"I was reading through my collection of clippings, and I came across an article you wrote, entitled ‘English Major and Minor,’ dated Nov. 20, 2000 (yes, I keep clippings of your column), and I wanted to ask you if, in the present context, there is indeed a bright future for emerging creative writers.
"You see, I am currently writing a research paper on this topic for my English class, as a freshman college student taking up Communication Arts. The reason why I chose this topic is mainly because I myself want to become a creative writer, but I did not take up Literature because I feared that I, unwealthy as I am, would have to (as you so aptly say) ‘take a vow of poverty’ if I did.
"I was wondering, is there an audience for Philippine literature outside schools and writers’ circles? What is the primary problem, if there be any, of our local writers nowadays?"
Well, Jewel, let’s ask that question again in a slightly different way: what kind of future awaits the Filipino writer?
I suppose that depends on what you’re looking for. Will our writers continue to produce fresh, vibrant, and significant literature? I have absolutely no doubt they will–in English, Filipino, and other Philippine languages. The Filipino urge for artistic self-expression (whether in poetry, drama, or music) is a powerful and pervasive force, the curious offspring of our material hardships and spiritual blessings; we never run out of things to say and ways of saying them.
I myself am amazed by the growing popularity of creative writing courses–both degree programs and short-term workshops. A lot of people out there clearly want to be writers, for one reason or other. (But I have to add, from my own observation, that you’d be lucky to get one truly talented and determined writer from a class of 15 students–someone who not only can write well but who will still be writing, say, 10 years after graduation. It’s no reflection on people’s intelligence, just a reflection of the fact that good writing takes more than raw IQ. Some of the best talkers and critics in class can’t write a story or a poem worth two dead flies.)
But can you live off creative writing? The short answer is no. A writer earns from publication, and there simply just aren’t enough places in this country where you can publish a poem or story and get paid for it–maybe two or three magazines in print, one or two online. That’s it, pathetically, in a country of 80 million, most of whom are supposed to be literate to some degree. If and when you do get paid, how much can you expect to receive? Maybe P500 for a poem, and rarely more than P2,000 for a story (less withholding tax). And it isn’t as if you can write a new poem or story a week, and get it published every time.
Even if you get a book published after years of slaving away at the manuscript, it won’t pay for the rent, or buy you a vacation in Paris. The standard royalty rate paid by local publishers to their authors is 15 percent (or 10 percent in some cases). Let’s say a book comes out in, typically, a print run of 1,000 copies, each of which is priced at P200. If you sell all those copies (a huge if), your share of the gross sales would be P30,000–not an awful lot, but still not too bad if you’re 25 years old and if you get it all in one check. Instead, you’re likely to be 35 or even older, and you’ll get your royalty checks (if ever) in piddling sums, as the books are sold. How many books can you write in a year, anyway? How many literary prizes can you win?
So how do writers like me survive? By doing a whole lot of other things than penning poems or stories–jobs you may not necessarily enjoy, but which will put food on the table and maybe even buy you a bauble or two, once in a lucky while. You’ll need to learn and to practice related skills like teaching, editing, book design, speechwriting, scriptwriting, opinion writing, and feature writing; you’ll need to be bilingual; you’ll need to cultivate an active interest in politics, economics, and history, aside from literature and the other arts.
You can (you must) toss your most cherished romantic notions about writing out the window. You can’t play the prima donna, now that you’re writing for other people, and not just for yourself. You’ll need to know and to respect deadlines and budgets, and to deal patiently with clients with elephantine egos and pea-sized brains. And, last but certainly not least, you’ll need to cultivate a network of contacts in PR, publishing, the academe, the arts, the media, business, entertainment, advertising, and politics to keep the jobs coming.
I can guarantee you that, one November morning, you’ll wake up with a throbbing gash across your heart, asking yourself if this was what you read Dylan Thomas or Robert Graves for, pining for the purity of undergraduate passion. (And if you’re truly any good as a professional writer, you’ll get over that moment quickly, grab a sandwich and a cup of coffee, and plunge headlong into that distinctly un-Dylanesque speech or column.)
Yes, Jewel, you can have a future as a creative writer–if you don’t mind everything else you have to do just to stay on your feet. The world never owed writers a living, and the best writers out there most probably pumped gas, flipped burgers, and drove ambulances (like Hemingway did). It didn’t just make them a living; it made them live, gave them the raw material that would gain even more power as focused fiction and plaintive poetry. (I once spent five months as a cook-waiter-busboy-cashier-janitor at a Chinese takeout in an American mall, swearing that I would make it all pay more than the $4-an-hour minimum wage I was getting by writing a story; and I did, with "Wok Man." Jaime An Lim parlayed his own grad-school experience as a lab assistant in Indiana into the prizewinning "The Axolatl Colony.")
And where’s the audience? Theoretically, all over this country–if we use the right medium, and if we can get our books to them. Even at P200, books remain too expensive for ordinary wage-earners. We need a wider and better-endowed public library system (such as the Pasig Provincial Library, where Pete Lacaba and I whiled away the hours and picked up a few words, ages ago) to serve people who can’t afford to buy our books. We need to transport our literary classics to film and television–and into Filipino, for our stories and novels in English–if we are to reach a wider audience. It won’t be quite the same–viewing and reading are two different things–but it’ll give our writers a boost while raising the quality of our movie and TV fare. We need to translate more of our works in Filipino into English–and to break into the foreign market, so the world can share in our imagination.
What is our "primary problem" as writers? The same primary problem that afflicts millions of other Filipinos, less articulate though they may be: to be living in a society brutalized by poverty, injustice, and the politics of privilege. But let me save those heartaches for the opinion page–or the novel-in-progress, better yet.
UP Diliman Chancellor Emerlinda R. Roman reminded me that a groundbreaking ceremony was indeed held on a lot on campus a while back, but that the project had to be shelved when it emerged that only about P4 million of the estimated P12 million of the total cost had been raised by the retirees’ association backing the project. "We don’t want to construct buildings without sufficient funds," UP President Dodong Nemenzo told me in a recent meeting. The campus, he said, had too many unfinished hulks, rotting away. Dr. Roman added that the best they could do while waiting for more funds was to extend the occupancy privileges of retired householders by another year, to two years after retirement. Meanwhile, the UP administration is building 320 more studio-type housing units for younger faculty members, to help ease the crunch.
This is a story that deserves a happy ending–if some philanthropist can just grant UP the P8 million (heck, make it P10 million) it needs to give its foot soldiers some peace of mind and comfort of foot at the end of many long years at the trenches.