Saturday, March 28, 2015

#BuqoYA, the full experience

This is the second time that I have joined Mina Esguerra's writing class.

I've thankfully finished my #BuqoYA story. It will be available on (you guessed it) http://www.buqo.ph/, an online bookstore really, really soon.

As this is one of m first times to write fiction, I'd like to share some takeaways:

Set deadlines for yourselfUnfortunately for me, I only realized this during the revisions stage, whenI rehashed most of the scenes, and I wished, I wished really hard that I have finished weeks even days earlier. As this is an online class, deadlines have already been set, but the key to good writing really is revising. So, that left me with little time to edit my work and fix the plot holes. 

Ask for opinions. The class reminded me of my creative writing class and the importance of beta readers. Different opinions (in my creative writing class wherein we critique each others non fiction works and poems) matter as this will help you get a feel of what the readers are thinking. 

Have a support group. The twitter hashtag #Buqo ya was a big help. Some of the girls were posting how many words they have already, and of course this made me nervous! I needed to catch up.

Read, read, read. Read the weekly discussions, read your classmates/friends tweet, read more about of the genre, read how to wrote in that certain genre, and do more more reading . A time-old advice for any writer, just keep on reading.

The first two weeks I was writing with a friend, KC, as she also needed to submit a story for another class. Unfortunately, we weren't able to finish anything as we were too busy chatting. Hahaha. Anyway,

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