Harold’s Mansion, Dumaguete City
10:39 PM
I look at a detail of Francisco Goya’s “The Forge,” and I imagine the effort it takes for three people to shape the metal into a useful item. One man holds the metal in place, while another runs the bellows. Still another strikes blows with the sledgehammer. Each careful step in the forge creates something more than strong metal; it creates a useful tool. Slowly but surely, every movement of the tongs, every blow of the bellows, and every strike of the hammer makes the metal what it is, at the end of a long process. Rather than for it to remain as a shapeless mass of chemicals and substances, the metal is shaped, formed, and built.
The metal is, in effect, workshopped.
Today, the Silliman workshop panel took one of my essays to task. Basically, as good as I think I am – or as good as others think I am – there’s still a lot of work to be done. I still make lapses in grammar, I still treat creative writing as a continuous stream of thought, and I still write with the kind of reckless abandon of a train that goes on and off the rails. I do write with the untamed anger of a caged animal; sometimes tame, sometimes unleashed, often unglued. My main weakness as a writer is recklessness.
Recklessness manifested in lack: a lack of control, a lack of precision, a lack of training. Recklessness manifested in overkill: the urge to write fast, the urge to write a lot, the urge to write good. In effect, I think the humbling lesson I learned today is prudence. One, that I have the skill to write, otherwise I won’t be here anyway. Two, that I don’t have to try too hard at being a writer-type of person. Third, that as much as I can throw suggestions away, it’s much better to keep them and take them to heart.
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