100: The Hundreds Project by UP Writers Club

It takes 43 muscles to frown. 17 muscles to smile. 14, 17, or 35 muscles to kiss. It takes much more muscles to make love. It takes a wink to be noticed. A note to make the moment memorable. Or, a drink and a bed to make the night less lonesome. It takes six words to a story. 14 lines and a meter to a sonnet, but you know that’s hard to find. It takes 3 words to express what you feel. 3 words and a slap to know you expected too much. It takes 100 words to express why we all need love and should bother reading this book.

And it takes a trip to the 33rd Manila International Book Fair to take home this one of a kind collection of stunning literary works "expressing kilig to kirot and all points in between."

In elementary or even in high school, writing a 100-word essay may feel like a painful chore of physically extracting words from your brain but when writing becomes a hobby, a hundred words may feel like jotting down a measly phrase. That is why I admire the format and the works from this literary goldmine I almost didn't purchase because the few remaining copies were hiding behind boring looking books.

And what better theme to give such a format than the still undefinable four-letter-word everyone could relate to. Add to that a sprinkle of unrequited yearnings, passion and the gory details of a broken heart combined with a candid dash of sex, lust, and all the things the CBCP warned teenagers not to do, this compilation is a perfect mix of sweet and complicated which addictingly delivers what makes up young love today.

Here are (hopefully) non-copyright infringement, cyber-crime-law-fearful copies of my favorite pieces:

Full of poetic quotes and relatable lines readers would be dying to post on Facebook, Twitter and upload a lomofied snapshot of in Instagram (I am guilty of this), it's a shame that the book is not available in most of the leading bookstores nationwide. However die hard fans may check out this site for more information on how to get a copy:

http://www.panitikan.com.ph/event/writers-club-publishes-100-hundreds-project-now-available

"Be a period, a stop. Be the end of my every sentence. Cut me into sentences, paragraphs: the better for me to understand myself. Because unlike a comma, you will not let me run on. You will be my brake; you will make me make sense. Give me meaning and open me up to the world. You will ground me, and I will love you for it."

- No. 87 by Isobel Yap