Literary Workshop: Lesson 1

Here is my submission for a literary workshop I did a few months ago. Please feel free to critique and tell me how I can improve. The lesson was to write an introduction using 500 words. The introduction is in the voice of a character I conceptualized. My invented character talks about me and my reasons for writing. I hope you like it...

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I approached the podium and uttered the words, “My name is Dan and I am an Alcoholic”. I continue on to reveal that I have been sober for over 3 years. This was a regular thing with my AA meetings. We would meet up and introduce each other before we revealed our deepest regret and fears. Tonight I was going to tell them about Ted Espiritu, the reason why I wanted to be sober.

You see, I met Ted while I was in Manila on business. Being an alcoholic, I met him in a bar, obviously. It was just a neighborhood beer joint with one small Karaoke Machine and a bunch of pretty waitresses. I sat at the bar and he introduced himself. He noticed that I was American and he was fascinated that I was slumming it and drinking the local beer, San Miguel beer.

We exchanged some friendly banter before he told me that he was just visiting Manila with friends. He was living in the suburbs outside of Manila called Las Piñas. Las Piñas, was a quiet town full of yuppies trying to escape the stress and confusion brought by Manila.

He then proceeded to tell me that he was a writer. This was a plain faced kid who looked like he was barely out of high school, there was no way he was a writer. Yet, he continued on and explained how he became one.

Ted had been working in customer service for years talking to Americans like me. I guess that was how his English got as good as it was. It was not perfect but it was decent. He later on told me that he lost his job and started searching for jobs on the internet. That was when he stumbled upon a writing gig dealing with finance. Without any expectations, he applied for the job and he was surprised that he got it. Then, writing jobs came left and right and before he knew it, he was a paid writer.

He was skeptical about the idea of writing for a living, at first, but he grew to like every minute of it. He loved to write but had no background in writing. He did not even have a favorite genre. He just read what he felt like reading and wrote what he felt like writing. It could have been a romantic story, a horror story or even a press release, it did not matter. He just loved the opportunity to write.

That was why he chose to enroll into a workshop hoping to improve on his new found passion. I believe and hope that he will be great at it one day.

I stopped drinking because I wanted to be as happy as Ted. It took that seemingly unimportant conversation for me to realize that I was not going to find happiness at the bottom of a bottle. He was not drunk but he was happy. I did not know that was even possible at the time. Now, I do.