Painting the Town Pink: A Salute to Ang Ladlad

I first met Danton Remoto in Bali at an international AIDS conference (ICAAP9) last year. I was attending as a media scholar and he was attending as the Communications Officer for the UNDP (United Nations Development Program).

We sat beside each other in the pressroom while I was reviewing the slides for a presentation. I was going to make about campaigning for safer sex in the Philippines. One slide in my presentation included a European condom commercial. The commercial had, ehem, distinct sounds of people in the midst of copulating and not knowing that the volume of my computer was turned up rather high, I had inevitably filled the newsroom with sounds of moans and groans. It sent the otherwise busy journalists pounding away at their keyboards, giggling. Read more

The Golden Rules Every Writer Should Live Right By

Compiled by Ana Santos, Nikka Sarthou, and Nina Terol-Zialcita (Published as a sidebar in The Manila Times article “How to Jumpstart That Freelance Writing Career” – April 12, 2010)

1. Be yourself. Don’t try to be someone else; don’t try to use someone else’s voice. Know yourself. Discover yourself. Know what’s comfortable and what works for you. Readers will be able to sense if you’re trying to fake something, and that is always an awful feeling.

2. Be patient with yourself. This is actually related to number 1. It might take a while for you to find your voice, or to find projects that you will love working on, or to get a paycheck that you will be happy with. As with many other things, writing—especially freelance writing—is a journey. It will take time, patience, networking, study, trial-and-error, and A LOT OF PRACTICE. So give yourself the time and space to explore your craft and you will emerge from it a better, more effective communicator.

3. Be original. It’s important to know who you are as a writer. It’s okay to find inspiration from great writers, but don’t copy them.

4. Write whatever. Practice writing so you will be good at it. It doesn’t matter whether you write in your journal or blog, you just need to write whenever possible.

5. Always learn. Grab learning opportunities whenever you can – join writing workshops, seminars, and other activities related to your craft. You can never go wrong with investing on your education.

6. Be obsessive-compulsive. Never take anything for granted. It’s the details that matter from start to finish. When interviewing, take detailed notes but also pay attention to your subject’s body language. When writing, pay careful attention to grammar, grammar, grammar. Never turn in work with a lot of grammar or typo errors, thinking that someone will “edit it anyway.” Pay careful attention to sources, references, insights, and deadlines. Writing is a very creative act, but it’s also bound by a lot of parameters. If you want to succeed as a freelancer, you’ll have to balance the art and the DISCIPLINE behind writing.

7. Go out. Meet people. If you think that being a writer means staying at your desk and nailed down to your computer, then you are so wrong. You need to go out, meet people and observe, listen to their conversations. Everyone has a story to tell to learn from and may be even write about.

8. Get to know people. Empathy is a trait of any good writer. Uncover a subject’s motivations, passions and imagine putting yourself in their shoes. It will enable you to paint personality profiles, and get the most out of your subject during an interview.

9. Never let an idea run away. Always bring a pen and paper to immediately write down an idea the absolute minute it strikes you. You’ll never know when a good idea will hit, so it’s always good to keep a pen and paper handy. If you’re caught without a pen, you type in your idea into your phone.

 

Writer’s Block Philippines will be holding their first workshop entitled, “How to Jumpstart Your Freelance Writing Career” on April 24 and 25 at Powerbooks, Greenbelt. Log on to www.writersblockphilippines.com for more information.

Ignite Manila: March 2, 2010

                                                                        

 

Sex and Sensibilities Founder and Editorial Director Ana Santos will try to kick some serious SASs in exactly five minutes at Ignite Manila on March 2, 2010.

Drop by Mag:net Bonifacio High Street and see how SASs will ignite, enligten and inflame the audience — but will be quick about it.

WHAT IS IGNITE MANILA? Read more

The secrets of professional blogging and internet marketing

I always thought that the phrase “monetize your passion” was a marketing term to encourage the prostituting of something we love. To a writer like me, monetizing my passion just seemed like a sin.

Not until Maven Secrets did I think that this was a possibility rather than a sin. Read more

Amanpour on the Killing of Journalists in Maguindanao

 

 

Black is the color of death…the color of grief and bereavement.
 
Now, black is also the recognized color of protest against election violence and senseless political killing. Read more

4th Post as Guest Blogger for The Pleasure Project: The pleasure of baring it all for a cause

Filipino Pushcart Educator is CNN Hero of the Year

We Filipinos have seen just about everything – typhoons that are both monstrous and benign, a government that reaks of corruption and self-interest, a self-righteous Church that judges everyone else except itself, decades long violence in the Southern Philippine island of Mindanao, extreme poverty that surrounds us. We have been through a lot as a nation, and as a people. 

Read more

A Pleasurably Bad Bad Boy: My 3rd Blog Post as Guest Blogger for The Pleasure Project

Annie Philpott and I have what can probably be termed as “every safe sex activist’s ultimate fantasy”. This fantasy is of a hot, delectable specimen of a man subtlety promoting condoms, insinuating the pleasure that they bring.

During a conversation we had on this topic, the man who came to mind was George Clooney, Hollywood’s alpha-male and quintessential bachelor who has the distinction of being voted the sexiest man alive, more than once. Read more

Food, Safe Sex and Pleasure in Bangkok

Unveiling Vulnerabilities

It’s 25 days till World AIDS Day 2009….

Did you know that there  is a difference between “risk” and “vulnerability”? Read more

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