LITERAL 03: Who Is Your Writing Support Group?

L.I.T.E.R.A.L. is a weekly blog meme for authors hosted at Indie Books, created to serve as a support group for participants of the Author at Once workshops.  L.I.T.E.R.A.L. welcomes all writers (from anywhere in the world) who’d like to weigh in on the topics!

This third prompt comes late because of my involvement with Crime Prevention Week. We've been celebrating it on the first seven days of September since 1994... well, anyone who's had some involvement with the law has been "forced" to observe  it since 1994. As in many holidays, most folks just nod their heads, grunt noncommitally and do whatever they are wont to do during the week. Not me, no sir. I had to be shanghaied into filming it.  

Excuses aside, our third prompt has to do with support groups. And truth to tell, I don't really have one, at least, not any more.


The First Institution

No one in my family writes for a living. Sure, the legal and police administrative professions require one to churn out volumes of text-- subpoenas, affidavits, undertakings, memoranda-- but this kind of writing is subordinate to the whole that is "the job." Writing is the boring and tedious  part of whatever "the job" is. No one really gets respect for writing unless his name is Sidney Sheldon or Gore Vidal. My family is somewhat "old school":  there will be lip service paid to writing in and of itself, but little else, unless said writing "delivers the goods"-- a roof over your head, food on the table and a woman in your bed. Or just wads of cash.

My sister and I dabbled in writing for publicists and publications, but these never really took off (except maybe my sister's year at the Manila Bulletin, but that had to be sidelined for her studies in Law). We were natural candidates for "support group"  but it never quite happened. We were too wrapped up in what we were doing  individually. Our own personal lives didn't allow for much interaction beyond the occasional family dinner discussions where we avoided talking about our work or our personal concerns.


F.R.I.E.N.D.S.

My friends in early college were all trying to write the Great Comic Book or Novel of the Early Twenty-First Century, and most of us filed that dream under "Stuff you Outgrow" pretty quickly. Thad Lacanlale and I were writing for a Cubao-based comic book series back in the early nineties: something just shy of copyright infringement called WrestleWarriors.  If you haven't heard of that book, then you pretty much understand why you haven't heard of us. That experience didn't kill the dream for me, but put it in a body cast and made us push it in a wheel chair for around eight years.


A recent friend, Jen, was willing to share assignments with me just to get me back into writing again, but I could not accept her sometimes unsolicited help. Not that I didn't want to, but because my job was in the way. Being a language coach in my old company required you to do the work of grad students with two jobs. I literally had no time.



Plugging Doll Eyes

Among my friends, only Eline Santos may be on her way to making good on our collective dreams. You should check out her children's story "Doll Eyes."  It's very Gaiman in the way she mines our psyche and our childhoods for villains, but you should just read it for yourself.        


Conclusion

There were other friends who came later in my life, who offered their support-- but they've gone, they're in other locales and social groups. Or they've gone into other projects. Really:  rehabilitating angry bloggers with writing issues should never be on top of their list of priorities. I won't expect them to cheer me on, if and when I take to writing The Thing That Should Have Been the Great Novel of the Early Twenty First Century (That Will Also "Deliver the Goods.")  We're all simply too busy with our expanding social circles.  If and when I do, though, I'm sending them all private messages on Facebook. I hope they'll be happy for me when I do.  



Plugging for friends:
Read up on IndieBooks
Link to LITERAL
Be an Author, at Once

Light as a Feather, Stiff as a ...

I've been published before-- school publications, illustrations for training manuals and student guidebooks, anonymous articles written for a publicist, speeches written for some government bigwigs, artwork for EPSON Vision and the Commission on Human Rights. There are also significant contributions to the odd Engrish Teachel Manuars for my former Korean bosses (Seriously, I have to bring home a copy the next time I'm at the old office).

I have pointed memories and feelings for each of them, but few among these works give me as much pride and disappointment as that one poem that showed up in the compilation in this picture (left).  If you've read my first L.I.T.E.R.A.L response, you'll understand why I will probably derive much joy from throwing this book at the odd home invader.

Strangely, the compilation is true to its name: much of the poetry that lives on the pages has to do with love-- expressing it, having it rejected, keeping it alive in the face of ridiculous odds. The book's construction itself is the bastard child of love and cynical marketing. It's as if the minds behind the old Poerty.com (the people who put this book out in the early 2000's)[1] were divided into camps who--

• wanted to put out quality work for the many authors who wasted their time submitting entries in the earnest hope of making it , and  
• who wanted to milk us for every penny they could get, while the cash cow was in a mood to givegivegive.  

The paper stock is great, and I can't complain about the spine. I think the cover is hard enough to stop a knife. These, to me, are clear indications that whoever approved the project cared enough about the many people who were being bilked to include these specifications while their cynical counterparts nodded their heads and discussed among themselves the market appeal of making a book that could potentially be an heirloom.      

The time I'd been informed that I'd received some sort of prize and gotten "invited to share" my poetry "aloud" in the old Poetry.com's annual Poetry Convention in DC, I'd also felt humiliated as my application for a US visa got shot down. It's standard practice, of course, and I cannot blame the consul who denied me entry. This is exactly how the embassies make money for their mother countries. Nevertheless, the wound was deep, and I'm not sure it's really healed. I'd grown up on Sesame Street and Marlo and the Magic Movie Machine, and while I had no illusions that America was a paradise, I still suffered from the misapprehension that I could represent myself in a way that would get embassy personnel to respect my honest endeavor enough to let me through for a two week tour.[2]

Okay, this is hopefully the last time I'll talk about this. It's great to get it off my chest, but to dwell on it is ultimately unproductive. Here's to just writing, and (for now, at least) writing for the sake of it.

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[1] The new Poetry.com is, to my knowledge, being run by Lulu.com. I have not tried to retrieve my old submissions from the site, even though a link has been generously provided for all the old poems submitted before the site changed hands. Perhaps I should. I sharpened myself partly by making poetry on the fly using their poetry in motion app, where one uses the scrambled words of one poem to fashion a new one. It's a good exercise and I miss it.

[2] It galls that people actually get past the consuls, overstay, and disappear into the landscape. I'd not wanted to even travel before the opportunity to be recognized as a good poet even presented itself. When the prospect of doing so was presented to me, my inner child took over, and I thought I could finally see the Empire State Building, feel it and, later, the US capitol ground under my feet. To have that inner desire exposed, the opportunity to satisfy it stare me in the face and then yanked away was the ultimate cock tease.  If a God had set it up, it was a cruel joke consistent with his Old Testament dickishness.