This is why we need Time-Turners.
That was the first thought that came to mind when National Book Store posted online the schedule of events for the Philippine Readers and Writers Festival 2016.
With about 45 events scheduled and more than 100 speakers, the three-day literary festival provided the whole gamut of experiences for literature and art lovers.
There were book launches and signings, poetry readings, art and writing workshops, discussions on literacy and education, panels on writing, book blogging, publishing and the different genres of popular literature, and even talks about visual storytelling in film, photography and art.
If there is one experience during the festival, held at Raffles Makati, that I hope I will never forget, it will definitely be being front and center during the author spotlight on Pulitzer award-winning novelist Adam Johnson. When host and Inquirer writer Ruel De Vera described Johnson as “the most interesting man on Earth,” he wasn’t exaggerating.
Johnson, a vivid and animated storyteller, talked about “stealing” food from the zoo as a child, personally experiencing his wife’s jujitsu skills, failing to have a barong Tagalog made, and being stuck in Metro Manila traffic.
The highlight of the talk was Johnson’s tales of his adventures in North Korea, the isolated Asian nation he described as “the most voiceless place on Earth” and the setting of his Pulitzer award-winning novel, “The Orphan Master’s Son.”
“They don’t have storytelling,” Johnson said of the country. “They don’t have their own narrative other than the state-sponsored one. They don’t even have access to their own literature.
“No one in North Korea has read a book, as you know it, in over a hundred years. They don’t have a living relative who has read a book,” he added.
Traps
Johnson, on the power of the story: “There are two traps to being a human, and I think literature plays against both of them. One is that we’re stuck in time. The future is absolutely unknown and the past is known but forever inaccessible… and the other thing, the other trap of existence is that you will never know the mind of another. … But a novel is designed specifically to transcend that.”
In the three short years of the literary festival, people have witnessed the rise of a rare breed of author: the rock star writer. This year, this distinction was awarded to Wattpad darling and Internet sensation Anna Todd, who wrote the best-selling “After” series. Todd entered the packed Ballroom 2 of Raffles Makati to the sound of screams from her fans.
The “After” series first found acclaim on story-sharing website Wattpad as fanfiction (specifically, real person fiction, a fan-written story about a real celebrity). The male lead of “After” is Harry Styles, a member of the English boy band One Direction. He was renamed Hardin Scott when the story was published as a series of novels by Simon & Schuster.
Todd is unapologetic about loving fanfiction and wanting to write it for “the rest of my existence.” “I’m not sorry for writing fanfiction,” Todd said. “I’m never going to be embarrassed about writing about One Direction. I don’t care. If you don’t like it, don’t read it.”
Todd also dispelled the notion that young writers, especially those who started out as fanfiction writers, do not deserve the success they are getting because their journey to becoming published authors is completely different from the norm. “Writing fanfiction totally changed my idea of what a writer is supposed to be,” she said. “If you’re writing a book, you’re a writer. It doesn’t matter what you’re writing.”
In the beginning of her career, Todd said, she felt unworthy of her success. People were patronizing her for being young, saying that she just got lucky and that she “skipped the whole hard part of writing.” But Todd realized that despite what anyone said, she put in the hard work. “I wrote a million words. I didn’t skip anything.”
Abducted by aliens
The last of the trio of American writers who received top billing in the festival, Paula McLain, spoke about how being inspired to write “The Paris Wife” was like “being abducted by aliens.”
“The Paris Wife” is a historical fiction novel about the love story of American literary juggernaut Ernest Hemingway and his first wife, Hadley Richardson, who will forever be remembered in history as the wife who lost Hemingway’s manuscripts on a train.
McLain talked about reading Hemingway’s memoir and becoming obsessed with his romance with Hadley that she needed to find out more about this woman. “It was like I couldn’t help myself,” she said.
“I found a biography in the library and it was almost like a religious experience. It was like the sky opened and the angels were singing. And I just thought, ‘I must write this book. It’s my destiny to write this book.’”
She contrasted this with the “utter failure” of writing a novel about two-time Nobel Prize winner, physicist Marie Curie. “I had this perception that all I had to do was find another good idea,” McLain said.
But despite of the fact that Curie is one of the most interesting women in history, she said, “there was something about her that stayed elusive. I never found her voice. I never found her point of view.”
McLain also shared her “secret sauce” for writing: “My favorite moment as a writer is just disappearing, looking up in a coffee shop after five hours on my computer and I don’t know where I’ve been… that total freedom and total surrender.”
She is currently writing a book about Hemingway’s third wife, war correspondent Martha Gellhorn, who is “the most interesting” of Hemingway’s wives.
Inquirer Super editor Pam Pastor, activist Mae Paner (popularly known as her alter ego Juana Change) and award-winning writer Noreen Capili (also known as noringai) shared priceless and practical lessons on writing that they have learned through their individual journeys as writers.
Capili, whose book, “Buti Pa ang Roma May Bagong Papa,” won the prestigious National Book Award last year, said the secret to writing “is not to write about events, but to write about emotions—what you felt, what you experienced.” Capili, who experienced many rejections in her career before all this success, said that what she learned is “nobody can tell you that you can’t be a writer. We all have a story to tell, and who else will tell that story but us? The way you tell it is what matters.”
Not a writer
For Paner, who wrote about her conversations with taxi drivers in the book “Kwentaxi,” fear and insecurities almost kept her from writing her book. She was scared because she was not a writer. But the people she encountered in her cab rides and the stories they told were so interesting that she felt compelled to write about them.
She learned that if you want to write, “If you want to do something, never come from a place of fear.”
For “Planet Panic” and “Paper Cuts” author Pastor, writing is a very personal experience and “the beautiful thing about having the passion for writing in this age is that you have a ready audience—your Facebook friends, the people who follow you on Twitter or Instagram.
“As a writer, you learn to embrace the strangeness that happens to you because it gives you more to write about,” she said. Pastor, who was diagnosed with depression last year, has used her writing to document her journey and put a spotlight on mental health, a topic “that people don’t talk about enough.”
It also impressed on her the power of words and writing. “It can alter lives… or somebody feeling less alone because of your words. It’s so magical. As writers, we’re so lucky that we can make a difference with just our words,” she said.
But, at the end of the day, it’s the “doing” and not the “thinking” that really sets apart writers from those who are not. “You can’t be a writer unless you write.”
Significant part
Taking that first step can be a daunting challenge, and this is precisely the reason why the
Inquirer’s Young Blood workshop is such a significant part of the festival. Young Blood is one of the most popular columns in the Inquirer’s opinion section.
For the festival, the team behind the “Young Blood” series—the best-selling books that collected the best essays published in the column—got rid of the age restriction, at least in the workshop. This gave writers of all ages and backgrounds the chance to have their pieces read and reviewed so they can improve their work and learn from the experts and from each other.
Award-winning fictionists Dean Francis Alfar and Angelo Lacuesta underscored the importance of providing a venue for young Filipino writers to publish their work during the launch of “Maximum Volume 2: Best New Philippine Fiction,” an anthology of short fiction written by Filipinos under the age of 45.
“Who else will publish stories? And where else will we read them?” Lacuesta said on creating the “Maximum Volume” series. A third volume is in the works for next year.
“These are great, wonderful stories written by younger people, and they are keeping the flame of short fiction in the Philippines alive,” Alfar added.
The Philippine Readers and Writers Festival has also continued to open its doors to all kinds of storytellers.
CNN Life had a panel featuring visual artists like photographer Shaira Luna, filmmaker Jade Castro, furniture designer Ito Kish, painter and fashion school co-director Mark Lewis Higgins, and illustrator and graphic designer Dan Matutina.
The five talked about how story was a guiding principle in their art, regardless of their field of expertise.
Spoken word artist Juan Miguel Severo was one of the highly anticipated speakers at the festival. It didn’t matter if Severo arrived late; his fans were there to finally witness a spoken word performance from the “hugot” master.