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What is this blog for? Who am I?

My name is Alvaro Adizon. I’m from the Philippines. I finished studying Industrial Engineering in University of the Philippines, Diliman in 2017 and now I am studying Theology in la Universidad de Navarra in Pamplona, Spain.

I decided to take up writing recently because I thought it would help me process and communicate ideas that I learn from my studying and reading to help other people. I’ve always been struck by how the great works of literature (some favorites: The Brothers Karamazov, Grapes of Wrath, Go Down Moses, Remains of the Day) have helped me see things under a new light. Or communicate through the beauty of prose grand ideas about truth, the glories and sorrows of the human condition, philosophy, and God. I wanted to take part in this privilege, even if it be a humble part.

Think of this blog as a sort of open “sketchbook” for future novels that I intend to write and publish. I treat the short stories as studies of ideas I may use in the future. I also treat them as practice to help me hone the craft of writing. Hence you won’t find Hemingway-level shorts here. In fact, reading some of my earlier stuff I found a lot of crappy ones.

But I do hope to show improvement in my writing through the course of time, and I expect that each story gets better and better. It’s also a way for me to document what I do. A testament to teach aspiring writers of the future that to hone the craft you have to be prepared to suck. But after years of hard work and fighting perfectionism and self-criticism you can get good enough, even without the Faulkner-like “genius” or “the Muse”.

Hope you stick around. I’m sure that you’ll come across some that you’ll like.

Special thanks to my mentor from afar, Seth Godin.

Some of my literary heroes:

Prose: Melville, Dostoevsky, Conrad, Chekhov, Faulkner, Hemingway, Flannery O’Conner, Borges

Poetry: Shakespeare, Dante, Wordsworth, Tennyson, Whitman, Yeats, T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens