That unteachable part of you

Every week, I get a couple of messages in my inbox, invariably with largish attachments, politely requesting me to read the attached suite of stories or poems and to comment on their merits (or otherwise) at my convenience. The letters themselves are written very earnestly, with that mixture of timid modesty and brash exuberance that tells you they’re achingly sincere and deserving of an answer.

That’s why I feel so boorish when, 90 percent of the time, I don’t answer, partly because of a foolish hope that, against all odds, I will find the time to read the work and give it a decent response, and partly because, like all Pinoys, I find it exceedingly difficult to say no. That is, unless I give a blanket "no" – make that "so sorry, but no" – which I’m doing right now, for my own good and yours. So sorry indeed, but I’m neck-deep in work, and every little request is (albeit sometimes pleasant and worthwhile) a distraction I can ill afford to indulge. Sending me a novel to digest will be consigning that novel to oblivion, to some bottomless well of benign neglect.

Over the years, I’ve found that my reading habits – or what’s left of them – have greatly changed. Since I have to read fiction as a professional chore, I turn to something else for pleasure – to poetry for wonderment in words, to nonfiction (history, technology, crime, journalism) for the hands-on thrill of encountering and negotiating the material world.

If you want me to discuss your work, you’ll have to enroll in one of my classes (not this semester, though – I’m going all-undergrad, for a change), or qualify for one of the workshops I might attend as a panelist. In those settings, you will have my undivided attention for an hour (as well as that of a roomful of other people, more attention than you ever wanted).

This brings me to another point that came out of last week’s piece on publishing your first book. Reader Roy from Cagayan de Oro wanted to know what I thought of correspondence courses on fiction writing – were they any good, and would they be of any help?

First of all, Roy, I haven’t seen the syllabus of a correspondence course such as you mention, although I can imagine that it would cover the usual basics – plot, character, point of view, dialogue, and so on. What’s even more important than the syllabus – which you can swipe from any number of writing self-help books on the market – is the kind of mentoring you’ll be receiving from the other, the faceless, end. Will your instructor be sensitive enough to what you’re trying to achieve? Will he or she be aiming to help you tell your story well, or will he or she simply be aiming to help you tell a good (read: generically good) story? Will he or she be critical enough to tell you or to suggest, in so many words, that you simply don’t have it in you to be a writer, so you can still become a good actuary or dentist while you can?

I know, it’s odd for me to say these things after I’ve just said I can’t help people long-distance with their writing, but that’s precisely why I said it: I’m not convinced that writing can be taught or learned by connecting the dots and moving up from Lesson A to Lesson B. In the end, it’s the cultivation of a sensitivity and a sensibility that you already need to have, even before you enter the classroom. It’s not something you’re born with, either – I don’t buy that biology bit – but it’s something you imbibe and become aware of as you grow up: A rabid urge to discover and contain the world through language, in language. That starts with reading, and I daresay that most people who became writers were readers first, and readers also. (Unfortunately, it doesn’t mean, either, that good readers easily become good writers; this is where imagination counts more than reason – a driven but disciplined imagination.)

A year’s subscription to the Writer’s Digest will give you many ideas and tips about the handling of a story, but it won’t give you the story. That story has to come, in a way, from an unteachable part of you, some riotously rampant element of your being that demands expression. The challenge is to keep the idea potent and its message fresh – after all the processing it has to go through to filter out the impurities. Call that "processing" the workshop, or writing school.

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I realize now that I may have seemed too harsh and dismissive of so-called "vanity publishing" last issue, especially at a time when norms are being upset right and left by technological advances that help us assert our individuality. That’s a fancy way of saying that we can now record our own songs on our own CDs in our own houses in our own good time – or, why not, publish a book? Desktop publishing has changed the publishing paradigm, allowing ordinary people to come up with quick, affordable, and presentable solutions to their publishing needs, from flyers and pamphlets to full-fledged books. Blogging does away with print altogether (mercifully, considering the extremely private, ephemeral, and less-than-compelling nature of many blogs).

Publishers, writers, and editors have traditionally looked down on self-publishing as a form of self-indulgence, basically because it doesn’t go through the process of being refereed or vetted by a panel of independent and presumably authoritative readers.

On the other hand, let’s face it: You could wait forever to get noticed by an established publishing house, or you could have your book finally produced by a name publisher, only to find it horribly designed. If you can’t wait, or want your book to look just so (marbled endpapers, deckled edges, and everything) – and if you have a wad of money to blow – then self-publishing may be the way for you to go, the snooty critics be damned. It’s your book, your name, your call to make, and no one’s going to tell you otherwise.

There is, by the way, a fine line, often blurred, between self-publishing and vanity publishing. According to the Society of Authors: "If you pay a printer to produce copies of the book (self-publishing), you will end up owning those copies. When you pay a vanity publisher, you are not acquiring the books. They remain the property of the publisher. You will be asked to grant the publishers an exclusive license to exploit the work. Your fee is for the costs of publication. The contract will probably entitle you to, say, 10 free copies of your work and the chance to buy more in return for (further) payment.

"Increasingly, vanity publishers print copies to order, so treat with skepticism arguments about the cost of warehousing and storage. In any case, their production costs – unlike those of a conventional publisher – have already been met (by you). There is inevitably less of an incentive for the publisher to sell the work."

Another option came up in a message from a fellow Mac user, Chu Sibal, who has a company that’s offering a "Publish on Demand" service. "Our current distribution at the moment is focused on law books," Chu says, "but we do have a bookstore coming up in a few months in Glorietta that will be selling books both printed or published through our system. We are also setting up a bookstore website for local distribution. I’m just finding the right balance of easy payment and delivery that fits the local market." You can check out a guide to the service Chu is offering at www.central.com.ph.

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Speaking of publishing, this Friday, May 20, at 2:30 p.m., a new website is going to be launched at the FC Conference Hall in UP Diliman – the Literary e-Library, which seeks to compile short stories, novels, plays, poetry, biographies, essays, speeches, epics, and folklore that can be read on-line or downloaded and saved for reading. According to its founders, the website currently has about a hundred titles, with more being sought and prepared for e-publication.

The e-Library is an initiative of Project Pantas Philippines (P3), a non-stock, non-profit resource center seeking to establish the ultimate digital library for Filipinos – www.pantas.ph. P3 wants important works of Philippine literature, history, politics, technology, and education to be available online for millions of Filipino students to access.

I think this is a superb idea, long due, that should help bring Filipino books closer and more cheaply to our people (and the world at large as well). There’s already a pioneering effort along this line in the field of Philippine literature, spearheaded by the Dumaguete-based writer Ian Casocot (www.geocities.com/icasocot/home.html). The P3 project will expand this to other kinds of texts.

However – as I cautioned the P3 people who paid me a visit – they should take every care to observe and protect the intellectual property rights of the writers and publishers whose works they will be drawing from. This has been a major obstacle in the way of broader Internet publishing. Just as with music, putting a work online without the writer’s and publisher’s consent (except for works whose copyrights have expired) would be piracy, however well-intentioned. I was assured by P3 that they would take every care to keep this in mind, in which case I would be glad to give them all the help I can.

See you Friday at the Faculty Center!

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Send e-mail to Butch Dalisay at penmanila@yahoo.com.