Writers love to ask how-to questions.

How to begin.
How to write better.
How to sound like someone who knows what they’re doing (spoiler: we’re all faking it at some level).

But here’s what I told the students of the PUP DEFLL Writers’ Circle last week — the thing I most needed to hear when I was starting out:

Writing isn’t about learning the “rules.”
It’s about figuring out the story only you can tell.

Nobody Else Has Lived Your Life

We talk a lot about voice in writing workshops — sometimes like it’s this mysterious thing you have to “find,” like it’s hiding under your bed next to the old flash drives.

But voice isn’t something lost.

It’s already with you. It’s in the way you notice things. In the words you reach for when you’re half-asleep. In the tiny, unfiltered phrases that pop into your head before you have time to sound “smart.”

In the talk, I shared this idea:
Voice = Observation + Emotion + Memory.

That’s it. Not complicated. But not easy either.

Because it means you have to really pay attention to your life — without judgment, without trying to make it prettier or more profound.

You have to look at where you’re sitting in the world — and write from there.

Creative Nonfiction: Where Memory Meets Meaning

I told them about my own late arrival to creative nonfiction — how I grew up thinking writing had two boxes: fiction or journalism.

I didn’t know you could write real stories with literary voice — until I did.

Creative nonfiction lives in that intersection of fact and feeling. It’s shaped by memory — which is emotional, partial, human. And it’s driven by voice — your specific way of making sense of what happened.

Vivian Gornick puts it perfectly:
“The situation is what happened. The story is what you’ve come to say about it.”

Writing isn’t just reporting.
It’s witnessing.

What Writers Really Need: Serious Noticing

I told the students: The most underrated writing skill? Serious noticing.

Notice like a child seeing things for the first time. Without the armor of adult indifference.

Look at what’s outside the photo.
Look at what people don’t say in a conversation.
Look at what feels awkward, what feels unfinished.

Writing starts here — long before the page.

And Of Course, The Golden Question: Paano Magsimula?

Every talk ends with it. And I love it.

My answer stays the same:

Start from where you stand.

Not from where you wish you were. Not from someone else’s highlight reel. Write badly first. Write like nobody will read it. Then read it again. And rewrite until you surprise yourself.

Because nobody else has lived your life.

Nobody else sees the world exactly the way you do.

That’s the story only you can tell.

And I promise — it’s enough.