Burnout

I don’t know where this started, but my morning routine of writing is becoming an unproductive task. I
remember last month, I was still busy for the Pagkarahay Festival that time, I can still write a decent
short story. Preparing for a festival is grueling task, that’s I myself was amazed how I was able to write
short stories while preparing for a big festival.

As of now, my short story collection is in the phase editing. I have already sent the manuscript to Don.
We will meet later, so I might as well ask him about the progress of editing. As for the cover, Alyssa and I
will work on Monday. We already have an idea for the cover, so executing is the only problem.

So far, I am satisfied with the collection. As Alyssa said while we were in Liwa, it is just safe and good
collection of short story. I guess I am cool with that reception. As a first short story collection, I don’t
want to be “experimental” in a way. I want it as much as possible adhere to the standards of a short
story. I still don’t have enough leeway to do a “high concept” collection. As the saying goes, we have to
start small. But I still dream big that in next years to come, I will be able to produce a good short story
collection or even a collection of short stories.

Going back to what I was saying awhile ago, I feel that I am exhausting in writing after finishing the short
story collection projection. I was trying to write an article about punk philosophy and how capitalism
used its “rebellious spirit” to desensitize the movement. As I was thinking in the past few days, writing
fiction and literary criticism has different. They are both different beasts. The former relies heavily on
creative imagination that evokes beautiful imagery and scenes, and the latter relies on research, factual
evidence, and logic. Writing literary criticisms requires heavy research, which involves lots of reading,
reading, reading ,and readings. That’s why it takes a while for me to finish one. It is different in my
practice in writing short story. I just read stories under the same genre of what I am writing and get
inspiration from them. Actually, I use the structure of other stories and add some variations on it, so
that readers would not identify my work where I based its structure.

Also one of the hindrances why I am not getting in the flow is in the recurring headache. I don’t what
triggers the headache, but I suspect my brain is not yet used to the interface of my new laptop (I bought
a laptop this week which costs 14K pesos!), or this is just the effect of summer heat. The heat this
summer of 2018 is not bearable for me at least. My body is still adjusting to the weather, and I don’t
when I will be get used to it.

Now, I am thinking what to write next. I just want mind to be occupied with a writing project mind. I
would like think big projects now which is long term in nature. By doing so, my works will have an
overarching theme and will be connected to each other. In addition, writing under a big project in mind
helps me to keep the flow because I have to think what is the relationship of I am writing now to the
next. Thinking about finishing my first short story collection amazes me. I never knew I would have that
writing energy to write a series of short stories. And now that I did it, at least I know how it feels to have
writing streak.