Magazine Training International attracted 12 participants for the Manila seminar.

Planning is crucial for a seminar and MTI Director Sharon Mumper, left, spends many hours with trainers and staff. Trainer Kim Snider, right, shares scripture with others including worship leader Michelle, a volunteer from Malaysia.

http://www.editteach.org/

You can enroll at no cost and take the free training.

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The long, narrow road of a conference hall is the place where writing fever begins.

The trainers and participants are enjoying a vigorous dialogue. Some of us are sharing ways to stay sharp. Here are two books that remain popular with writers.

1) “On Writing Well” by Zinsser, and

2) “Stein on Writing” by Sol Stein.

The books say many of the same ideas (most do), but each shares war stories that are sticky, memorable. For instance, Stein tells a story of watching a family dance together in the 1950s. That’s where he first noticed what remained unsaid. The “unsaid” but observable will launch a writer’s prose into a higher plane, where the air is thinner and the stuff of ideas is made.

An unidentified man searches for something usable in Manila Bay following a tropical storm.

Editor’s note: The Fayetteville Observer in North Carolina published a variation of this piece Oct. 12, 2009.

MANILA—Clerks in the Kultura Store in the 600-shop Mall of Asia stopped dusting and greeting customers when a favorite Filipino song comes on over the in-store stereo system.

The girls in matching tan jackets and skirts, their hair styled in a tight bun customary in traditional Filipino fashion, began clapping and dancing down the aisles of a store known for its rice pearls, wood accessories and uptown fashions in Asia’s largest mall, the kind that could include Fayetteville, N.C.’s Cross Creek Mall, Cary Towne Center and Raleigh, N.C.’s Southpoint Mall with plenty of room leftover.

Shoppers, up to 200,000 a day, look on delighted as the young clerks are joined by their male counterparts and dance with élan.

Just a few miles a way, a young man, about the same age as the clerks, teetered on the unsteady debris of Manila Bay, home to nearly 20 million people and location of the U.S. Embassy off Roxas Boulevard. The man collected what he could from the trash leftover from two back-to-back typhoons from the past two weeks. That man, like so many others, may find something to sell to thousands of Americans who visit Manila just like me. As cars stream along Roxas Boulevard, young men and some small children dart in and out of traffic offering to sell some dubious item or two.

Reuters reported that Tropical Storm Ondoy and the storms that followed led to more than 200 deaths as of mid-October yet this city and the country of 92 million, the 12^th most populous in the world, is soldiering on. Yet while I was there late last week, business went on as usual.

That’s not to say the town is Raleigh-like. On my first day in the hotel, I received a telephone call from a man who said he was from Iran and he needed to talk to me right away. I pressed him over and over about his identity but he finally cursed and hung up.

While that call was odd, most of the visit was typical, even uneventful.

For instance, Bayview Park Hotel, directly across the street from the U.S. Embassy, remained open and hosted many of teams from the 2009 Asian Men’s Volleyball Championship not to mention participants of the Writing Magazine Articles conference.

The magazine conference is a ministry of Magazine Training International (MTI), begun by Sharon Mumper in 1989. The organization has trained writers from more than 325 publications from some 50 countries. She invited me to represent Campbell University as one of three teachers for the intensive three-day seminar. In addition, I went on behalf of Memorial Baptist Church, my home church in Buies Creek, N.C.

Trainers Kim Snider, Marlene Legaspi-Munar and I taught writers and editors such as Normi Son, a Filipino writer who battled four feet of mud to get to the training. Writer Mizue Uchida of Japan Harvest arrived in a wheel chair following a twisted ankle accident so she could participate. Andrew Dudgeon flew from Preston, England, to represent his outstanding publication, Asialink. Others came from India, Japan and Malaysia to learn ideas to improve their prose. Each day we prayed for relief for the Philippines and a blessing on the editorial work of the conference.

The training went on while the wind buffeted the 14-story hotel and traffic moved in starts and stops as it does over the bridges leading in and out of downtown Lillington.

“Filipinos are resilient people,” noted Kim Snider, one of the three trainers who participated in the Oct. 4-7 conference. She has nurtured dozens of Filipino writers into print. “The Filipinos are industrious, hard-working, loving people,” she added, her eyes a bit moist as she spoke. “They need the Lord just like all of us.”

She said the fresh debris in the bay likely will remain pulsing against the debris from past storms. It’s part of the rhythm of this city that works so hard against such high odds.

Terry White, publisher of BMH Books in Winona Lake, Ind., came to Manila in early October to lead a session on magazine editing for MTI. When he arrived, he saw the Bayview Park Hotel entrance surrounded by sand bags to keep the rising water out of the lobby.

“I was impressed with the grudging acceptance of the people, some of whom lost nearly everything,” White said of the destruction. “Perhaps it comes from living in a part of the world where such water disasters are so common–perhaps it is being part of a collectivist society where relationships are far more important than individualism and material goods. Whatever the reason, the ability to plod on, swabbing down the mud from their houses, washing filth out of clothing, seeking to salvage anything wearable or usable from a roadside pile of debris–it said a lot to me about a people who are determined to keep going, no matter what.”

Missionaries are doing their part to help with the recovery effort as are the U.S. government and relief agencies including North Carolina Baptist Men who sent a medical team there.

As the Philippines reels to recovery, the joyous dance of the clerks at the Kultura store will remain lively this week and diners at the Starbucks beside Bayview Park will continue to sip their lattes. Life will go on for many as usual, but the goal of the magazine conference is that writers will spotlight the tragedy and help others think beyond the pulse of ordinary life in the midst of devastation.

Michael Ray Smith is a professor of Communication Studies at Campbell University. He is author of “The Jesus Newspaper” and “FeatureWriting.Net.”