Category Archives: Life

Random Thought #3

Posted on by

I was reading The 101 Habits of Highly Successful Novelists by Andrew McAleer the other day and stumbled upon the following blurb. Weeks after having finished the book, this portion has stuck with me the most:

“There is a story about a woman who said that when she was in grammar school, she was always dying to go to middle school. Then, when she was in middle school, she was dying to go to high school, and in high school she was dying to go to college and then dying to have a family and then dying to retire. Then one day she woke up and realized that she was dying. She had wished her life away.”

Perhaps this blurb was so memorable to me because I can sympathize completely. I’ve had a similar experience of constantly looking forward, to the detriment of the present. When I was in elementary school, I couldn’t wait to go to high school. When I was in high school, I couldn’t wait to go to university. And when I was in university, I couldn’t wait to graduate. Even now, with an indefinite period of “resting” time (so-called by others, but more correctly called “writing” time, I believe), I find myself committing the same mistake. Throughout university I couldn’t wait until I graduated so I could travel. While I travelled I was constantly thinking about coming home and writing. Now, while writing, I am worrying about getting a job. It probably doesn’t help that the economy is so bad. The pressure is doubled to join the masses of the recently graduated and unemployed, looking for a job and the security it entails. I tell myself I should enjoy the moment, because my writing suffers as a result, becoming buried under repeated edits of cover letters and resume submissions.

I doubt this is a singular trouble. I’m not alone in such a harried way of life, am I? Is there something about our generation that makes us enjoy the added stress? It seems that we pride ourselves on a refusal to look at life in a cut and dry manner (“There must be more to this life than school and work and retirement!”, we say) and yet we are afraid to make the sacrifices this point of view entails. Is it possible to follow your passion and still have security (without already being a multi-millionaire)?

Perhaps sometimes you just have to jump.

My Twitter Highlight of the Week (or My Inner Nerd Revealed)

Posted on by

At the risk of revealing exactly how nerdy I really am, I must confess that seeing this on Twitter actually made my day:

Penguin Canada Twitter

For those who know me, they know that I love to read. For those who know me well, they know that I love to read Penguin books.

As a person with self-diagnosed bibliomania, I tend to collect books despite the ill effects collecting may have (say, on my bank account). I especially love collecting Penguin; they have the most comprehensive collector’s sets after all . As a result, I lurk about the Penguin websites, checking out the latest reads, surfing through the Penguin Book Club page, and occasionally even dipping into the “Current Job Opportunities” site to see if there’s any way I can fit into the Penguin team myself.

Imagine my delight upon seeing that I have been tweeted by Penguin Canada! I can’t seem to talk down my giddiness even though I know that social networking sites are made specifically to connect with the general public. This is what it must feel like when your favourite celebrity shakes your hand or, for a closer comparison, when your favourite celebrity acknowledges your tweet and tweets you right back. It’s even more exciting that PenguinCanada’s shout-out to me was Friday’s last tweet… I get to enjoy seeing my name on the top of their site for the entire weekend!

From City to City…

Posted on by

Hello everyone! After a long hiatus, I’m back from an extended three-week vacation around Florida, the Cayman Islands and Mexico. The break was a great opportunity for me to learn how to slow down and take it easy.

Posing on the Mayan Ruins. Clearly I need to do a lot of work on my yoga poses!

Posing on the Mayan Ruins. Clearly I need to do a lot of work on my yoga poses!

Prior to my vacation, I’d been feeling a bit discouraged about my writing. After fast-tracking through elementary school and university, I was faced with my career choice (writing) – something I couldn’t rush. The results seemed few and far between and I was mainly afraid of not being good enough or making a career-crippling wrong move early on. During my vacation, I realized that (as many mentors have tried to teach me before) in order to write one must first live to have things to write about. Furthermore, I realized that everything must come in its own time. Mistakes will be made and rejections will be had, but that’s all part of the process.

Although I’m currently having a two-day stop over here in Markham, I’ll be departing for Halifax this Sunday morning to attend the Writers and Exile retreat at the Tatamagouche Centre. Though I haven’t even attended the seminar yet, all of the people I’ve corresponded with thus far from Tatamagouche have been extremely encouraging and helpful.

I can’t wait to attend! I expect the retreat to be, not only a great experience, but just the kind of experience I need to further place my writing into perspective.

Random Thought #1

Posted on by

While rejection always sucks, there’s something unbelievably liberating in looking back on a rejected piece and knowing, with added wisdom and hindsight, where its strengths and weakness lie and how you can improve it.

LiL and Website Work

Posted on by

Check out my latest Live in Limbo article titled “Books for Dads: Bookstore Chains’ Holiday Reads“. I’m a bit hesitant about this article because I was unable to spend much time with it. Its due date arose between family visits, relatives’ birthdays, graduating ceremonies, and fundraising events. As a result, I was unable to really get a feel of the article before submitting it. I know that if I really want to make a living as a writer, I’d have to quickly learn how to write timely articles on a deadline. Because of this, I’m even more glad that I’m part of LiL; it familiarizes me with this aspect of writing. I hope to gradually improve with practice.

On another note, I spent a good few hours transferring my website to a different host (WordPress instead of Blogger). I find WordPress enables me to create different Pages within one Blog site that users can easily navigate through. With Blogger, I had to create completely different blogs and link them together through an HTML sidebar to create the feel of different Blog sections. Please feel free to give me feedback on the website’s change. Suggestions are greatly welcome, as I’ve just recently received my domain name and am still at the very beginning stages of my website construction and career.

Convocation, Writing, Film Fest Going

Posted on by

A lot has been going on and I just haven’t had the time to update. My apologies in advance for the long, long post.

Yesterday I attended my convocation ceremony and have officially graduated! The ceremony was early in the morning and, even if it was a nice day, I was extremely hot in the toga. I couldn’t help feeling sleepy, but I think the fact of graduating finally hit me when everyone began to clap for the final person to pass through and shake the Chancellor/Vice President’s hand. Only then was I suddenly struck with a wave of intense relief… I’m done!

I was unaware of this going into graduation, but apparently my grades ended me off on footing for an Honours Bachelor of Arts “with Distinction”. I guess that’s a good thing because only a handful of Trin students graduated without it. Nevertheless, it was a really nice surprise.

As I was walking up to the stage and shaking the Vice President’s hand, she congratulated me and asked me what I’m planning on doing now that I’ve finished my degree. I told her I’m going to write. She asked what I planned to write. I told her I’d like to write fiction – short stories or novels. So she congratulated me again and said she can’t wait to see my name in print. Neither can I!

 

In terms of writing, I recently registered for the Writers and Exile program at the Tatamagouche Centre. The program is a week-long intensive writing workshop focused on creative non-fiction, fiction, and culture’s role in these forms. The mentors for this retreat will be Shani Mootoo, author of Cereus Blooms at Night, Aaron Berhane from PEN Canada, and Gwen Davies, founder of Community of Writers. The only limitation I have with this program is its price ($620 for the program, accommodation, and food costs + approx. $450 in travel costs), but I received word that I’ve been approved for a $200 bursary from the Tatamagouche Centre and I applied for a scholarship there as well. I’m hoping all goes well. I used my published short story as part of my writing sample and received an awesome reference letter from Krishna. If everything goes through, I’ll be heading off to Nova Scotia for a week after I come back from my cruise this July!

In regards to scriptwriting, I’ve still been vigorously working on my script but am still in the plot revision stage. I’m not sure if I’m just really slow-going or if this is how long it takes to set the foundation down for a feature film. Although the last day of Krishna’s contract was June 15, I’ll be meeting with him tomorrow morning for our final go-over. Krishna has really been an awesome mentor – a little rough at times and blunt when things in our script have to go, but exactly what I needed – someone to tell me how things stand exactly as they are. After my time with Krishna is done, I’m taking a bit of a break from the screenwriting, only to return to my script with a vengeance later on to ready it for film fests and scriptwriting competitions.

On the side, my scripwriting friend, Maureen Holland, and I are volunteering for the ReelHeART International Film Festival. Founded in 2005, the ReelHeART Festival has grown to include the works of over a hundred different filmmakers from all around the world. The volunteer opportunity is a pretty awesome way to learn more about the industry, see new filmmaking faces, and view emergent films and screenplays for free! Maureen and I signed up for the Lunch n’ Learn morning shifts. Although the morning is a bit hectic, we get to see live reading performances of the winning screenplays selected for this year’s festival and meet with industry execs who discuss the art of screenwriting and the steps to discovery, distribution and filmmaking. Oh, we also get some free lunch – obviously the reason why I signed up for this shift. Haha, just kidding. But seriously, I signed up for this opportunity on a last minute whim upon request from Maureen, and have been wow-ed by the windows it’s opening up, providing excellent insight into the (still widely mysterious – to me at least-) film industry.

Last but definitely not least, as part of my graduation gift in celebration of yesterday’s event, my brother presented me with the following: https://miaherrera.com! Currently, the domain name redirects users to my blogspot, but soon I will have an up and running website of my own. I’ll update everyone when the website is in place. For now, feel free to continue following me here on blogspot or on my Twitter – a more informal place where I track what I’m doing, what I’m reading, what I’m seeing and what I’m listening to.

If you’ve made it thus far in my post, congratulations! I’ll be back soon!

Script Revisions, Book Prizes, and Piano Concerts

Posted on by

Yesterday I went downtown to discuss my beat sheet with Krishna. I am now working on Beat Sheet Revision #7! According to Krishna, my script has become belaboured with too many plot lines and I have to really trim it down to the basic story. I was pretty discouraged but know that in the end my script can only benefit from Krishna’s mentoring.

On another note, I won a prize from Keep Toronto Reading! I think I probably won it through submitting a ballot at the Diaspora Dialogues Reading. I won five books by five different Canadian authors and will probably receive it later this week. I always love getting new books; it’s more to add to my library. Very excited!

On a final unrelated-to-writing note, yesterday I also watched Serhiy Salov play for the Four Seasons Centre’s Piano Virtuoso Series. It was the first of the series that I attended. I was especially impressed with his last performance of Mily Balakirev’s “Islamei: Oriental Fantasy”. He also performed some Scarlatti, Beethoven, and Ravel. I probably need to garner a greater appreciation for piano music to understand the complexity of the songs. Whenever I listen to piano music, especially Beethoven, I always picture black and white silent films from the early 1900s where people are hurriedly running about performing gags. It’s my Cinema Studies background getting the best of me and it’s sad to say that it usually ruins my perception of the music as I picture set up gags. At the end of his performance, Salov received a standing ovation.


Serhiy Salov playing at the Four Seasons Centre

Hart House Review Launch, etc.

Posted on by

I am attending the Hart House Review Launch this Tuesday, April 14 at 7:30pm in the Hart House Debates Room and I’m not too sure what to expect, though I know there will be hors d’oeuvres and drinks. I suppose that means mingling is involved (unfortunately for me, as I am chronically anti-social). There will also be readings from Priscila Uppal and Ronna Bloom, with showcased pieces by Davida Nemeroff. I will also get my hands on this year’s issue of the Review with my short story, “Mahal Kita”.

I am still extremely grateful and excited about my acceptance into the Review. At the same time, I’m eager to start trying my hand at publications and contests outside the UofT community. I am currently working on a short story to be finished by early May tentatively titled “Lights Out”. It will focus more on Canadian culture – specifically cosmopolitan Toronto culture – although it will still cursorily refer to Philippine culture as a reference point as well. It is the first time I’m trying to seriously write something for publication in a while and I’m a bit nervous about it.

My screenplay is still in the works as well, and has actually regressed to the beat-sheet stage. There were a lot of issues I had to work out at the plot level, and I’ve come up with a completely different story from the one I first started with. I’m very happy with the changes and progress that has been made, as it’s starting to move at a movie-like pace as opposed to the novelistic turtle-walk it was moving at before.

Anyways, more later. Adios.

Wake Up to Bad News

Posted on by

Dear Ms Mia Herrera:

Your application for graduate studies in the Department of English at Queen’s University has been given careful consideration and I regret to inform you that we are unable to offer you admission.

Thank you for the effort you have made in applying to Queen’s University. I trust you will find a graduate program elsewhere which appeals to you.

Yours sincerely,

Monica Corbett
Director, Admissions and Student Services
School of Graduate Studies and Research

———

Checking my e-mail is the first thing I do when I wake up. Literally. Checking my inbox this morning was brutal. I haven’t been out of bed since.

Is it possible that Queens found my blogs, which adamantly stated that going to Grad School was a back up plan for me? For the past few months I’ve been envisioning the moments when I receive word from the school’s I’d applied to, but who would have thought I’d hear back from them so soon? Part of me truly wished that I wouldn’t get in so that it would clear a path for me to do what I really wanted to do. Another part of me truly wished that I would get in because, although I’d probably be faced with the tough decision of having to reject one option over the other, at least it’d be on my own terms and not because I’m just not good enough.

Oddly enough, I was always functioning under the impression that I would be rejected from UofT but accepted into my other two choices. I know that this sounds pretentious and is sorely underestimating the graduate faculty of other universities, but my Registrar had even told me as much. Now that I’ve actually been rejected from Queens, I feel as though it’s a sign that I’m just not going to be accepted everywhere. And this bad news is accompanied by mixed emotions.

First and foremost, no one likes the feel of rejection and I am no exception. Despite the fact that (I suspect) the rejection was first received with relief – as though I can now finally stop tipping on my toes and focus on my writing ithout having to split my mind between getting stellar grades and working on my passion – the rest of the moment was just flooded with… embarrassment.

Seriously, most of me is just embarrassed that I will have to tell people I was rejected. Not only from Queens, but most probably from all the other universities I applied to. I don’t want to go downstairs because I don’t want to face my parents.
…

& now that I’ve written it all out… I suppose a little bit of me actually feels happy for this outcome. For the next two months of school I no longer have to stress about assignments, tests, grades – I just have to worry about getting that fifty and breezing out of here : ) Adios to a lifetime of education! Aloha shady and unknown future!