Miscommunication is as old as time. We can trace it all the way back to Adam and Eve, when Eve was enticed by the serpent and ate the fruit she was told not to. Serpent: Did God really say you can’t eat from any tree?Eve: We can eat fruit. Just not from the one in…
We get it. Writing parents can be a pain. You’re juggling a cast of characters, world-building, plot twists, subplots—and then here come the parents, needing attention. It’s so tempting to k*ll them off (or ship them abroad) and get on with it. But let’s face it: this shortcut has turned into a tired, predictable trope…
I’ve been reading books since I learned how to read, and I’ve dipped my toes in a little bit of everything since then… long before I learned that there was such a thing called a trope. And to be honest, this was something I didn’t notice at all when I was younger. I just kept…
The last time I heard the term ningas-kugon was back in elementary school, around twenty years ago. This morning, it came up again during a conversation with a friend. For non-Filipino readers: ningas-kugon is often taught as a negative Filipino trait, right up there with crab mentality and colonial mentality. It literally translates to “grassfire”…
Visibility, branding, and posting with purpose—your crash course in being seen. I’m writing this as someone who has built pages that took off—and pages that didn’t. I’ve seen what works, what falls flat, and what actually lasts when the hype fades. Not just how to get attention—but how to build something worth remembering. Let’s begin….
You want to be read.You want your stories to reach people—lots of them. Maybe even the world. That’s the dream, right? Global readers. Viral posts. Book signings with a line out the door.You want people to feel what you’ve created so clearly, they can’t help but share it. I get it. I do.But here’s the…
If it doesn’t bruise a little, it’s probably not real feedback. There’s a kind of writer who says they want critique… but what they really want is gentle approval in a prettier font. Something that sounds like feedback but feels like a pat on the head. “It’s nice, just tweak this line a bit.”“Love the…
Some writers pick pen names like they’re signing up for a gaming account. Something cute. Mysterious. Maybe edgy. Usually something they think sounds cool in the moment. But here’s the thing:You’re not building a username. You’re building a legacy. A pen name isn’t just a nickname you slap onto your work to sound more interesting….
In a world saturated with syntactic acrobatics and lexical indulgence, where verbosity is often mistaken for value, many aspiring wordsmiths conflate convolution with competence. They seek not to communicate, but to construct linguistic labyrinths that dazzle, disorient, and ultimately dilute the very core of what writing is meant to do: connect. The result? Sentences so…
Let’s be honest. No matter who you are, you’ve heard a story from someone like Marites. She lives three doors down. She waters her plants at 6AM. She “minds her business” but somehow knows the exact time your cousin’s ex-boyfriend left the bar last Friday. But more importantly? She’s a master storyteller.She is the ultimate…