How fan fiction about One Direction changed Anna Todd’s life
‘I want to write live, I don’t like planning stories,’ says the author with a billion (and more) readers on Wattpad.
September 16, 2016
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‘I want to write live, I don’t like planning stories,’ says the author with a billion (and more) readers on Wattpad.
There is a visual incongruity that one experiences when meeting Mina V. Esguerra for the first time. In person she’s relaxed, giggly and so girly that she seems way younger
The diversity and quality of new books that appeared on bookstore shelves in 2014 made readers in the Philippines immensely fortunate. Proving to be greatly popular among Filipinos and adopted by the Philippine publishers in a big way, the electronic publishing platform Wattpad flexed its muscles, leading to the wide release of print versions of their best-selling titles, the release of three motion-picture adaptations (“Diary ng Panget,” “She’s Dating the Gangster” and “Talk Back and You’re Dead”) and various television series. Expect more of the same in 2015. What used to be considered niche fare such as comic books, young adult and speculative fiction continues its march toward mainstream domination. Celebrities brought their own wattage to a wave of titles lit up with familiar names. In a year that saw a rising number of foreign authors visiting Manila, National Book Store’s first Philippine Literary Festival wowed fans by bringing in Amy Tan, Chang-Rae Lee and Eric Gamalinda. Filipino authors continued to be prolific and broke new ground all around. Now everybody seems ready to do even greater things in 2015, after a year that literally and literarily provided something for everyone, and proof that, yes, Filipinos do read—a lot. Here are the Inquirer’s selections for best books published in 2014 arranged alphabetically by title:
The legend of Scheherazade is about a woman who had 1,001 tales to keep herself alive. Eventually she gave up and said she had no more stories to tell. But, by then, the king had fallen in love with her—thus sparing her life.
It turns out the Philippines is a nation of readers and writers after all—especially when one looks at how Filipinos have taken to Wattpad (Wattpad.com). Dubbed the “YouTube for writers,” this website and online community allows users to post their own stories, as well as read and comment on the stories of others. Writers can continue to revise their own work even as others comment. It’s really like a self-contained eco-system for aspiring writers, and there are many of those in the Philippines.
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