For the writer in all of us

No write, no eat
PENMAN By Butch Dalisay
The Philippine STAR 09/05/2005

I had a great time last week speaking before my youngest audience ever
– a group of exceptionally bright children attending a special school,
the Little Farm House Holistic Education and Development Center in
Beverly Hills, Taytay. Part classroom, part garden, part zoo, and part
laboratory, the HEDCen, as it’s called, caters to a small community (or
a large family, if you will) of 300 students and teachers for whom
personalized instruction is the norm. The school has grown along with
the students, so there’s a junior high school class, but no seniors yet
– but there are kids galore, happy hordes of them eager to show off the
school’s pet python, ferret, and iguanas.

I knew one of them from babyhood – my friend Rayvi Sunico’s
eight-year-old son Juani, whom I hadn’t seen for, uhm, half his life;
Juani knew me, in turn, as “Butch Da Lizard,” and embraced me in happy
recognition as soon as I introduced myself by that noble name. Juani
became my tour guide, dragging me from one exhibit to the next, and
proudly announcing that their subjects (in Grade Two) included
chemistry and ecology.

A classmate of his named Kathy asked me what I wrote, and I must’ve
mumbled something sadly impertinent because her next question was, “Do
you write about cats? Can you write me a story about cats?” Yes, I
will, Kathy, I certainly will, one of these

days, and its hero will be a marmalade tomcat named Chippy, as grumpy and as sleepy as his “Mr. Boss.”

They gathered up the whole school to listen to me talk about my life as
a writer – mine was one of an ongoing series of talks on possible
careers – and the teachers aside (most of whom seemed very young
themselves), my audience ranged in age
from about seven to 16. So I told them the usual stories I’ve already
told at least twice over in this column – how I sewed sheets of bond
paper together to make my own “books”, how I start stories, what a
typical day for me might be like. A stream of questions followed. One
question I didn’t expect in its forthrightness was “Do you make a lot
of money as a writer?”

Ah, the money question. I know I’ve taken it up here before, but let me
give an extended answer for the benefit of some other readers (far
older than 10 years old) who’ve been writing in to ask me about writing
as a profession.

First, the short answer: “No – but if I don’t write, we don’t eat.” I
make enough to feed, house, and clothe myself and my family, for which
I’m deeply thankful. Not too many people in this country can live off
their writing, and I’m glad I’m able to – I’d better,

because I don’t think there’s anything else I can do.

But “writing” here doesn’t mean writing novels or stories or even
essays – what I’d really love to do if I had the time – but rather
commercial jobs such as brochures, scripts, speeches, biographies, and
coffee-table book projects, including editing and editorial
supervision. (Forget what I make from teaching, even as a full
professor; it might be enough for a 25-year-old bachelor to live on.)

I
treat every project as seriously and as carefully as I do my own
stories; like I often say, I look at every job I take on – no matter
how seemingly slight or even silly – as my first, last, and only job.
That’s how I maintain my professionalism and sense of humor –
both of which are often tested by clients who insist on knowing better
about what they hired you to do, or who see the text you’re writing for
them as an arena for internal politics. Despite all these I do my best
to please the client, and if he hires me to write
about a bar of soap and if I’m desperate enough to say yes, then he’ll
get the best piece on a bar of soap his money can buy. In other words,
I sort the writing I do for myself from the writing I do for others,
but try to achieve some excellence in both.

Admittedly the many decades I’ve spent writing for a living have rubbed
off much of the romantic sheen of writing – I think it’s mostly
technique, although I’m always open to serendipitous turns of plot and
character – but they’ve also imbued me with a sense of writing as a
professional, lifetime discipline, rather than an amateur’s passionate
but passing fling with words.

I know that it’s hard to describe writing as a profession when there’s
not much money to be made from it, unless you write until your eyeballs
go white, like I do. You certainly can’t live off fiction; a short
story in the local magazine might net you P1,500
tops. A novel might earn you some P30,000 to P50,000 in royalties over
a couple of years – if you sell all 1,000 copies. A Palanca Award could
enrich you by P12,000 – but how many can you win, and how often?

But then writing’s the only thing we know, and doing it well is half
the compensation, leaving us with a sense of a world just slightly
clearer, fresher, and perhaps more tolerable for the words we brought
into it. I’ll end for now with a passage from a
fascinating
book I’ll be quoting from again some other time, The Cost of Letters (A
Survey of Literary Living Standards), edited by Andrew Holgate and
Hoinor Wilson-Fletcher (Middlesex: Waterstone’s, 1998). This is from
Julian Barnes, author of Flaubert’s Parrot and other modern
masterpieces:

“My advice to young writers would be: don’t do it unless you really
want to; don’t do it expecting that it will support you; don’t do it
imagining that once your talent has been revealed, the world will
conclude that it owes you a living; don’t do it to mend some hole in
your life or purge yourself of some pain; don’t do it unless you
believe, utterly, that making art is the most important thing there is;
don’t do it assuming that the result will ever satisfy you. And
finally: don’t take advice from older writers – they’re only talking to
themselves. It’s different for you. You’re starting afresh. The world
awaits. Go for it.”

Send e-mail to Butch Dalisay at penmanila@yahoo.com