Creative Writing Workshop: Diving Deep into the Realm of Prose & Poetry ✍️

Hi, there! It's me — Jo. For this post, I wanted to share something that made me appreciate literary pieces to a whole new level. I hope you can stop by to read this and may it ignite the fire within you to hold your pen and let the magic of words transport you in the world of literature. So, let's start, shall we?

During my second semester in third-year college, I had a course — Creative Writing. I would say it was a very productive class because we were able to create our literary pieces step-by-step. Reaching nearly the end of the semester, our professor told us that we would have a creative writing workshop. We all looked forward to it because there's still so much more to learn and it's a beautiful opportunity to improve our writing skills.

The workshop was a whole-day event which was held at CTU-DANAO AVR. In the morning, we dove deep into the world of prose spearheaded by our distinguished guest speaker, Mr. John Danté, a Cebuano fictionist and poet known for his high fantasy literary pieces. Afterward, some of the short stories written by my classmates were shown and were put under the judgment of Mr. Danté. As a beginner myself, I already found their works wonderfully written, but when I heard his feedback, dissecting each part of the story, I learned a lot and I'm sure, all my classmates did, as well. His suggestions gave us room to think beyond and opened many possibilities to improve our craft.

In the afternoon, we continued to ride the waves of poetry. You know, poems always have their way of piercing right through our souls. We were then given a chance to create our poems, be it in English or Cebuano. First, I tried writing in Cebuano, however, it was so hard to express my ideas because I didn't know what word would deliver them perfectly. So, I switched to using English but, you know the feeling of being overwhelmed with ideas that you ended up writing nothing about? Haha, that was what exactly happened to me ༎ຶ⁠‿⁠༎ຶ.

Afterward, we closed the workshop by handing out everyone's certificates and a photo op session! The workshop may have ended but one thing's for certain, Mr. Danté's words of encouragement and the life experiences he shared with us will forever be ingrained in our hearts and minds. As per Sir John Danté, " There are so many things that the world couldn't give to a writer, but when you write, you offer many things to the world. Padayon sa pagsulat ( Continue writing)"

See you in my next blog, Hivers! ❤️