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December 06, 2005

A totally different writing experience

Writing a book is an experience, really. How do they do it? I don’t think I’ll ever knock another commentator again (ask all my students in criminal law and you’ll know what I think of commentaries and commentators; it’s poetic—or even divine—irony that I’m now doing what I’ve been deriding all these years).

I’ve been reading so many cases just to keep up and this is a subject I’ve been teaching for several years now. It’s also a very depressing subject—rape (I know of a few women who have experienced it and it is not something you would wish on your worst enemy—regardless of gender). I asked one of my former students—currently in first year—to help me out and she’s been churning out stuff like there’s no tomorrow (turns out she graduated summa cum laude—no wonder) and so I’m up to my neck in digests. He he, serves me right.

It started as a legal reference—a primer of sorts. So I thought, okay, just a few pages. So I started with general instructions to her—a few digests here and there--and she gives me several pages of digests a few days after. After I get the information that it’s going to be upgraded into a book, I come up with an outline—and discover that she also has made some sort of outline—and I end up with more cases. So, I’m reading cases on rape like anything.

Sometime soon, I’m going to finish this book; I hope it’s soon. This topic is depressing.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi sir! I share your experience with decisions on rape. I've been helping Atty. Bing Guanzon with her Engendering the Juduciary book by going through SC decisions on VAW. A good chunk of them are actually rape cases (primarily because of the former automatic SC review rule). I had 3 days (Fri-Sun)of making/editing rape case digests and it was just so depressing!

Damcelle