Third Freewriting Adventure: Foot-Loose in Manila (Lrt Edition)

3. Freewriting Adventures Foot-Loose in Manila (Lrt Edition) on Sept. 7, 2013 

The third Freewriting Adventure was inspired by the book Foot-Loose in Tokyo: The Curious Traveler's Guide to the 29 Stages of the Yamanote Line by Jean Pearce. It is a travel book where the author went from one train station to the next. At every stop, the author explored the areas near that station. 

For the Manila version, I decided to use the LRT station because the surrounding areas interested me. From Tayuman station, we went to the Dangwa Flower Market and hunted for curious flowers.

Then, we went to iChill Theater Cafe at 1125 Dos Castillas street, and we discovered that they had a little stage in the middle of the cafe. If you performed there, you'd get free chips and stuff. Their round tables were very wobbly, and a participant noted that you could turn the table top around. At that instant, I decided to create a spontaneous writing challenge.

I asked the participants to think of a flower in Dangwa, then turn it into a monster (inspired by an improv acting game by SPIT Manila), and write one sentence describing that flower monster. Then, I asked them to turn the table top in order to pass the paper to the person to their right, and then that person will write another sentence to continue the story. We continued doing this until the story is finished.

The story has to follow this format: 1. discovering the monster 2. the monster displaying its powers 3. defeating monster. When we finished the stories, I asked the participants to perform their written work on the stage.

Some people were shy.

Some people got into it.

After that, we went to Blumentritt station, and then proceeded to Blumentritt street market. Before I unleashed the participants onto the streets, I asked them to pick a color. As we walk through the market, participants should note down all the objects of that color or people who were wearing that color (a writing exercise from Natalie Goldberg). 

Our search led us to take notice of ordinary things, which looked cooler at closer inspection.

toys are cute

Now that the bagoong is heaped in a cup, it looks like pink ice cream

Spongy cute

When everyone had their collection of objects, I told them to create a story out of all of those objects.

Our last stop was Monumento station where we looked at National Artist Guillermo Tolentino’s Andres Bonifacio Monument. 

Inspired by this sculpture, I asked them to respond to a question, "If you were to create your masterpiece, what would it be?"

We ended the day with a writing exercise that was suggested by one of our participants. We wrote a letter to ourselves where we identified our big dream and the small goals that we needed to accomplish within 30 days. Each of us gave our letter to another participant and that person will mail the letter to its owner within 30 days.

We said goodbye to each other, well aware of the journey ahead.

Freewriting Adventures is headed by Ja Cruz. With a Bachelor of Fine Arts Major in Creative Writing, she graduated Cum Laude from the Ateneo de Manila University and received the Creative Writing Program Award. The Philippine Daily Inquirer, Philippine Star, and Cosmopolitan Magazine have published her articles. She worked at Summit Media’s Female Network as an editorial assistant, and she is currently an art reporter for a newspaper.

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*Note: The opinions expressed in this blog do not represent the official views of the companies, organizations, or institutions that I am associated with. These opinions are solely my own.