On Your Mark

I don't know what has gotten into me but I'm back at writing in wattpad! Right. Maybe it was because I was just bored at being stuck at home and I have nothing else to do. Or maybe... it's my inner desire to crush those cheesy novels I keep on seeing on wattpad and I wanted them to show how teen romance should be done. Ha! Martyrs of the Modern Era is not a new novel of mine. It's just a revised edition of the novel I've written back in college, with a cringey title "Operation: SELOS". I decided to change the title because...why not? But it wasn't only the title that I revised. I mean, the whole crappy story. Before, the story centers on the  fake dating between the two main characters, Jo and Rhian. But since I was so ignorant that this trope has been used a gazillion times, even popularized by that movie To All The Boys I've Loved Before, I finally decided to toss it out and focus on its other themes: which is martyrdom. Almost ever

Nothing beats high school when it comes to the most memorable moments we share in life. It contributed a lot in shaping who we are now. There, we made friends to have a shoulder to cry on over our adolescent problems that we thought would be too much for us to take, yet were just incomparable to what we’re dealing with now in our present days. Admit it, we missed everything we did in highschool. Even though not all were good. It’s our high school friends who made those so special. So why the fear of reuniting with them? I asked myself this just days ago, before I came home to my hometown to see them. “Am I still their friend?” I know, it’s weird I asked myself that. But I was among those who grew apart from them after I graduated in High school. The great distance was a real bitch. It affected my relationship with them so deeply, so you can’t really blame me for fearing if there would still be anyone happy to see me after a long time. In fact, it was almost 8 years sinc

Marinating your manuscript simply means not reading your draft for a long time, say a month? A lifetime?  Before reading it again and realizing it is such a huge mess. It borrows from the concept of marinating foods in which you soak the meat in a combination of oils and spices to add more flavor and to tenderize the food. Apply this in writing and you’ll be surprised at the duplications, redundant phrases, words, fillers, chunks of irrelevant chapters, plotholes, and emotional chapters that cannot even trigger a single tear for a reader. I read this concept from Robert’s Rules of Writing written by Robert Masello . And I can say that this process really works. My WIP is now on my fifth draft and everytime I finish writing to the end of the chapter, I would just set it aside and discipline myself to never read it. The purpose of this is to strip off the illusion that you have written the best version, because who among us writers think that we have written a garbage right

You heard me right. And I am not fooling around, there’s no one behind my back forcing these words out my mouth. Bug fixing is actually fun. In my work I prefer tasks needing bug fixes rather than creating a new feature in our project. New features demand too much time analyzing what needs to be done, what alterations to be performed on the database, unit tests to write, and ensuring the design meets the company’s standards. Bug fixing on the other hand is like a game of cat and mice. And you get to play the role of the cat, which is kinda exciting. At first it’s scary, like searching for a needle in a haystack of codes, but done right, you’ll be able to get the hang of it. First of course, you need to replicate the scenario reported, need to see the error yourself. Then read the error message. What exception was thrown? Where? Which file? In my experience, I always see NullPointerException as the number one culprit. Others were ConcurrentModificationException, and o

Befriending a person is easy. One can just crack a silly joke, share a heartfelt story, compliment another’s outfit and yes, you get the idea. Being close to them? That is a different story. It is not something that can be done overnight. It takes a long time and investment of mutually earned trust. It may involve some fights, or years of misunderstanding before eventually realizing that you’re starting to really like the person. But difficult as it may be, I may have insights that can help you pull a friend closer to you. Of course, it involves a lot of coercion and torture conversation exchange—preferably a face-to-face one, where you could directly feel their emotions on the manner of how they speak, where there couldn’t be any barriers of communication and you can actually understand the tone of their message. A hearty conversation is essential in keeping your bonds strong. It’s like the more you share the more seeds you plant in them that will grow and eventually

Even though I resigned as a teacher months ago, hindi ko pa rin maitatangging nami-miss kong magturo. ‘Yung turo lang ha? Hindi kasama ‘yung other things na nakakabit sa work na ito, *cough* paperworks, *cough* lab manuals. There were moments na bigla ko na lang maiisip na, “Ay, ito, magandang pa-activity ito sa mga students ko next time,” when I know I shouldn’t even stress myself about it dahil iba na rin naman ang sakop ng new work ko. Madalas ay nanghihinayang ako kung bakit hindi ko nagawa ang ilan sa mga iyon. Kaya kung teacher ka at nagkataong naghahanap ka rin ng way para gawing masigla ang inyong klase, I may have some valuable information for you. Admit it, boring ang pure lecture lang. No one wants to hear a teacher drone on and on about a subject topic. Well sure, I can’t blame you for doing that dahil papa’no mo nga naman maipapasa ang information sa klase kung hindi ka magsasalita sa harap? But please naman, do it in a fun way! Let your students be enga