Day 3.

We began by one of us saying: I want to swim against the tide.

And we were off!

Language matters.

[Your writing on Batanes] makes me want to go there.

The way people embody what they think and how they react is so important.

At the end of this writer’s session there was a big sigh: Oh, it means I can keep going – that’s so good. This workshop has been so helpful for me because I’ve been writing in the dark. I was in a blind panic for months until I got to this week and sorted things out.

Another ventured (another writer, another world): Writing is hard. It’s very hard. I’ve never been “workshopped” before so this is all very new. My writing is always very private. But I’m so impressed by how generous you all are in sharing your work.

– If you don’t have resah [restlessness, an artist’s sort of trouble], do something else.

We heard a reading of poetry in Malay, prefaced by, it’s not right to come here and not hear Malay.

– We surrender to worlds that remind us of love.

By the end of the three hours we were full. It was good eating.

And the reaction?

I feel so immersed!

I don’t want it to finish.

I don’t want to leave this magical world of writing.

(As an aside, in this case I think this writing is both a gerund as a noun and the continuous form of the verb, as present participle – writing writing].

– Francesca