DANCING WITH A FIVE LEGGED IGUANA
By David Hontiveros


Don’t blame me, this is Karen’s idea.

For some reason, Karen seems to think I can write an article similar to hers in last year’s December 25 issue of MIRROR. (Dave is a brilliant storyteller. I am not.—Karen)

Well, I’ll give it my best shot.

To make things easier, I’ll present the article in a barrage of tips, since writing is not an exact science and can’t be presented in a step-by-step how-to. Let’s get to it, shall we?

ACKNOWLEDGE THE PRESENCE OF YOUR MUSE

Let’s face it, all creative types have them. And I’m not talking about neuroses and moods that are euphemistically referred to as “artistic temperaments.” I’m talking about those otherworldly entities that are the source of inspiration that make us do the things we do, that make us go to the lengths we go to to turn that elusive vision into a concrete, physical object--into a piece of art.

I’m talking about MUSES.

You see, you have to acknowledge them because they’re a notoriously fickle lot. When they swoop down and cast that whammy, filling you with that drive, the urge to create, to boogie on down with them, you can bet your bottom peso that if you don’t shake your booty right then and there, that inspiration will just disappear, POOF, as if it was never there, the sound of the needle scratching across the grooves in the vinyl, a long, screeching, accusatory sound.

And that’s because you ignored your muse. Your inaction was as good as saying, “Hey, honey, haven’t you heard, disco’s dead. I got better things to do.” (This is, of course, using as an example, a muse of the disco-dancing variety. Some do the tango. Others, the cha-cha. It’s all very much a matter of taste.)

Be sensitive to her moods. Humor her. You don’t have to know what your muse looks like, just that she’s there; though having a mental picture of her is always a good thing, like having a grad photo of your girlfriend in your wallet. (I’ve been fortunate enough to know that my muse is a five-legged Iguana. She treats me well and we have lots of fun dancing. Thank goodness she doesn’t dance to disco either.)

EXPOSE YOURSELF TO CREATIVE CATALYSTS

You can’t always wait for your muse to get in the mood. Sometimes you have to prompt her and prod her a little. Sort of like renting a video before…ummm…never mind.

Read a lot. And I’m not just talking about traffic signs and the cable guide. Reading requires books. Lots of them. A library’s a good place to visit. (Aw, come on! Libraries aren’t dentist’s offices) and don’t be fooled by the word “comics,” either. There are Pulitzer prize winning comics out there, bub.

Watch a lot of TV and films. Not no-brainer TV gunk or cheesy Hollywood fare, mind you. View some intellectually stimulating films like “Hudson Hawk” or “Cyborg.” (He-he. Just kidding.) Try some independent films on for size. Stuff like “Blood Simple” or “sex, lies, and videotape” or “Clerks” or “Paperhouse.” Edgy stuff that pushes the envelope. Or stuff by auteurs like Woody Allen or Whit Stillman or David Lynch.

And believe it or not, there are number of shows on the tube that are worth spending time sitting still for. Shows with sharp, intelligent writing, witty and thought-provoking plots and excellent, award- winning (or at the very least, nominated) performances. I’ll leave you to find them on your own.

Listen to music. I said “music”, not Top 40 fodder. Songs that say something about the human condition in ways and words that aren’t hackneyed. Songs that wouldn’t make Morrissey want to “hang the dj,” if you know what I mean.

I call all of these “creative catalysts” because these are works of art that, in turn, if you’re receptive enough to them (and provided your muse is nice to you), should give you ideas and get the creative juices flowing.

On a personal note, I listen to a LOT of college music, read constantly (meaning that I’m always in the middle of some book or other, not that I spend every moment of rest reading—if I did this, I wouldn’t get any work done), get a weekly dose of an assorted bunch of comics, watch movies on a regular basis (weekly), and was an avid follower of series like “Twin Peaks” and “China Beach” (These days, I watch “The X-Files,” “NYPD Blue,” “Friends,” “E.R.” and “Chicago Hope,” to name a few.)

And merging music and images, I watch MTV too, though most of my viewing is restricted to “120 Minutes,” “Alternative Nation,” “The Maxx,” “Aeon Flux,” and “Liquid TV.”

It is this steady input of images and information that serves as sparks for all the stories that are constantly in my head, giving them forms and shapes, helping in their gestation and eventual birth.

ALWAYS CARRY AROUND SOME WRITING IMPLEMENTS

We can’t all have the money to buy laptops, so in most cases, a pen and a small pad of paper will do nicely.

This is because your muse will strike at the strangest and at all times, most inopportune moments: in the bathroom; at church; in a theater, during the awful commercials and trailers for the latest Steven Seagal movie; while you’re half-asleep or when you’ve just awoken from one of those particularly vivid dreams where you’re a headless chicken running for your life, while you’re being hounded and persecuted by suspicious yuppies and snot-nosed ten-year-olds; or that perennial favorite, during traffic. (If one is to believe many a writer, worlds have been created and destroyed while waiting for the lights to turn green on that looooong stretch of EDSA. Perhaps this is the case with our world: God’s stuck in traffic somewhere in the Pleiades, waiting for Cthullhu—who I hear drives like a grandmother—to get a move on. And the world will end, not with a bang, nor with a whimper, but when God finally kicks into second gear.)

Just a thought. Sorry. As I was saying, always be ready for that spark. This is not to say, however, that you should whip out that pad while Father Perdisyon is in the middle of his homily about child possession through repeated viewing of “Sailor Moon”. You do the decent thing and wait till the service is over, then write about your next Big Idea—a musical burlesque of the Book of Revelations. (Hey, don’t knock it. The Bible’s a great place to look for inspiration.)

LEARN TO LOVE RESEARCH

Like I’ve said earlier, libraries aren’t dentists’ offices. And be honest with yourself. How are you going to write that period epic without knowing what women wore during the Spanish era? How are you going to write that short story set in London if you don’t know the word they use to refer to a flashlight? (It’s “torch,” if you wanted to know.) How are you going to write that culinary murder mystery if you don’t even know exactly which mushrooms are poisonous and which aren’t?

These are the kinds of things you uncover when you plow through those books and sink your teeth into research. Films are good reference points too, if dialogue is your concern. (It wouldn’t do to have a knight of the Round Table speak in slang now, would it?)

The point is, you can set your story wherever you’d like to, provided you have access to material that can tell you about the setting. (You don’t actually have to travel to Haiti, in order to write a story about zombies and voodoo. You just have to read up a lot, before you even start to think about the story itself.)

Immerse yourself in the society and culture you’d like to write about. Of course, traveling there and seeing the sights, breathing the air and the local color, is the best way to write about a place, but if you don’t have the means to pay for that air fare, reading’s the next best thing.

Remember, Bram Stroker wrote Dracula without ever having set foot in Transylvania.

TRY NOT TO WORRY ABOUT THE BASIC PREMISE; WORRY MORE ABOUT THE EXECUTION.

Many a writer has asserted that every story has already been told; that there are, in fact, no more new stories. Shakespeare’s done them all. And if not him, there are a thousand other authors and poets and playwrights who’ve been down this path before; a path you and I are just beginning to discover.

To a certain extent, I believe this. That’s why I worry more about how to tell a story, rather than the story itself.

Do you tell it in first, second, or third person? Do you use flashbacks or utilize a non-linear method of storytelling? Do you use in medias res to begin the story or do you slowly build up to the main action of the piece? Will there be an ensemble cast to tell the story, or will you just stick to one or two principals as your protagonists?

These are just some of the questions you need to ask yourself when you sit down to write that story. And in the end, it is how you tell the story that will make or break it.

EXPERIMENT WITH YOUR STYLE

Never be content with your writing. Play around with the way you write. It takes years for some writers to find their “voice”, that unique style in which they write that makes them stand out from any other writer.

This is another reason I recommend reading a lot, because when you read other authors’ works, you get to see what you should (and shouldn’t) do. You get to try out different styles of writing, and hopefully, learn a trick or two. (This is one of the reasons why I’m a big fan of anthologies. You get to sample a wide variety of authors’ styles, and the average length of a short story makes it easy to study and dissect, so you can see for yourself just how they did what they did.)

I’ve found that a good exercise is to, every now and then, set out to write in a specific author’s “voice”. Write a Bradbury, or a Lovecraft, or a Koja. See how the shoe fits. See what you like and dislike about that specific style. Are there any elements of the author’s style that you can assimilate into your own style? Are there any that you find you cannot do, or don’t like at all?

And keep in mind, it’s only an exercise. It’s a means to an end, not the end itself. The point isn’t to be the next Stephen King, but to be a good writer, and if the way Stephen King writes can help you learn how to find your own “voice,” then by all means, I say go for it.

KNOW THE BASICS

An established writer once said ( And I forget who it was exactly that said this), “You have to know the rules before you can break the rules.” ( These weren’t the exact words, but this was the essence of what he said)

I live by these words: Let’s face it, if everybody wrote like their grade school grammar teachers told them to write, well, everything would be…boring. And believe me, I don’t mean to belittle grade school grammar teachers. Hell, I owe them a lot! They provided the foundation upon which I build my “voice,” instructed me in the “googoo’s” and “ga-ga’s”, so I could graduate to words like “transubstantiation,” “deoxyribonucleic,” and “goo-ga.” Yes, “goo-ga.”


See, the spirit of this author’s sentiment, when he said we needed to know the rules in order to break them, was that these were simply guidelines, not letters of the law. I firmly believe that if writers concentrate too much on the technical nuances of writing, then they lose the art of it. Ideas need to flow freely, and words and sentences are the tools we use to convey those ideas.

And knowing the basics doesn’t mean you have to know what an intransitive passive direct dangling object participle is exactly. So long as you can construct a readable sentence that manages to express its idea clearly, then you’re well on your way to being a writer.

Though if there’s something to keep in mind, it’s this: you really shouldn’t start to break the rules until your confident enough in your writing to start trying something different. (Refer to the previous tip about experimentation.)

NEVER, EVER, EVER, COMPARE YOURSELF WITH ANOTHER WRITER

“Oh God, I can never be as good as Neil Gaiman.”


If this is your first thought, before you even sit down to think about your story, then you can just forget the whole pipe dream about being a best-selling author and just content yourself by joining the rat race, getting a normal nine to five, and reading Neil’s stuff.

If it’s something I learned over the years, it’s counter-productive to think that you can be better (or worse) than another writer. Than only writer you can be better than, is yourself.

Every new story that you write, every paragraph, every sentence, keep on thinking that you can make it better than the last. If you keep at it, all the hard work’s bound to pay off.

Of course, some people will say a little good-natured rivalry is always beneficial, but this just so often falls by the wayside when egos come into the picture.

Me, I’m content with pushing myself, and using my own performance as a yardstick. I ask myself, am I a better writer than I was one, two, three years ago? If the answer is “Yes”, then I must be doing something right…

BE PREPARED FOR CRITICISM

When you finally got the story on paper, you’re going to have to show it to someone eventually, even if it’s only to your friends and family. (But of course, friends and family aren’t the most objective people around, unless they hate your guts, in which case, they could be your average critic.)

You may get “Oooohs” and “Aaaaahs.” Or your may get, “What the hell is this horse (bleep)?”

Remember that when the tomatoes and rotten vegetables come flying in like nuclear warheads aimed for sensitive military targets, that the commends are not meant to be personal. (This is provided that the individuals making the comments are logical, sane, objective, qualified people, not pathological character assassins). When you’re on the receiving end, learn to separate the work from the artist. (Come to think of it, this is a good rule of thumb, even when you’re on the giving end. If a fellow writer asks you to critique her work, don’t murder it just because she was a fan of the New Kids on the Block.)

Again, keep in mind, it’s not personal. When they say, “Isn’t it too short?” they’re not challenging your manhood. When they say, “Shouldn’t you put a little more meat on it?” they mean the substance of the story, not that you’re skinny and you should eat more. (Although they may mean that too.) When they say, “It stinks,” they’re not talking about your personal hygiene.

Of course, critical comments aren’t normally this simple, but the point is, that you should be open to the possibility that your story may not be as great as you think it is. And when these comments come in, they’re meant to improve the story.

On the opposite end, you shouldn’t readily take all the comments tossed your way as Bible Truth. You also have to learn to weigh things, such as the source of said comment. Again, don’t make it a personal thing. Just keep in mind where the other person is coming from. If you’ve just written a very visceral horror story, and this person is somebody who throws up whenever you watch a George Romero movie, then maybe this wasn’t the right person to ask for a critique in the first place. If you’ve just written a lengthy comedy of manners and the person you’re asking comments from falls asleep during Merchant-Ivory drawing room dramas, hey, let’s just pack it all in, why don’t we?

In the end, common sense and open-mindedness should prevail.

TRY NOT TO BE YOUR OWN WORST CRITIC

While on the subject of criticism, try not to put yourself down too much. This ties into the “comparing yourself with a famous author” syndrome.

The following has been known to happen: You write a story, leave it alone for a while, then go back to it and say, “Eeurrgh! I wrote this atrocity?!” But that doesn’t mean you throw it out. Maybe you can salvage it, play Dr. Herbert West and re-animate the bugger. Or, it could be that it isn’t as bad as you think it is. (Which is where other people come in. Refer to the previous tip.)

It’s also a natural occurrence for an author to go over his past work and not to completely satisfied with it, time and distance from the writing process allowing him to see the weaknesses in plot and character, allowing him to see where he could have done it differently, where he could have made it better. (Even Neil Gaiman wasn’t entirely happy with the early Sandman issues.) As I said, that’s all natural, but that doesn’t invalidate the whole work. There will always be little things, sequences that you will be proud of, no matter what happens. The trick is to chalk it all up to experience, to learn from the mistakes and go on. Don’t linger. Don’t obsess.

The best thing you can do for yourself is…

KEEP ON WRITING

The two things established writers tell aspiring writers when asked the question, What should I do to become a good writer? 1) Read a lot; and 2) Write a lot.

Just write as often as you can, whenever the mood strikes. All the very least, it’s good exercise. There is truth to the adage, “Practice makes perfect.” At the very most, you could sit down at the computer one fine day, begin a short story, that slowly but surely takes a life of its own, and soon becomes your First Novel. You never know.

In parting, let me tell you this. Harlan Ellison once said, “…you cannot discourage a real writer,” and, “break a real writer’s hands, and s/he will tap out a story with feet or nose.”

I know exactly what Mr. Ellison means. I need to tell my stories. When I “hear the music” (again, a phrase from Mr. Ellison), I am compelled to put pen to paper, to tap out the words on the keyboard and strike ‘F10’, because I must let those ideas lose; if I don’t, I have the awful feeling I ‘d burst.

I’d like to think that other writers are familiar with this feeling. So you won’t mind if I excuse myself, right? I have to take my five-legged iguana out for a round of pogo-ing; if not, I could end up a right bloody mess.

See you on the dance floor.


June 1996

I met with Dave last Saturday at McDo, Greenbelt. Had to get some scripts and artwork from him. I showed him the art for HORUS #5, illustrated by Clint, a high school teacher from Batangas and an aspiring comic book artist. Well, for a newbie, his stuff looks great! Dave and Carl liked what he did for HORUS.

And after a long while, got to talk to Dave about comic books again. Said that he wasn’t blown away with Grant’s first issue in X-MEN and he compares this with how Grant started on JLA, AZTEK, and his run as writer of THE FLASH. Still, Dave said, the dialog was trademark Grant. His theory on Ms. Nova is that she’s Prof.X’s evil twin sisters. Considering that Grant recognizes X-MEN is one big soap opera, what could be more soap opera-ish than introducing an evil twin?

Makes sense to me.