Thursday 28 August 2014

My first (unpublished) novel, Chasing Deimos, has been short-listed!

Yes! The first draft of my first novel, Chasing Deimos, has been shortlisted for The Asian Writer Chick-Lit Competition, among seven other novels. It did not win, but I am still glad! It just goes to show that my first ever novel has a potential! I am out of this world at the moment! :-)
The judges have also sent a brief feedback on my novel. One of the good things they said is this:

"Love the concept and how it is really international. I feel there will be a lot of soul searching and every girl that has felt lost in their life will be able to relate to it. Above all you can feel the love. Written very eloquently."

I would not post all the comments as they are for me to keep and most of them just state what can be improved. I am really happy with this. It gives me a boost of confidence! You never know what I might be doing next ;-)

Thursday 14 August 2014

Using visual arts on creative writing


Ekphrasis : The word comes from the Greek ek (out) and phrasis (speak).
Nowadays ekphrasis is used by many poets/writers. They derive ideas or get inspiration from any visual work of art (i.e. painting, sculpture,) to  compose creative pieces, most usually, poetry.

I help to run the Blakenhall Writers Group and last Saturday we went to Wolvehrampton Art Gallery to write some poems about or inspired from the artworks exhibited there. The two paintings below were the ones that caught my attention. 




Writing responses has been a new experience for me and I hope those two poems I'd written would get to be published in the near future. Well, our group member, Cherry Doyle, has a brilliant idea of collecting a new anthology of Blakenhall that shows our written responses to our chosen art from Wolverhampton Gallery. That would be very beneficial for the group and I can't wait to work with them on materializing such an exciting project!


To learn more about ekphrasis and read some poems inspired by art, click here



Wednesday 6 August 2014

oh well

just finished an exhausting day at the hospital.... currently reading The Rialto magazine which contains very good poems from prolific authors.
At my writing rate (which is like a poem a month) and because of my busy working schedule, I doubt I can write (for The Rialto) any poems to be submitted to any magazines soon....
Sometimes we gotta do stuff to make a living, though they aren't necessarily the things which make us feel alive....

Flying to the Philippines

I was quite anxious flying back to the Philippines for my AIDF programme. It was my first time flying alone and I'm not too keen on plan...