (Art.
356, RPC)
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7. Why is libel punished?
The enjoyment of a private reputation is as much a constitutional right as the
possession of life, liberty or property. It is one of those rights necessary to human society
that underlie the whole scheme of civilization. The law recognizes the value of such
reputation and imposes upon him who attacks it, by slanderous words or libelous
publication, the liability to make full compensation for the damages done.
8. What are the Elements of Libel?
Element 1: There must be a defamatory imputation
1. This means that the matter claimed to be libelous must impute a crime, vice,
defect, or any act, or omission, condition, status or circumstance, tending to
cause the dishonor, discredit or contempt to a natural or juridical person, or to
blacken the memory of one who is dead.
2. Rules to determine whether the language is defamatory or not:
a). What should be considered is what the matter conveyed to a fair and
reasonable man and not the intention of the author or the accused.
b). Statements should not be interpreted by taking the words one by one
out of context; they must be taken in their entirety.
c). Words are to be given the ordinary meaning as are commonly
understood and accepted in the in daily life. The technical meanings do not
apply. This is especially true to idiomatic sayings. Thus “Babae ng Bayan “ does not
mean a heroine. “Hayok sa Laman” does not mean a meat eater. “Adu client nya
nga pagbigasan”
3. How the imputation is made:
a). By the use of direct and express defamatory words, descriptions or
accusations. Examples: (i). He is a thief, swindler, “babaero”, ugly, wife beater, a
crook (ii) drawing a caricature of a person depicting him as a crocodile
b). By the use of Figures of Speech such as:
(i) Hyperbole - exaggeration according to which a person is
depicted as being better or worse, or larger or smaller than is actually the
case. Example: (a). Mr. X is the gambling lord (b) She is the mother of all
cheaters. (c) Praise undeserved is slander in disguise
(ii) Irony or sarcasm or where words are used to convey a meaning
contrary to their literal sense. Examples: (a). “Maria belongs to the ladies
called “Kalapating mababa ang lipad” (b). Don’t bother asking him for a
treat. He is boxer ( i.e stingy or a miser) (c) He has a face only a mother can
love (d) She is my wife when she is beside me, yours when she is near you.
(e). She is very famous because she is a public sweetheart.
(iii) Metaphor or the use of words or phrases denoting one kind of
idea in place of another word or phrase for the purpose of suggesting a
likeness between the two. Examples: (a) He is Satan personified on earth.
(b) She has an angelic face but covered with a skin as thick as the hide of
a carabao
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c) Or words or phrases with double meanings such as those which
apparently are innocent but are deliberately chosen because in reality, they
convey a different and a derogatory meaning. Example: “He will make a good
husband. He is a mama’s boy”.
4. What are not defamatory
a). Words commonly used as expletives, denoting anger or disgust rather
than as defamation, such as the expressions “Putang inaka, tarandado ka”, “Ulol”,
“Punyeta ka”.
b). Expressions of an opinion made by one who is entitled to state an
opinion on a subject in which he is interested. Examples:
(i) An heir writes that there was unfairness in the distribution of the
properties
(ii) A lady complains over the radio that there was discrimination
against Cordillera girls’ women in the selection of candidates to the Miss
Baguio Pageant
(iii). A law student writes in the school news organ that he believes
the faculty in the college of law are generally lazy and are not kept abreast
with new jurisprudence
(iv). A teacher declared in an interview that the students of one
school are less intelligent than those in another school
c). Words which are merely insulting are not actionable as libel or slander
per se, and mere words of general abuse however shameful, ill-natured, or
vexatious whether written r spoken, do not constitute a basis for an action for
defamation in the absence of allegation for special damages. The fact that the
language is offensive to the plaintiff does not make it actionable by itself.
Element 2: Publicity of the Libelous Matter
1. This means the accused caused the libelous material to be known or read or
seen or heard by a third person, other than the person to whom it has been written
i.e. the victim. Somebody must have read, seen or heard the libelous material due
to the acts of the accused.
i). Posting the material in the internet or posting in a bulletin board
ii). Showing the caricature, or naked picture, of the victim to another
iii) Announcements in the radio, or paid advertisements such as “The public
is warned not to purchase the skin lotion products of ABC Corp. to prevent possible
cancer”
iv). Asking someone to write a defamatory letter about the victim
iv). Sending the letter to the victim through a messenger but it is in an
unsealed envelope (the presumption is that the letter is intended to be read by
anyone other than the victim). Thus, if the letter is sent in a sealed envelope, the
element of publicity is missing.
2. Effect: Each separate publication of a libelous matter is a separate crime,
whether published in part, or in the same newspaper. Example: (i) There as many
crimes of libel as there are various showing or staging of a libelous drama or stage
play in different venues and at various times.
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Element 3: The Person libeled must be identified. (Identity of victim)
1. This means the complainant or plaintiff must prove he is the person subject of
the libelous matter, that it his reputation which was targeted.
2. This element is established by the testimony of witnesses if the complainant was
not directly mentioned by name. They must be the public or third persons who can
identify the complainant as the person subject of the libel. If third persons cannot
say it is the plaintiff or complainant who is the subject, then it cannot be said that
plaintiff’s name has been tarnished.
3. How the victim is identified:
a). Directly by his name
b). By descriptions of his person, his address, nature of his office or work, his
actions, or any other data personally connected or related to the plaintiff; or
identification from similar other the circumstances
c) From the likeness of his face or features to the libelous drawing,
caricature, painting or sculpture
4. The victims maybe natural persons who are alive or juridical persons, or
deceased persons as to their memory.
5. Rule if several persons were defamed or libeled
a). If several persons were libeled in one article, but all are identifiable, then
there are as many charges of liable as there are persons libeled
b). If the article is directed to a class or group of several persons in general
terms only without specifying any member, there is no victim identified or
identifiable, hence there is no actionable libel. No person can claim to have been
specifically libeled as to give that person the right to file charges of libel.
Examples:
(i). Some lady students in the 4th year law class section A, are ugly
(ii). Two thirds of the law students are cheaters
(iii). Majority of the policemen are crooks
(iv). Most lawyers are thieves disguised in coat and tie
c). If the defamation is directed against a group or class and the statement
is so sweeping or all-embracing as to apply to every member of that group or
class, then any member can file an action for libel in his own name, not in the
name of the group/class. (Note: Philippine laws do not recognize group libel). Or
if the statement is sufficiently specific so that each individual can prove that the
statement specifically point to him then he may bring an action in his own name.
Examples:
(i). All those belonging to 4th year law class section A are sex perverts
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(ii) Each and every employee in the accounting office is secretly taking
home part of the tuition fees paid.
(iii) If you are a faculty member of the college of law of U.B. then you have
no integrity but you are a yes-man of the school President
d). But even if directed against a group or class but the statement is directly
and personally addressed to a member or members thereof, then only such
member(s) can bring an action.
Example: A radio announcer addresses himself to Mr. X and Mr. Y and says:
“ Mr. X, and you Mr. Y. You Pangalatoks are sex maniacs”. Only Mr. X and Mr. Y
can file an action for libel.
Element IV: That there be malice on the part of the accused.
1. Malice is the legal term to denote that the accused is motivated by personal illwill,spite,hatred, jealousy, anger, and speaks not in response to duty but to do ulterior
and unjustifiable harm. The purpose is really to destroy, to injure, to inflict harm.
2. There are two kinds of malice
a). Malice in Law or Presumed Malice.
(i) The plaintiff need not prove the existence of malice. It is for the accused to
disprove this presumption
(ii) This presumption, that accused was actuated with an evil purpose or malice,
arises if the article is defamatory on its face, or due to the grossness of the defamatory
imputation even if the facts are true, but there was no good intention or justifiable
motive.
(iii) Examples:
(a). X writes an article about the sexual escapades of a society matron complete
with the details of time, place, and supported by pictures. In such case the law
presumes that X was actuated by malice even if what he wrote is true.
(b). X calls the radio and announces that the family of Juan de la Cruz is a family
of thieves and crooks.
b). Malice in Fact or Malice as a Fact. -. It is the malice which must be proven by
the plaintiff. He must prove the purpose of the accused is to malign or harm or injure his
reputation. This arises either because:
(i) the article is not defamatory on its face or if libelous it is ambiguous
(ii) the accused was able to overcome the presumption of malice.
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Lesson
Attachment
No. 3:
CRAFT ESSAY SAMPLES
Sample 1:
IN DEFENSE OF TELLING
A Craft Essay
by Scott Bane
Almost anyone who has taken a writing class has
encountered the sacrosanct dictum: Show; don’t tell. The
late Wayne C. Booth, Professor Emeritus of the University of Chicago led me to question
this doctrine in his influential book, The Rhetoric of Fiction (1961). I like books about
rhetoric, so when I came across the book at my local Barnes and Noble, the title hooked
me. Professor Booth is a warm and clear-eyed guide. And while he occasionally feels
compelled to cut through thickets of scholarly debate, he always manages to keep his
focus on the rhetorical devices that make fiction work.
Professor Booth advances the idea that many novels, especially those from the
18th and 19th centuries, have what he terms an “implied author,” an authorial presence
that guides and modulates the reader’s reactions, sympathies, and expectations.
Implied authors are hybrid creatures, combining the voice of a fictional character with
the point of view of the author. But for Professor Booth, the voice of an implied author
can’t be equated with the actual author; it’s a rhetorical mantle that the author dons for
each novel or story.
In their most straightforward form, implied authors are created when the writer
speaks directly to reader about the action or characters of the story. It was a favorite
device of earlier centuries, and accounts for much contemporary impatience with
slowly-paced thick, thick novels by Henry Fielding, George Eliot, and others. By the time
the novel fell into the hands of a writer like Henry James, implied authors had become
more subtle, created through word choice, emphasis on specific details, and
arrangement of action rather than direct commentary. But an implied author is still there
in the text, lurking behind the words, guiding readers.
Today, implied authors are often scarce. I attribute this disappearance to the
association between implied authors and “telling,” as well as the ascendancy of
“showing.”
What exactly is meant by “telling”?
In the eagerness to “show,” the nuance of “telling” is threatened with extinction.
But there are exceptions. In my story “Light Refracted through Water” the first person
narrator is trying to decide whether a high school buddy is making a sexual advance to
him.
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Was desire or fear stronger? But it wasn’t really a question. After years of taunting
in school, I didn’t dare dream of acting on my desires with other boys, and so they were
relegated to the world of private fantasy. It never occurred to me there was any other
choice. Gradually a split arose between how I acted and what I desired, so that with
time, I didn’t even recognize my own desires. Or so I thought. In reality, though, they were
like light refracted through water. The beam of my desires shone through my actions, but
bent at various angles, sometimes obtuse, sometimes acute, that weren’t immediately
recognizable to me.
Here, “telling” portrays how we narrate the world and our own experience to
ourselves. The implied author is subtle and comes in at the very end in the use of the visual
metaphor of light refracted through water. While some people may spontaneously think
in metaphors, up until this point in the story, the closeted, gay teenage narrator from a
rough and tumble background has not shown himself to be such a person. The narrator
gets an assist from the author. That the narrator is interpreting his experience using a visual
metaphor is also an example of telling and showing working together.
Or take the late Philadelphian writer Mark Merlis who used “telling” to excellent
effect. In his 2005 novel Man about Town, the main character Joel Lingeman is
inexplicably drawn to a photo of a man in swim trunks in a magazine ad. While the
photograph triggers Joel’s reflection, the depth and significance of the photograph is
conveyed by “telling.” Merlis writes about the character:
He knew it was a crime, looking at that picture, even having it in the room. Not just
the obvious crime. Perhaps he already had some vague intuition that a good boy wasn’t
supposed to be quite so profoundly interested in a picture of a handsome guy in
swimming trunks. But there was something else about the picture, something seismically
subversive.
In his reflection, Joel’s character is imbued with Merlis’ preternaturally wise and
articulate voice, making fine-grained distinctions about obvious and subtle crimes, how
too great an interest can imply a kind of guilt, or how something can be “seismically
subversive.” “Telling” brushes into a story’s frame the presence of a mature writer
capable of assessing human experience and ascribing words to it. For Professor Booth,
this “writer” may be one of a story’s greatest fictional creations, but it’s a necessary one
that underlies and reinforces the overall aesthetics of any given piece.
I can already hear the impatience: You’ve got to be kidding. In the early 21st
century, we like our stories cool and ironic, and irony abhors “telling” or commentary of
any kind. We like to have a character or scene presented directly, because we’re quite
capable of inferring the meaning for ourselves. We don’t need to be told. We like the
sense of privacy, privilege, and power that judging in the wings alongside the author
brings. Any comment from the author, implied or otherwise, destroys the spell of direct
presentation.
The other competitor “telling” has is film, a medium that for obvious reasons is
predisposed to “showing.” “Telling” or commentary by a character in film must be done
with a light touch or its effect usually verges on silly. Think of Sonny von Bulow’s mind
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talking to the viewer from the depths of a coma in Reversal of Fortune. Directors also
almost never speak in their own voices. So film, too, in which the director/author is very
nearly always obscured, also creates a general taste for visual representation, direct
presentation, and no “telling.”
Yet despite contemporary cultural inclinations toward coolness, irony, and visual
representation, it’s strange that the many nuances of “telling” should be lost. There are
instances when “telling” is “showing,” such as in Tristram Shandy, where the sheer power
of the voice, the voice that tells and tells and tells some more, is the most vivid
presentation of a character imaginable. Coolness, irony, and visual representation tip the
scale in the direction of “showing,” but it doesn’t mean that “telling” is an ineffective or
less valid literary device.
In each work of fiction, “telling” and “showing” interact to advance plot, shade
characterization, and explicate meaning in a way that is as unique as each writer’s
fingerprints. Neither “telling” nor “showing” can be held out to writers as theorems that
hold true under any and all circumstances, although just such a magic key is alluring. But
rigid application of “show; don’t tell” drains art’s reflective pool and hinders its ability to
mirror our lives back to us in all their complexity and nuance. And this being the case, I’m
always ready to be told a good story.
Sample 2:
FROM PLAY TO PERIL AND BEYOND:
HOW WRITING CONSTRAINTS UNLEASH TRUER TRUTHS
A Craft Essay
by Jeannine Ouellette
“There is neither painting, nor sculpture, nor music, nor poetry. The only truth is
creation.”
~Umberto Boccioni, Italian painter and sculptor
Writers seek truth—truth that makes a reader’s hair stand up and speeds our hearts
with recognition. But that kind of truth is elusive, both from the perspective of craft and
brain science. I spent two decades unable to write an essential truth of my own life, one
rooted in my childhood, during which I experienced several years of sexual abuse by my
stepfather, beginning when I was four. Not surprisingly, this experience shaped the person
I am—and, as a writer, I sensed the importance of weaving this early trauma into some
kind of narrative. But my attempts to do so were consistently ineffective and inartistic.
Dreadful, really.
So, I wrote other things. From my twenties through my forties, I published narrative
journalism, a couple of nonfiction books, a children’s book, plus dozens of essays. Some
essays were intimate and a handful took risks. But this one true thing tugged—and
persistently evaded me. The problem wasn’t the material itself, which was neither buried
nor inaccessible. The problem was my inability to transform it. In print, my life started
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around age twenty. Meanwhile, that blocked childhood truth coursed beneath, like an
undertow that kept my writing from its full potential.
Writing constraints help us discover the truth rather than recite it.
The turning point came in 2010, when I was working full-time as a Waldorf teacher
and impulsively enrolled in a three-week writing workshop with Paul Matthews, a Waldorf
mentor and author of several books of poetry and two craft books, Sing Me the Creation
and Words in Place. Paul teaches writing with constraints—a literary technique that
involves requiring or forbidding certain elements, or juxtaposing various incongruities, or
imposing one or more patterns. Constraints are so common in poetry that you need only
think of the rules for sonnets or sestinas or villanelles to understand how they work. But as
a writer of prose—at the time, primarily nonfiction—my first response to Paul’s workshop
was alarm. His lectures were riveting, but his prompts were preposterous. Many were
collaborative and involved “activities.” We made up nonsense languages. Spoke to
plants. Wrote nursery rhymes in iambic pentameter. We blindfolded ourselves and tossed
beanbags back and forth as a means of wordless communication.
If I had, that first day, been seated closer to the door, I’d have run through it. I was
a “serious writer,” there to write, not babble. I was not near the door though, and that
was lucky. Because my writing began waking up almost immediately in all kinds of
exciting ways. First, I laughed more than I had in years. I entered into what the comedic
actor and creative genius John Cleese heralds as the most essential condition for
creativity—“open mode”—a loose, playful state of mind most easily achieved through
laughter. Second, and this is related to the laughing, I learned invaluable craft lessons,
including the paradox that if I wanted to write dark and serious things, I needed to lighten
up. I needed to play.
Playfulness, Paul told us, is the portal to the profound: the English word “silly” comes
from the German selig—which means, according to the Babylon German-English
Dictionary, soulful, full of feeling, blessed, late, deceased. These opposites work
synergistically. As eighteenth-century philosopher Frederich Schiller wrote in his aesthetic
letters, “Humans are fully human only when we play, and we only play when we are
human in the fullest sense of the word.” Schiller also said art belongs in the same realm of
total freedom as play. Both offer the possibility of becoming childlike, of losing ourselves
in experience and—according to Matthews—“healing the division in our consciousness.”
My problem is that I am quite unnerved by free, undefined play. The same is true
for most people who have endured childhood trauma. But even the untraumatized are
not exempt. Most adults experience at least some discomfort in the face of a game with
unfamiliar rules—or worse yet, a game with no rules. We shrink back from the innate risk
of freedom. Twelfth-century troubadours in the South of France understood this risk. They
played a literary question and answer game called the jeu-parti—the divided game.
From this root comes our English word “jeopardy,” meaning danger. What an idea! That
in the midst of word play we might be confronted by a real question, a creative risk, a
jeopardy, to be faced directly or shied away from. According to Paul Matthews, such
moments almost always hold the hidden question: Who are you? What could be
scarier—or richer—than that?
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Paul’s workshop gave me my first glimpse of what my failed childhood stories were
missing, which was joy. Of course, more joy in the process of writing doesn’t—and
probably shouldn’t—turn an incest story into a comedic romp. But more joy in the writing
will leak into the work. It will add light, not in a way that diffuses the story’s darker truths,
but illuminates them more completely, slanting them in a way that surprises us even as
we write. This slant, as Emily Dickinson understood, makes all the difference. After all, if I
tell exactly the story I’ve set out to tell, I’ve failed. The truer story exists somewhere outside
the margins of consciousness. Writing constraints help us discover the truth rather than
recite it.
This theory also underlies the work of the Oulipo, the French “workshop of potential
literature.” The Oulipo is a loose gathering of (mainly) French-speaking writers and
mathematicians founded in 1960. They create works using constrained techniques, and
define potential literature as “the seeking of new structures and patterns which may be
used by writers in any way they enjoy.” Note the emphasis on new and patterns and
enjoy. The group advocates the use of severe, self-imposed limitations during the creative
process, seeing themselves as “rats who construct the labyrinth from which they propose
to escape.” One of the most famous members of the Oulipo, Italo Calvino, wrote an
entire 300-page novel without the letter “e.” The Oulipo is recognized as one of the most
original, productive, and provocative literary enterprises to appear in the past century.
As for me, the more I experimented with constrained writing, the more I came to
see its value. Still, I wondered why devices like writing constraints are so useful for
accessing sharper angles on certain truths, even in cases when those truths are not
particularly traumatic or difficult to tell. The answer stems from brain science, which
confirms a sad fact: we’re wired to see and say (and write) the same versions of our
various stories over and over, even if those versions are not essentially true—or interesting.
Meanwhile, the big truths about our own lives march by unrecognized. The simple term
for this is “confirmation bias,” a deep and debilitating hardwiring against seeing virtually
anything we haven’t already pictured or that we don’t expect to see.
One of my favorite sources for understanding this conundrum is the book Thinking
Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, which explores the dichotomy between our two
modes of thought: “System 1” and “System 2.” System 1 is fast, instinctive and emotional.
It’s the system we use the vast majority of the time. System 2 is slower, more deliberative,
and logical, the system required for solving calculus problems and working out difficult
code. System 2 is taxing, and we avoid it; it raises our heartrate and makes us sweat, so
we default to System 1. But there’s a hack for getting past System 1’s hold on us. All we
have to do is intentionally engage System 2, which effectively disables System 1 and
thereby allows us to see beyond our pre-existing beliefs.
Constraints are like puzzles. We use System 2 to solve them, which quiets System 1,
and suddenly, as if by magic, we write something newer and truer.
This is exactly how writing constraints work. Constraints are like puzzles. We use
System 2 to solve them, which quiets System 1, and suddenly, as if by magic, we write
something newer and truer.
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One of my literary heroes, the poet and memoirist Nick Flynn, writes and teaches
with constraints. In 2005, he described his process in an interview with the University of
Arizona Poetry Center:
Well, when I’m walking in a strange city I have this ritual, which is to find three bits of
ephemera, usually scraps of paper, usually something torn from advertisements, or maybe a ticket
stub, or discarded cigarette pack, trash really, but it has to have some element in it that catches
my eye, that interests me, or reminds me of something. I like pages torn from children’s notebooks
a lot, with drawings on them, though they don’t always mix well with other images. Once I find
one it might determine what comes next, one that somehow either adds to the one I already
have or else works against it, creating some tension or juxtaposition, though if it feels too limiting,
I’ll throw it away and start over. Eventually, over the course of a day, I’ll settle on the three scraps
of paper, and then I’ll force myself to make a collage. I make a collage a day, always from only
three scraps, because anything more becomes chaos, and I try to only use things I found that
day, and to date the final collage, also finding the “canvas,” usually a weathered piece of
cardboard, a technique I learned from Bill Traylor. So I have to carry a glue stick, or buy it in a
stationary store once I land, which is even better, because I like stationary stores, especially in
other countries. I write the same way.
I write that way, too—or I have since studying with Paul Matthews. I first tested the
methods soon after Paul’s workshop, in a memoir class at the University of Minnesota,
when we were asked to write a scene from childhood. Totally frozen, I gave myself a
restrictive constraint using Annie Dillard’s An American Childhood—a book that
beautifully chronicles a sunny childhood vastly different from my own. I opened Dillard’s
book randomly to page 185 and forced myself to copy her sentences, replacing Dillard’s
words with my own, part of speech for part of speech and syllable for syllable. I quickly
gave up on the syllables, but stuck to the parts of speech until I bent that rule also, before
finally tossing off the rules altogether when I realized that the first line of the exercise had
altered my whole story, shifted it what Nick Flynn calls “five degrees to the left.”
Previously, I’d always viewed the abuse I experienced as a child through a lens trained on
my stepfather and my mother. But when I revised Dillard’s first sentence, “The boys were
changing,” to “My sister was changing,” and, later, to, “Mary is changing,” my lens focused itself
more clearly on the world of the child. That shift was fundamental to unsticking my stuck story and
opening it up in unexpected ways. I continued the piece, which I called “Tumbleweeds,” long
after the class was over, forcing myself to include several new and incongruous elements, such as
fragments of the text of Jimmy Carter’s 1977 inaugural address, facts about the breeding and
parenting behavior of the Western Meadowlark, the botany of tumbleweeds, the myth of the
jackalope, and the archetype of the mother in fairytales. I was writing about some very traumatic
events—which was hard and scary at times—but I was also enjoying myself. It felt almost wrong,
really, that writing about incest could be fun. Yet, in order to follow my own rules, I had to be
playful. I had to explore new angles on a story I knew by heart, but that was actually far more
complex and nuanced than I had understood.
“Tumbleweeds” was a finalist in several writing contests and eventually selected
by Joyce Carol Oates as the second-place winner of the 2015 Curt Johnson Prose
Contest, published in the journal december, reprinted in Nowhere, and subsequently
selected for the Nowhere Print Annual alongside work by none other than Nick Flynn
himself.
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With that kind of encouragement, especially after so many years of failed
attempts, I was more than sold on using constraints to break open difficult new material.
Now, I’m always grateful when someone gives me a good constraint, which is exactly
what my former MFA advisor, Brian Leung, did during a workshop at Vermont College of
Fine Arts shortly after “Tumbleweeds” was first published. Brian’s constraint had ten rules
and options, one of which was to include the necessary building of unnecessary stairs. I
threw myself in, and months later my short piece eventually grew into a 6,000-word essay,
“Four Dogs, Maybe Five,” a winning entry in the 2016 Proximity contest. Eventually, this
material coalesced into a novel manuscript, the first chapter of which was published last
October as Narrative Magazine’s story of the week.
Of course, in the end, art is art, and art is mystery. For every constrained exercise
that’s worked, I’ve produced many nothings. But even those nothings are flexing my
creative muscles and keeping my mind playful and limber by turning my own stories
sideways. As the late scientist Stephen Gould said, “The most erroneous stories are those
we think we know best—and therefore never scrutinize or question.”
Ultimately, the pressure and limitations of writing constraints open doors to truths I
can’t see otherwise, especially the hardest truths that hide behind the ones I believe
about myself.
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VOCABULARY BUILDER
WORD
SENTENCE USED
SYNONYMS
CONVERGE
Perhaps our paths will part momentarily but I know the lines of
our lives will converge not now, but soon.
His context of life is gloomy; mine – joyous.
meet, join, unite
CONTEXT
FLEDGE
GAUGE
With writing, we fledge our flight to creativity.
How do you gauge success?
PERSONA
IDEOLOGY
A writer develops his literary persona over time.
Our ideology shadows our principles and reflects our integrity.
APOLOGIST
Let us not be apologists of mediocrity; when we write our works,
we create with excellence.
What is your study dogma and how do you stand true to it?
Do not be indifferent and insensitive to your reader’s responses.
If we get intimidated by critics; we might dissemble our true
beliefs and purpose in writing.
Do you miss your friends’ volubility? Your squad can talk for
hours!
As writers, we make it a point to give homage to our roots.
In the writing process, it is inevitable to slip into a writer’s block.
DOGMA
INDIFFERENT
DISSEMBLE
VOLUBILITY
HOMAGE
INEVITABLE
Perspective,
environment,
background
Prepare, ready
Measure, assess,
determine
Character, role, image
Philosophy, belief,
creed
Supporter, defender
Doctrine, creed
Uncaring, uninterested
Pretend, mislead
Chatter, talkativeness
Tribute, honor, respect
Unavoidable, imminent
KEEPING IN PRACTICE A-C:
Answers vary. Please consult the rubric for assessment.
COOLING DOWN
Identify if the following statements are TRUE or FALSE. If FALSE, provide an
explanation in 1-2 sentences that will correct the statement. (30 points, 2 pts/item)
*Explanatory sentences can vary.
1. Self-reflection is a process in Creative Writing that helps the writer find one’s
writing style. TRUE
2. In the Gibb’s Reflective Cycle, results and reflection is much optimized if the
action plan is ideal and ambitious. FALSE
3. Displacement Activities are those that help the writer achieve and focus on
the writing goals. FALSE
4. Artistic Theft is essentially plagiarism. TRUE
5. The choice of language is only a writing style/ accessory that one can use
to show a writer’s freedom of expression better. FALSE
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6. In translation, the original meaning is carried from one version to another.
TRUE
7. It is advised that the writer talks to a mentor or another writers when a writing
idea comes to mind. FALSE
8. Writers are safe from libel if they use metaphors or hyperboles when
describing a person. FALSE
9. Writers are not punishable e-libel if they did not publish anything
electronically. TRUE
10. When evaluating experience in the reflective cycle, it is best to focus on
the positive points than the negative. FALSE
11. Form limits a writer from freely expressing what he/she wants to write. FALSE
12. Once you have concluded about what you learned and what you could
have done differently, the reflective cycle is complete. FALSE
13. In the early ages, form has helped writers, readers, and audience in
remembering pieces easier and faster. TRUE
14. Critics to one’s writing must be ignored. FALSE
15. Freedom of expression is scary and dangerous if your language choice is
inappropriate. TRUE
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Electronic Sources
Bane, S. (2019, January 7). In Defense of Telling: A Craft Essay. Retrieved June 24,
2020, from Cleaver: Philadelphia's International Literary Magazine:
https://www.cleavermagazine.com/in-defense-of-telling-a-craft-essay-byscott-bane/
BayasNatin Legal Services. (2020). Libel. Retrieved June 29, 2020, from
BATASnatin: https://batasnatin.com/law-library/criminal-law/crimes-andpenalties/1079-libel.html
Cebu Citizens Press Council. (2009). Basic Philippine Law on Libel. Retrieved June
27, 2020, from Cebu Citizens Press Council:
http://www.cebucitizenspresscouncil.org/basic-philippine-law-on-libel/
Gibb's Reflective Cycle. (2018, December 18). Retrieved June 25, 2020, from The
University of Edinburgh: https://www.ed.ac.uk/reflection/reflectorstoolkit/reflecting-on-experience/gibbs-reflective-cycle
Hood, D. (2013, May 6). The Writing Life: The Art and Craft of Creative Writing.
Retrieved June 22, 2020, from Find Your Creative Muse:
https://davehood59.wordpress.com/2013/05/06/the-writing-life-the-artand-craft-of-creative-writing/
Ouellette, J. (2019, June 3). From Play to Peril and Beyond: How Writing
Constraints Unleash Truer Truths. Retrieved June 24, 2020, from Cleaver:
Philadelphia's International Literary Magazine:
https://www.cleavermagazine.com/from-play-to-peril-and-beyond-howwriting-constraints-unleash-truer-truths-a-nonfiction-craft-essay-byjeannine-ouellette/
Book Sources:
Edinburgh University. (2007). The Handbook of Creative Writing. (S. Earshaw, Ed.)
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Morley, D. (2007). The Cambridge Introduction to Creative Writing. New York:
Cambridge University Press.
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