The moment a person thinks that he is a writer or decides to become one, he is in deep, deep trouble.
Life, as it is, is difficult. To be a writer makes life doubly difficult. The word “writer” is not only loaded with meaning, but it also ignites a gamut of conflicting emotions and intentions, particularly intentions.
Emotion, or pouring out one’s heart, is presumed to be a given especially for beginning writers. Joyce Carol Oates said that beginning writers should write their hearts out, to never be ashamed of their subject, and their passion for their subject.
But after pouring your heart out, which I have to admit is really quite tempting because what could be better than wallowing in misery or self-pity and wanting the world to know about it—the question the beginning writer has to ask himself now is, what’s next?
Now that you’re a writer or believe yourself to be so, as you have already placed the term writer right beside your name, like MA, Ph.D, SVD, OP, Superstar, Megastar, Star for all Seasons, Queen of All Media, Sexiest FHM cover/centerfold, what do you do now?
You can get really confused because there are many roads to take, but it all boils down again to one thing—intention or your motive as a writer, and the road you take reveals, plain and simple, your intention and motive.
Well, who isn’t self-absorbed these days, anyway, especially if you’re a writer? Even medical doctors, lawyers, literary critics, critical theorists, sexy starlets, aspiring models and other wannabes can be totally absorbed in themselves, more so the writer.
“What is the quality of my writing?” is quite similar to those psychological tests we need to take before we get hired for a job which we writers can easily cheat. This kind of test attempts to interpret people’s personalities, but what you do is just change the description of each rating to 5—Extemely Talented Writer; 4—Talented Writer; 3—Satisfactorily Talented Writer; 2—Mediocre Writer; and 1—Perhaps a career in vulcanizing?
Getting paranoid
Just the idea of becoming a writer or putting the word “writer” next to your name can get you really paranoid. It is intimidating. You defy all the forces of nature, your nature included, to be acknowledged as one.
Suddenly there is this powerful feeling that surges inside you—a drive, a motive, a hunger, a scheme, a kind of greed—that can eat you up for days, weeks, months, years or even for the rest of your life. You now fight for dear life to be accepted by the literary community.
Now that you are totally convinced that you are a writer, you are faced with the dilemma which involves choosing what road to take.
You can be the Ad Man, short for the Advertising Man, the one who is a master of self-promotion. The first thing to do is to go to places where there are many writers, rub elbows with them, be friends with them, inch your way into the circle until you realize that you’re on first-name basis with them.
Another term for the Ad Man is Hub Man, the one who goes to writers’ hubs—drink with them until the wee hours of the morning, talk about art and writing like there is no tomorrow.
You now have the liberty to ask them the questions, “How did you find my story? What advice can you give me to improve my work”? You only want to hear one answer and that is “Your work is good.” So the question that you really want to ask is, “But tell me, how good is my work, c’mon tell me, tell me, tell me?”
Social media play a very important role in the strategy. You post on Facebook your work or the books that you’ve read, or just about anything that has to do with your being a writer. You wait for your friends’ positive response. You check every hour the number of likes.
You read with loving attention all the praises you get for things you posted on your wall, and, of course, the praises mostly come from friends, relatives, students, and other people we know or even people we don’t know personally but whose friend requests we confirm.
The more friends you have on Facebook, the more chances of getting a gazillion likes and kind remarks. Facebook allows you to flatter yourself and get selfie any time of the day.
Para-android
Another road can take you to a different direction. So now you have written something which some people say is of considerable value, which most of the time you don’t believe because you are the distrustful type. This is difficult for the one I call the Para-Android for he takes himself too seriously as a writer that he feels that he has to top himself in his next work—if there would ever be another one.
Your greatest fear is seeing yourself on the same spot, no growth, no development, and your worst enemy is doubt. You feel you’d end up like Alanis Morisette, whose second mainstream album, “Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie,” was a dud since “Jagged Little Pill,” her first, had been hailed by critics as one of the greatest albums of all time.
Your credo, which you regularly recite in your head, is better not write than to be accused of producing the same thing or, worse, a lesser work or be called a fluke.
You become doubtful about your talent. Your inner voice tells you that it is impossible to be a better writer because you only have one brain, a pair of eyes, and a built-in comprehension mechanism/device whose quality is actually genetically determined or depends on what you drank when you were still a baby—mother’s milk, milk formula, Promil or just plain am.
T. Braxton syndrome
When you’re a writer, you often think or feel that you’re this sensitive, fragile, anxiety-ridden being who has been badly hurt by the world. And with the talent that you have, there is no other way but to write your misery and the world’s miseries. As a writer, you can do this because you are given the license to turn your emotional baggage into art or something quite close to it.
You just have to make sure that what you’re doing is genuine art or else you will turn out just like many celebrities washing their dirty linen in public, farting and wanting the world to know about it. This kind of writer I call Toni B. (as in Toni Braxton). You encourage people to write about their trauma, to be aware of deep-seated conflicts, to wage a never ending war with the world and the unseen forces that seem to sabotage your idea of “I am art and art is me,” and your final plea for all these lesser mortals who have hurt you, whether real or imagined, is to, as Toni B. wails, “unbreak my heart.”
There is a little of this in all of us. When I wrote one of my early stories, I was very concerned with writing about a very painful experience, thinking that writing about it can heal me instantly, but every time I read it, it was like going through the pain all over again, and the horrible part of it is that is that there’s something inside that tells me to read it over and over again, that inner voice again telling, “C’mon, hurt yourself more, and while you’re at it why not listen to those cheesy love songs that hurt you even more—‘It Might Be You,’ ‘Just Tell Me You Love Me,’ ‘Got To Believe in Magic.’”
Bit of masochist
Writers are a bit of a masochist. But here’s a warning, don’t overdo it, because you might end up putting your head inside the oven (think Sylvia Plath) or placing pebbles inside your pocket and drowning yourself in the lake (think Virginia Woolf), or worse still, doing it by seppuku, a ritual involving self-disembowelment (think Yukio Mishima).
But a good Toni B. writer will not repeat what others have done. You can probably envision yourself a beautiful mermaid instructing sane human beings to throw you back into the sea. That I have to admit is more imaginative.
There are other roads to take, rough roads. You can go the Thomas Pynchon way by being a recluse to send the message that the work matters more than the artist.
You can drown yourself in alcohol to invite hallucinations like what Edgar Allan Poe did, or be an activist who fight for certain worthy and unworthy causes, or be a bitch goddess, or just plain bitch if you don’t really qualify as a goddess, or be a rebel or a freak and be the Lady Gaga of the literary world
The road that you, beginning writers, choose to take reveals your intentions and motives and these are the demons you have to wrestle with. Just the thought of becoming a writer, thinking yourself a writer, the act of writing itself, and of course the kind of pressure you have to deal with when you are writer becomes your own private hell with the seven deadly sins just lying around, ripe and ready for picking.
When the dust finally settles, writing is really just about good writing. That at the end of the day, you know exactly what quality writing is, that in the long run it’s good writing that stands, and it’s good writing that will be remembered.
Augusto Antonio A. Aguila’s “The Heart of Need and Other Stories” (2013, UST Publishing House) is available at Solidaridad (tel. 2541068) and National Book Store.