JavaScript is not available.

Feb 23, 2021

Happy book birthday to this weird kid who clawed its way onto the shore, trembling fingers and all. NEVER HAVE I EVER is out today! ❤️ No eloquence rn, just gratitude. Thank you for supporting these stories. 😊🙏 Sana matuwa kayo sa mga kwento. indiebound.org/book/978161873

254

808

Isabel Yap (on semi-hiatus) Retweeted

Suyi

@suyidavies

Mar 26

My latest essay, "Exposition Tax: The hidden burden of writing from the margins," just released in this collection, EX MARGINALIA, along with 20 other wonderful authors. Here are the essay's 3 major points (thread below). But before that, a small quiz:

104

239

Isabel Yap (on semi-hiatus) Retweeted

Sophia-Maria (PREORDER-HOW LONG YOUR ROOTS

)

@sophiam_weaves

Mar 30

This is what I'm currently reading and it's a collection of stories I've been meaning to read for over a year now! The writing takes me to so many places and I'm learning about (South) East Asian folklore I don't know in the most succinct way. Breathtaking so far.

Holding "Never have I ever" by Isabel Yap.

read image description

ALT

That is the work of finding the voice, the style, that works for you. If you persist, and grit your teeth against the ugly attempts in your own words, you'll eventually hit upon something you'll want to read and reread. And those words will likely sing for someone else too.

To conclude: so much of improving the quality of your own prose is doing the not-writing, the thinking, the reading, the studying around it. The absorption of your influences—falling into them—trusting that what you find beautiful, others will too.

There’s a Filipino concept of “umay” (I’ve mentioned before) where you don’t want to take another bite because something is too rich, almost too delicious. Fine-tuning the decadence of your prose is a matter of self honesty, and getting readers whose opinions you trust.

Check yourself to make sure you’re not saying one thing three different ways (each beautifully), or if you do, that it’s intentional and creating the effect you want. Seek precision.

(7) My last (and only concrete?) tip: think of constraint as well as excess. Mind your repetition. This is one thing I observe in earlier writers who DO write beautifully.

pwedeng mapagod, hindi susuko.

As a bonus: poetry by Filipinos is incredibly wonderful and beautiful and I love the idea a friend floated to me that poetry is inextricably part of a Filipino writer’s heritage. Go read the authors in Stef’s thread, here, and Stef’s poems too. :)

Quote Tweet

stef tran

@steftran

Dec 1, 2018

(takes deep breath) HERE IS A SHORT LIST OF FEMALE FILIPINO POETS WHO DESERVE TO BE MORE WIDELY READ, STUDIED, TALKED ABOUT, AND CELEBRATED:

Show this thread

How to find poets that resonate? It’s like any other writing…you try stuff, and when you find something you like, you search for more. Seek reccs from people you trust. You may also find you like individual poems from someone more than whole collections, and that’s fine too.

I understand that poetry can be intimidating and isn’t for everyone. But I don’t think it’s too surprising that a lot of the authors I personally love love poetry too. There is a musicality in their prose that stems from the pulsing love of words and syntax poetry gives you.

There's also a sense-making that is different than the storytelling of plot. Poems have a different logic. You can't read them with the expectations you would bring to a story. They rely more on feeling, sound, and intuition. And I personally enjoy stories that incorporate that.

Just like the fanfic authors I’ve reread endlessly, there are certain poems that form a sort of bedrock for how I write. What poetry teaches me: the utterance, going-for-the-jugular, the maybe-this-is-too-much-but-let’s-try. The weirdness.

(6) Read poetry. If you’re not a natural poetry reader, the attempt is worthwhile. I was much more focused on poetry as an undergrad; I workshopped primarily as a poet and the reading, writing, copying down, and memorizing of poems has been a key part of my writerly DNA.

Two exercises I’ve found interesting: I’ve put blobs of my work into text-to-voice, to see if the words hold up. And I’ve also recorded myself reading passages and listening back to them, to see what I like, where I’m awkward, where I’ve not been as honest as I want to be.

(5) Read aloud. Even if you feel weird about the sound of your own voice. Reading aloud from a written manuscript will reveal all the snags where you need to think carefully. It also makes you more attuned to punctuation.

There's nothing different to that process than writing. I reread their work over and over and then make an attempt, usually with similar characters or dynamics, in my own work. In trying hard to embody them, I get closer to my own sense of what I want my writing to sound like.

I don’t always do this, and sometimes I don’t know I’m doing this until I’m done. But there have been moments, and stories, when I’ve written towards, and with explicit awareness of, a certain writer. (“How would [X] write this story? This scene?”)

(4) Try writing to these influences. You can do this as subconsciously or consciously as you like. It was something I did a lot of as a fanfic writer, though I don’t think I consciously knew it then. But I wanted to write a story like the stories *they* were writing.

Reading interviews or essays also gives me a way to find out which authors my favorite authors admire. It’s almost like tracing out a writerly genealogy. Whose words shaped the words you so love? Look them up. You might love them too.

Read interviews with your favorite authors, too. These can be so illuminating. When I finished reading Beloved I looked for interviews with Toni Morrison and they taught me so much, even as they taught me more about the book I’d loved, I’d been exploded by.

The good news is you don’t have to mention this to anyone else! You just have to know it. That goal, that aim. Read them. Read them carefully and thoughtfully. Reread them as you need to. Again, their words will be a kind of muscle memory for you, when you set about writing.

Personally I sometimes feel, yet again, a sense of embarrassment regarding this question. It’s daring, to admit who you’re striving towards. The people for whom you feel, if your work was even a fraction as good as theirs, you’d have done something meaningful.

(3) Understand who you are trying to be in conversation with, through your work. The question of influences is actually an important one, worth giving thought to.

On Selling Your First Novel After 11 Years

I love how Min Jin Lee talks about this practice here: "I read every fine novel and short story I could find, and I studied the ones that were truly exceptional. If I saw a beautifully wrought paragraph, I would transcribe it in a marble notebook."

lithub.com

I had already failed at two novel manuscripts. Publishers had rejected my first manuscript, and I rejected the second, because it was not good enough to send out. I was 32 years old and beginning m…

132

That reading and rereading eventually resettled itself into my brain, found its way into my writerly DNA. Such that three years later, when I thought I might try fanfic again, I had access to new ways of forming sentences for my stories that I didn’t before.

I remember one significant leveling-up period for me, when I was 12. I quit fanfic because I became aware that my writing was not good enough. I remember, in the period that I stopped posting stories, I was reading and rereading certain authors who were doing what I wanted to do.

When I read I feed my subconscious; all that input becomes a kind of soil for my own sentences and ideas to grow. When this is happening, I’m reminded of how, if I refocused even 10-20% of the things I worry about in publishing to instead READING, my work improves so much.

(2) Read. Reading trains your ear. Focusing on a book, reading it carefully, highlighting sentences you like, copying them down, all of these things teach you what you want to be aiming for when you write.

And the prose goals of every project are different, too. You have to figure out what better prose actually means to you and go from there, but that starts with admitting it’s an aspect of your writing you want to work on and think about.

Instead I could set about trying to figure out how to engage with that desire in a way that helped my writing, instead of making me feel ashamed or jealous. Everyone wants to write better, but that doesn’t necessitate a preoccupation with prose.

...and one is much more likely to withhold that approval. That’s why admitting it felt a bit like relieving a pressure valve. In finally saying this was something I wanted from my work, to myself, I could let go of pretending I didn’t want it.

Why the embarrassment? For me, desiring to write good prose was hard to admit. It felt like pressure, and I wanted to appear above it—to not “stress myself out.” But this can make it harder to write, as you’re seeking that approval from yourself...

113

🧵 Thread on ways to develop your prose. (1) Accept that this is part of what you want to do with your writing, and try to grapple with the embarrassment or pressure of admitting this. This might be me-specific, but that’s been a big part of improving my work.

235

947

Buy Isabel Yap a Coffee. ko-fi.com/visyap

Mar 23

PS If you get to the end of this thread and want to buy me a coffee, I won't say no 😀 (as we have established, i have a full time job, in tech, so--i am not in dire need, but i do like getting paid for writing, including on twitter!)

ko-fi.com

Become a supporter of Isabel Yap today!

Ko-fi lets you support the creators you love with no fees on donations.

MFA vs. MBA? Finding Unlikely Literary Inspiration at Harvard Business School

And for those wondering re my dayjob path: customer support (2 years) —> product marketing (2 years) —> product management, all in tech. I’ve been a PM since 2017 but I also took 2 years in the middle to go do an MBA, which I wrote about here:

lithub.com

On a hot day in August 2018 I put on a full suit—black blazer, black slacks, and Mary Janes, because I didn’t want to spend the day teetering on pumps—and walked to the newly-opened Klarman Auditor…

A thing I’d be remiss in adding: I don’t have children. (I also don’t have a partner, which as I understand, can both lighten or increase the load, depending.) I know writers with families to support (children or parents or both) AND day jobs and I am in awe. 🤯

🌿 it helps to have a day job that you like. i know this can be hard to achieve; it likely entails effort + study + sacrifice. it took me 4 years + 2 shifts to move into my current role, which is my favorite one i've held. 🌿 practice saying no. keep practicing til you get good.

🌿 give fewer fucks 🌿 if social media is making you have Bad Feelings (ex. jealousy! raaage!) about writing, GET OFF IT, MAN. go on hiatus. delete the app. do what you gotta do. your work will survive it, promise. 🌿 decide if you need tough love or gentleness. apply accordingly

🌿 find community?? people to commiserate with, and people who will accept your writing griping! we all need outlets! 🌿 understand why you're investing in that particular story/project. your time is really precious/limited. WHY THIS ONE? revisit this question as needed.