A letter from Jewel

I always feel like I’m cheating a bit when I publish letters from readers instead of dreaming up a column from scratch, but the art of letter-writing (as opposed to the monologue of blogging) being endangered as it is, I feel even worse about putting well-crafted letters aside after a polite acknowledgment.

So once or twice a year I let the readers take over, and I’ll do that again this week and next — partly because my involvement in last week’s Philippine Writers Festival (Taboan ’09) would surely have left me too exhausted to think of something smart or funny to say, but even more so because, in an uncanny coincidence, I received two letters within a day of each other from two people who probably have no idea that the other one exists, but who share the same passions and predicaments. So let’s call this a follow-through on Taboan, a ground-level appreciation of what it’s like for young Filipinos wanting to be writers — and getting there.

I’ll first publish an excerpt from the letter of Jewel, now a successful screenwriter who first wrote me eight years ago, and whom I have yet to meet. Her letter will explain the rest. I’ll respond to her concerns next week, and also bring up another letter from a reader named Reggie.

Dear Mr. Dalisay,

Eight years ago, I wrote you to ask a question that was very important to me. Back then, I was a college freshman pining for the “writing life,” which, I felt, was out of my limits because it was better suited for people who didn’t have to worry about making money to support their families.   

 Do you remember? I was the reader named Jewel who wrote to ask you, “What kind of future awaits the Filipino writer?” You gave me a generous answer through your Penman article, “Living by Writing,” which eventually made it to your book, The Knowing is in the Writing: Notes on the Practice of Fiction.

 At that time, I was taking up Communication Arts, which sounded more practical than Literature because it was a course that taught you different skills — video, TV, and radio production, book and web design, photography, and scriptwriting. Despite all the fun I had learning all these things, none of them made my heart flutter the way fiction and poetry did. 

I was fortunate to have been granted a scholarship by my university; however, it also meant I was not allowed to shift out of my course. So I accepted my situation, and eventually, I learned to like Communication Arts the way mail-order brides learn to like their well-to-do husbands.

In lieu of getting a degree in Literature, I lurked outside my university’s Creative Writing Center and gazed at posters, announcing writing workshops and literary conventions, as if they were love letters addressed to someone else. I stalked my Literature professors to ask them questions on literary craft and kept myself up-to-date with the latest “literary” gossip (like, how this writer had a tryst with that other writer, or how this writer had an argument with that writer, and so on).

 Also, I tried to write. I became associate editor of our school’s literary publication, and I was able to get a fellowship for fiction at a creative writing workshop.

It makes me smile now, remembering those days of “undergraduate passion,” as you put it. Things have changed much since then.

After graduation, I tried many different jobs. First, I had a short stint writing for a noontime TV show. For a year, I taught English at a prominent Chinese high school. Then, I wrote storylines and scripts for a leading film production company, where I worked for three years. Now, I am teaching again, this time at my alma mater, where I am also taking up my master’s in creative writing. 

From time to time, especially on stressful days when I cleaned my desk and drawers, I would find my clipping of “Living by Writing” between the pages of a book, or in a plastic folder, between my birth certificate and transcript of records, and I would read aloud your words, “Yes, Jewel, you can have a future as a creative writer—if you don’t mind everything else you have to do to stay on your feet.”

Then, I would sigh (sometimes cry) thinking of “everything else,” the everything-else that gave me enough excuses to put off writing, the kind of writing I dreamed of doing. 

In the three years that I wrote for the film company, I deliberately avoided reading poems or novels (Literature with a capital “L”) because they made me sad. Reading them made me want to write something else besides the formulaic stories I had to churn out, like a worker in an assembly line. 

Last year, when I read Soledad’s Sister, I felt for your Soledad and her sister Rory. Like me, they were always dreaming of being somewhere else, always wanting to “see what it’s like out there!” 

 After reading Soledad’s Sister, I was reminded of how the novel, unlike mainstream cinema, leaves more room for an honest search for truth — to ferret out secrets from sealed coffins, to uncover our real selves obscured by our borrowed identities.

 It struck me how, at the end of the novel, the story of how exactly Soledad dies is left untold, emphasizing instead an even darker tragedy: that the demise of Soledad is reduced to “that dash of morbidity people everywhere seemed to crave in their humdrum lives.” The sufferings of our people are portrayed as entertainment, in the same way that Wowowee makes a spectacle of brittle-boned old women pleading to Willie Revillame and the TFC subscribers for help. 

 Last December, I quit my job as a scriptwriter, despite friends and colleagues telling me to stay. Mainstream cinema is a powerful medium, and I knew I was in a position to write good stories for mass consumption, but somehow that wasn’t enough. It was like living a borrowed life — writing concepts to suit actors’ whims, making characters “sympathetic,” revising plot points towards “acceptable” endings. 

You were right: I had to toss out my most cherished romantic notions about writing. I learned how to write for others, not just for myself. In the process, however, I started to feel as if my function was to be an appendage rather than an artist. In trying to execute someone else’s vision, I felt that I had lost sight of mine.

Have you ever felt that way, Mr. Dalisay? It’s hard to imagine a writer of your caliber writing with an unsteady hand. When I checked your blog this morning, I read your “Letter from Milwaukee” entry where you wrote about writing scripts for movies like Kailan Mahuhugasan ang Kasalanan? and finding new ways to make the Filipino audience cry. I was surprised and relieved to know that Lino Brocka also made movies that were un-Brocka in the sense that they were made for their commercial (“the money-making melodrama”) rather than their artistic value.

 I wonder what it takes to be able to do both commissioned and literary writing. Is it a matter of being able to disassociate one’s self from commissioned work? Or is it a matter of skill? I am very interested to know what you think.

Sincerely yours,

Jewel

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E-mail me at penmanila@yahoo.com, and visit my blog at www.penmanila.net.