The book with your name on the spine
May 9, 2005 | 12:00am
I got a letter from a reader named Marc, which I’ll use as a take-off point for this week’s column. Here’s what Marc said:
I read your column) about aspiring writers three weeks ago. In order to succeed in the book-publishing world, writers should possess not only talent but also, more importantly, toughness.
One article in Chicken Soup for the Writer’s Soul talked about this. It mentioned that a writer, more than any other professional, should be tough enough to go through dozens of failures.
In other countries, successful writers talked about getting rejected as many as 20-30 times before they succeeded. That’s an inspiring read – for those living in the same country as they are.
On the other hand, in the Philippines, opportunities for authors are very scarce. So it’s a different story here. Writers can’t afford to get rejected 20 times. If you get rejected five times, you’re basically through. That’s because there are only five book publishers here (at least, that I know of).
Though I like to think of this problem as whole new level of challenge for writers, I was still hoping that there must be more local book publishers here –publishers that still look for potential books the old-fashioned way: by accepting unsolicited manuscripts from unknown writers.
Perhaps, as an author yourself, you know more than five. Can you provide us a list of them in your column someday? I was hoping you know six. That way, I still have a chance after my fifth rejection.
OK, Marc, first of all, I’m glad you’re thinking about publishing a book, and not just publishing a poem or a story in a magazine, or writing a piece for someone’s private delectation. As I tell my graduate writing students until I’m blue in the face, it’s all about the book, folks, it’s all about the book – your book, the book with your name on the spine.
Everything else you do is merely a preparation for that book, and nothing else will likely matter as much when it comes to your writing and your sense of some achievement in writing. So you graduated cum laude in Creative Writing, or with high distinction from your MFA class? That’ll help get you a teaching job, and it’s a hopeful sign that you probably do write decently if not brilliantly – but we won’t know for sure until we see your book, will we? Win two or three Palancas? Good start, congratulations – but enough people have won Palancas to fill the Titanic. We don’t want to see another plaque, we want to see the book. It’s the book you’re going to leave behind, the one you’ll sign for strangers who’ll know you only through your words, the one you’ll leaf through in your dotage and shed warm tears over.
As a teenager feverish with writerly ambition, I used to prowl through the aisles of Alemar’s and National Book Store on Avenida Rizal, just to look at the spines and covers of books by authors I admired – now-unfashionable writers like W. Somerset Maugham and Graham Greene. (The funny thing was, they all looked alike, being Penguins or Pelicans. At 15 or 16 I wanted nothing more than to have my name imprinted on a slender orange spine.) I didn’t get my first book (Oldtimer and Other Stories) out until I was 30, and it was a thin book containing only eight stories, but I could’ve croaked the night it was launched, and died happy (I’m even happier now that I didn’t). Today, some 12 books later, I’m still as eager and as giddy as ever about seeing another book out – the long-delayed novel, a selection of Penman pieces, a manual of fiction writing, a collection of poems, a new collection of stories – and I hope I don’t keel over before I see these vaporous dreams in print and feel their heft in my hand.
And now, to answer Marc’s somewhat rhetorical question – yes, there are, of course, more than five reputable book publishers around. Off the top of my head, I can name Anvil, UP Press, Ateneo Press (and Ateneo’s Office of Research and Publications), DLSU Press, UST Press, Giraffe Books, Cacho Publishing (now and then), and a new but very active and venturesome publisher, Milflores. There are also more specialized houses like Adarna for children’s books, and Summit Books for what’s been called "chick lit"; some enterprising young publishers have even put out graphic novels by Filipinos. I always keep lamenting what I sense to be the low level of literary readership in this country, only to be amazed by how many new books are actually getting published every year, as the September Bookfair bears out. (We do have a much smaller publishing industry here, but also a much smaller pool of writers, and a much smaller book-buying public.)
That said, it’s no walk in the park to get your first book out. I tell my student writers that, even before they approach a publisher, the first thing they should ask themselves and answer honestly is: "Do I have something good enough for a book?" Some writers – especially those who think they’re God’s gift to literature, whose coruscating genius no one else can appreciate – can often rush to print, paying their own way if no willing publisher can be found (that’s called vanity publishing, and you can see why). It isn’t enough to have 10 stories to want a book; at least seven or eight of those stories should be good ones, two or three of them outstanding, with the rest given over to experimentation (or to what literary historians will call "juvenilia"). Having a stack of unpublished poems about your breakup or your summer frolic is no reason to inflict your private seizures on the public, at the cost of precious newsprint.
This is why – while it’s possible and certainly refreshing – it’s unlikely for someone to just appear out of nowhere and dump a brilliant manuscript on a publisher’s lap. Publishers look for some kind of paper trail – the writing programs, the workshops, the Palancas, the literary sections of weekly magazines – to validate your talent and your seriousness as a writer (in the very least, to be sure that you are who you say you are). It will help you get your foot in the door if you can show a publisher that you’ve paid your dues by finding the discipline and the modesty to try and get your poems and stories published by, say, the Free Press or the Graphic before you ask Anvil to finance your Collected Works. Literary prizes will also get you more visibility; win a few and win enough, and the publishers themselves will approach you.
In the end, of course, it’s the manuscript and not the c.v. that counts. Indeed, today, publishers are more inclined than ever to go off the beaten path and choose work by people whom we traditionally don’t think of as writers – overburdened housewives, retirees, harried yuppies, fashionistas, gourmet cooks, NGO workers – because they have interesting stories to tell, marketed under the rubric of "creative non-fiction."
If you get rejected (and haven’t we all?), neither despair nor become embittered. It could be that your manuscript just wasn’t good enough, in which case it’ll need more talent and more work (and if you can’t accept that, go find another dream, or another publisher); or you might’ve taken your MS to the wrong publisher (do some legwork and prior reading, and get to know what they publish first; university presses are especially particular, because they have academic reputations to protect and limited budgets to work with); or perhaps, indeed, you’re that mute inglorious Milton the world just isn’t ready for (in which case you’ll be posthumously famous like Franz Kafka, but do you want to live so miserably?).
In any case, it all starts with a publishable manuscript, so take care of that business first, and trust Providence to lend a hand.
I had the pleasure of serving as a judge a couple of weeks ago for the 2005 JAL Scholarship Program, under which more than 100 Filipinos have been sent to Japan since 1975 for a brief but intensive exposure to Japanese life and culture. Open to college students, the annual program – sponsored by Japan Airlines and organized by the JAL Foundation – requires the submission of an essay on a given theme (this year, "Globalization – 21st Century Asia: What Can We Do?") and an interview of the finalists by a panel of judges.
This year, we had an excellent crop of applicants, and I’m happy to announce the winners: Jewellord Nem Singh (BS Political Science, UP); Madelline Romero (MA Asian Studies, UP); and Alyssa Policarpio (BS Nursing, UST). Chosen as an alternate was Elizabeth Milo (MA Deveopment Economics, UP). The three successful candidates will be in Japan from August 10 to 31 for a series of courses, forums, field trips, and homestay programs involving fellow students from around the Asia-Pacific region. Congratulations, all!
For more information about the program, check out www.jal-foundation.or.jp/.
Send e-mail to Butch Dalisay at penmanila@yahoo.com.
I read your column) about aspiring writers three weeks ago. In order to succeed in the book-publishing world, writers should possess not only talent but also, more importantly, toughness.
One article in Chicken Soup for the Writer’s Soul talked about this. It mentioned that a writer, more than any other professional, should be tough enough to go through dozens of failures.
In other countries, successful writers talked about getting rejected as many as 20-30 times before they succeeded. That’s an inspiring read – for those living in the same country as they are.
On the other hand, in the Philippines, opportunities for authors are very scarce. So it’s a different story here. Writers can’t afford to get rejected 20 times. If you get rejected five times, you’re basically through. That’s because there are only five book publishers here (at least, that I know of).
Though I like to think of this problem as whole new level of challenge for writers, I was still hoping that there must be more local book publishers here –publishers that still look for potential books the old-fashioned way: by accepting unsolicited manuscripts from unknown writers.
Perhaps, as an author yourself, you know more than five. Can you provide us a list of them in your column someday? I was hoping you know six. That way, I still have a chance after my fifth rejection.
OK, Marc, first of all, I’m glad you’re thinking about publishing a book, and not just publishing a poem or a story in a magazine, or writing a piece for someone’s private delectation. As I tell my graduate writing students until I’m blue in the face, it’s all about the book, folks, it’s all about the book – your book, the book with your name on the spine.
Everything else you do is merely a preparation for that book, and nothing else will likely matter as much when it comes to your writing and your sense of some achievement in writing. So you graduated cum laude in Creative Writing, or with high distinction from your MFA class? That’ll help get you a teaching job, and it’s a hopeful sign that you probably do write decently if not brilliantly – but we won’t know for sure until we see your book, will we? Win two or three Palancas? Good start, congratulations – but enough people have won Palancas to fill the Titanic. We don’t want to see another plaque, we want to see the book. It’s the book you’re going to leave behind, the one you’ll sign for strangers who’ll know you only through your words, the one you’ll leaf through in your dotage and shed warm tears over.
As a teenager feverish with writerly ambition, I used to prowl through the aisles of Alemar’s and National Book Store on Avenida Rizal, just to look at the spines and covers of books by authors I admired – now-unfashionable writers like W. Somerset Maugham and Graham Greene. (The funny thing was, they all looked alike, being Penguins or Pelicans. At 15 or 16 I wanted nothing more than to have my name imprinted on a slender orange spine.) I didn’t get my first book (Oldtimer and Other Stories) out until I was 30, and it was a thin book containing only eight stories, but I could’ve croaked the night it was launched, and died happy (I’m even happier now that I didn’t). Today, some 12 books later, I’m still as eager and as giddy as ever about seeing another book out – the long-delayed novel, a selection of Penman pieces, a manual of fiction writing, a collection of poems, a new collection of stories – and I hope I don’t keel over before I see these vaporous dreams in print and feel their heft in my hand.
And now, to answer Marc’s somewhat rhetorical question – yes, there are, of course, more than five reputable book publishers around. Off the top of my head, I can name Anvil, UP Press, Ateneo Press (and Ateneo’s Office of Research and Publications), DLSU Press, UST Press, Giraffe Books, Cacho Publishing (now and then), and a new but very active and venturesome publisher, Milflores. There are also more specialized houses like Adarna for children’s books, and Summit Books for what’s been called "chick lit"; some enterprising young publishers have even put out graphic novels by Filipinos. I always keep lamenting what I sense to be the low level of literary readership in this country, only to be amazed by how many new books are actually getting published every year, as the September Bookfair bears out. (We do have a much smaller publishing industry here, but also a much smaller pool of writers, and a much smaller book-buying public.)
That said, it’s no walk in the park to get your first book out. I tell my student writers that, even before they approach a publisher, the first thing they should ask themselves and answer honestly is: "Do I have something good enough for a book?" Some writers – especially those who think they’re God’s gift to literature, whose coruscating genius no one else can appreciate – can often rush to print, paying their own way if no willing publisher can be found (that’s called vanity publishing, and you can see why). It isn’t enough to have 10 stories to want a book; at least seven or eight of those stories should be good ones, two or three of them outstanding, with the rest given over to experimentation (or to what literary historians will call "juvenilia"). Having a stack of unpublished poems about your breakup or your summer frolic is no reason to inflict your private seizures on the public, at the cost of precious newsprint.
This is why – while it’s possible and certainly refreshing – it’s unlikely for someone to just appear out of nowhere and dump a brilliant manuscript on a publisher’s lap. Publishers look for some kind of paper trail – the writing programs, the workshops, the Palancas, the literary sections of weekly magazines – to validate your talent and your seriousness as a writer (in the very least, to be sure that you are who you say you are). It will help you get your foot in the door if you can show a publisher that you’ve paid your dues by finding the discipline and the modesty to try and get your poems and stories published by, say, the Free Press or the Graphic before you ask Anvil to finance your Collected Works. Literary prizes will also get you more visibility; win a few and win enough, and the publishers themselves will approach you.
In the end, of course, it’s the manuscript and not the c.v. that counts. Indeed, today, publishers are more inclined than ever to go off the beaten path and choose work by people whom we traditionally don’t think of as writers – overburdened housewives, retirees, harried yuppies, fashionistas, gourmet cooks, NGO workers – because they have interesting stories to tell, marketed under the rubric of "creative non-fiction."
If you get rejected (and haven’t we all?), neither despair nor become embittered. It could be that your manuscript just wasn’t good enough, in which case it’ll need more talent and more work (and if you can’t accept that, go find another dream, or another publisher); or you might’ve taken your MS to the wrong publisher (do some legwork and prior reading, and get to know what they publish first; university presses are especially particular, because they have academic reputations to protect and limited budgets to work with); or perhaps, indeed, you’re that mute inglorious Milton the world just isn’t ready for (in which case you’ll be posthumously famous like Franz Kafka, but do you want to live so miserably?).
In any case, it all starts with a publishable manuscript, so take care of that business first, and trust Providence to lend a hand.
This year, we had an excellent crop of applicants, and I’m happy to announce the winners: Jewellord Nem Singh (BS Political Science, UP); Madelline Romero (MA Asian Studies, UP); and Alyssa Policarpio (BS Nursing, UST). Chosen as an alternate was Elizabeth Milo (MA Deveopment Economics, UP). The three successful candidates will be in Japan from August 10 to 31 for a series of courses, forums, field trips, and homestay programs involving fellow students from around the Asia-Pacific region. Congratulations, all!
For more information about the program, check out www.jal-foundation.or.jp/.
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