By Alma S. Anonas

To be a writer, you cannot be yourself.
Not being yourself comes in many flavors.

Reporter:

Never write in the first person.
Narrate, but don’t take charge.
Lead the reader to the facts,
But let them decide what to do with the facts.
Mold opinion, but never have one of your own.
Write knowledgably about a rainbow of topics,
But only show off a wardrobe that is purely black and white.
Be obective, but never objectionable.
Exist only on the edge of your life’s stage.
Never follow Puck’s lead.
You are better heard than seen
So find photos that make your words knowledgable and worldly-wise.
In the end, you only control the pucntuation and the words,
But never what drivel the reader finds in them.

Poet:

Never be truly, fully yourself
Except in the expressions of your personae.
Become the animus and anima but remain in some state of denial.
Embellish life so that it becomes surreal, or modern
Or magically real, or post modern, post-post modern, or art.
Be incapable of direct address: Metaphors are key, you are the lock.
Seduce, but make the personae put out instead of you.
Be the impressionist painting that hints and beguiles
Be the Dadaist art that outrages and stimulates the nerve endings
Be the non-sequitur that actually makes sense after a few years
Be the intoxicant but avoid intoxication on your own little lies
Do not be the museum-piece nude who bares all.
Dance the seven veils, but never drop your fig leaf.
Be lighter than air while being deeper than crush-depth.
Be profound, yet accessible, imaginative yet grounded.
Be droll but be what the reader wants to see.
Be the mirror that Snow White’s stepmama once owned.
Be overheard so your audience must lean forward
And embrace your thoughts in the space between breaths.
Say something that has never been said before,
But make sure your reader thinks it’s his or her idea.
Raise the poem right so it will be a good, contributing member of society
When it takes on a life of its own.

Columnist:

Always write in the first person
But never about yourself.
It is not all about your self, you see,
It is about the world that exists around you
But it is told from your view of it.
Go out on a limb and court the libel suits
Until they fall so far into you they forget to sue.
Hit and do it hard, like the readers like - harder, harder, yes, like that -
But pull back with expert brinkmanship.
Be legere interruptus and leave them gasping for more.
Learn how to do the first-person essay like Man Ray shot his photos:
Stark, in black and white, but with an eye looking outside the picture.
Be honest but be fair but be impartial but champion the underdog but_.
Be the vengeful sword in the Angel Gabriel’s hand.

Playwright:

Be present in every scene.
Be each character.
Be the soundtrack and production number
(where warranted, of course).
Be omnipresent with a light touch,
The stage whisper that longs to be heard,
The alpha thought touching the omega concept.
Push your sanity to the limit and race back to reality
Before the audience has a chance to blink.
Think in three dimensions, but reserve the fourth
For your audience to discover.
There is so much to say in the unsaid_
Use silence like a scalpel, give it meaning beyond words,
Own your space.

Blogger:

Make the pixels dance.
Break every rule of good writing, heck, grammar and spelling, even,
Then create order from the chaos.
Turn Webster on his hallowed ear,
Anarchy, that’s the way to go. Go ahead, punk, make their day.
Be a digital deity with a dazzling dialectic.
Be the virtual human everyone longs to be
And write a peekaboo journal for all to see.
Tell all behind a screen of anonymity
Use digital distance to get into the homes, the heads
Of ‘net denizens jacked up on caffeine. Keep them awake
With your titillations, intellectual or otherwise.
Be the visual drug happy place
For people with nothing better to do than click a mouse.
Give them a virtual life, Neo, make them choose
Between the red pill and the blue pill.
Be there, yet not there, be the Zen of writing
The page waiting to fill the unfulfilled.
Get a life. Then tell all lifeless netizens about it.

Fictionist:

All the characters, settings and scenarios
In this novel/novella/story/confessional
Are fictitious and have nothing to do whatsoever
With the internal or external reality the piece attempts to speak of.
Whatever resemblance to you, the president, your neighbor’s dead cat
Your deformed, blighted mother-in-law or the village idiot
(Among many, many other possible subjects of ridicule and scorn)
Are intentionally unintentional and premediatedly obscure
To avoid lawsuits arising from any truly amd utterly designed
Maligning, malingering and fun-poking and outright defamation.
While the author has an axe to grind
And figures that, since using a sword upon his/her subjects
May constitute possibly illegal acts,
The author has decided to use many layers of plausible deniability
That separate this opus from other, baser avenues of catharsis and revenge.
All the author’s other options are illegal,
So kindly pardon the pun or you will force said author
To seek presidential pardon somewhere
In the unfortellable but eminently predictable
Alternate reality that is the parallel universe
Of the abovementioned work of fiction - aka, the real world.
Also note that the hero/heroine of the piece does not
- and cannot - exist, as this is a work of fiction and there are
No such people in this world, and that, dear reader is fact.

You see, the whole point of writing in these known forms
Is to step outside one’s head, body, very skin
And into the world as one seeks to see it.

So, pick the poison prescribed by your skill level and write,
But always be absent to some degree
While seeming to be in the thick of it.

It’s still a living in a world where words are cheap.

* Published in the Philippines Graphic