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
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