Be brave

This last column on the Graphic Webinar Conference on literature and the Iligan Writers Workshop will be my answers to the questions asked in both events. Most of the questions were about the mechanics of writing – how to. The writing craft can be learned, first, by mastering grammar and amassing a good vocabulary. Good writing often requires precision. You know the exact word when you need it. Run your finger on a dictionary page, and when you come upon a word you don’t know, use it in five different sentences and it is yours for life. Strive for simplicity as distinct from simple. Avoid adverbs and adjectives if you can; concentrate on verbs – they are action words; they push the narrative forward and also define character. Language is always symbolic. Use symbolism to give your writing depth, ambiguity. The symbols must be organic, not artificial grafts. Night, for instance, is not just a condition in time, the opposite of the day; it can mean despair, hopelessness, death itself, the end.  Read particularly spy and detective novels and learn lessons in creating suspense from them. I said I am not in favor of workshops. They cannot teach a writer intuition, creativity, imagination. Yes, imagination most of all – have exercises in imagination, like what will a conference table say if it can speak? And keep a journal – write on it every day your perceptions, observations, what people say that is worth remembering. You may use remembered passages on these journals and incorporate them in the stories you will write. I had a comment from a young writer who stopped writing because she made a reader angry. This is a risk all writers take when they write the truth. You can still do this as a skillful allegory. If you create a character based on a real person, add qualities and quirks or idiosyncrasies that do not belong to the real person. Observe utmost fidelity to objective truth. Remember, you are not writing for yourself alone; you are writing for your people and for your time, most of all, if you are to be the truest keeper of your country’s memory.

As I already stated, be brave when you’ll be reviled for telling the truth. Be strong even if you stand alone. But look at yourself with an eagle eye. Is your conscience clear?

Read, read, read. It can be boring, but live and treasure each precious moment so you will remember the classics, history, the Bible; they have so much to tell you. You will realize after a while that almost every subject you want to write about has already been dealt with in the past. As they say, there is nothing new anymore. This is where you can prove them wrong by looking at the past with your own unique sensibility, with your sense of identity and imagination – you will dress up these ancient plots and ideas with new clothes, make them contemporary and relevant to our time.

Don’t worry about style; this will bloom in time because you are you. As a young writer, you may be impressed by famous writers, and you may imitate your writing idols. This will pass as you continually write in your own manner. I tell you, some of my early fiction was redolent of William Faulkner: one whole paragraph is one redundant sentence, elaborate, obscure. I grew up.

Keep young, the body ages, the organs, too, but shield the brain from aging or atrophy if you can. I listen to the young themselves, remembering my own youth, with its rash enthusiasms and easy susceptibility to what is fashionable, particularly in manners. But always remember that fads fade and are soon forgotten, useless as old calendars. Always keep an open questioning mind, ever alert to the changes that come quietly, subtly, unannounced; this is particularly true in politics. Keep your eyes open always so that all you’ll see is reality – the truth that you will write about, which will have a crushing impact not just on your writing but on your life. Have all your senses working, and this will be reflected in your writing which will throb with life, which your reader can identify with. So many of us are cast adrift in this world; some are fortunate to luxuriate while adrift, swine, wallowing in the trough without anchor or roots. Are you one of these?

Be honest. Recognize your condition; most of all, be true to yourself, which means you have to know yourself. Nurture loneliness; solitude will enable you to detach yourself from yourself, so you can examine your whole being, your vices and your virtues, your hates even, but most of all, your deepest pain and your deepest love, and yes, your deepest regret as well. With all this knowledge in your consciousness, your thinking will be clearer, and so will your writing be. It goes without it being emphasized that even without knowing it willfully, there is a fire wildly blazing in your belly, giving you purpose and passion. Yes – passion. How can you sustain it as the bones grow brittle and lethargy sets in?

What is your greatest love? Surely, yourself first and foremost. But you know deep within you, this greatest love demands sacrifice and that you are willing to give your life for it.

All of us who are cultural workers – we know writing is hard work, that after all that rigor and sweating, we are not appreciated or amply rewarded. There is no Filipino writer who has money; all of us have other jobs to survive, especially now. Venues for publication of literature have all but disappeared. What then is the future for our young writers today – for Kit Kwe Lacaba, Miro Capili, L.A. Piluden, Samantha King, Stephanie Shi – all of them starry-eyed, brilliant, waiting in the wings? As their elder who has seen so much, good writers have fallen on the wayside – what can I tell them? Why oh why should they persist? Why write at all? Listen – these people, this unhappy country needs you. Write because you need to justify yourselves, to prove your existence, to give your life meaning. Persevere because it is duty.