Book Update: The End Is Near

Thanks to all those who continue to visit this blog (and the other arts and culture blog) and those who continue to ask where I am on my coffee table book. I feel inspired by your thoughts and your faith in me. In this lonely path that I tread, I carry much hope for the end (of the book writing) is near and I will finally rest easy, knowing I had met this year’s writing goal.

In the same way that the manuscript was difficult to start (I worked my way into chapters 2 to 4, after which I wrote chapter 1, which involved some interviews and field research), I am finding that it’s difficult to end this book, not because I do not have much to say, when I have so much material online, but because I feel there is so much I need to say.  After this book goes to press, I will have to live forever with the knowledge that I could have done it better. A writer’s work is never done.

It’s almost the end of the year, and it’s my turn to ask: Did you meet any of your writing goals this year?

When a New Blog Means Moving On

Written in 2007 for X, who wanted his peace

There once was a time when getting a haircut was a sign that a girl had broken up with a boyfriend.

In this digital age, there are other, equally emphatic, ways of announcing one’s re-introduction to the, uhrm, market.

Like taking down one’s blog and putting up a new one.

Deleting one’s online journal speaks as strongly as cutting off one’s hair. It’s definite (because unless you back up, there is no way of saving those posts, unless you do it manually).

It says “I have a new life,” or “Enough with the complication,” and “I want a clean slate.” It means “I want to start over.” It conveys: “I don’t want you to know what’s happening in my life.”

Many (pre-Blogger) years ago, I was a faithful lurker of a Website by a California-based girl named Stella (I never bothered to find out if it was an alias or not). She was half-Pinay and seemed to be having a fun stateside life compared to my own: the proms, the Friday night sleepovers, the boys.

Stella wrote about her parental troubles, her struggles in school, her big crush (also Pinoy who dressed like Usher) and how she and this boy later hooked up, her college choices, her brother joining the US Navy.

She seemed to me a distant cousin whom I had never met but whose life’s daily inanities I was well informed about.

Eventually, my life got busier and I stopped visiting. Some years later I wondered how she was doing, if she was still the same Stella I had read about.

I went back and lo, a notice: she had moved to a new site (she was studying at UC Berkeley, that much I knew). She and the boyfriend had broken up, and “the memories were too painful” that she had to “abandon the site altogether.”

Friends and strangers who were following her online journal left comments asking for her new URL, but she never replied. The end.

I felt a little sad because I didn’t know how she was doing. After all, I followed her like some captive audience tuned in to Pinoy Big Brother. It was like this good friend had stopped talking to me and there was no way to let her know I could relate with how she was going through or that I knew how she felt. That it was not the end of the world.

I wouldn’t blame Stella. When one’s online life is shared by a handful of others, some of them strangers you would not face in the morning without brushing your teeth, the easiest way to move on, without password-protecting one’s blog, is to delete the entire site and find a new one, preferably with a handle that is totally different.

It’s like suicide.

Except, unlike real life, you can be reincarnated.

The goodbyes, like the breakups, are heart-wrenching. Sometimes moving on can be as simple as ceasing to write, the old blog left as a testament to what was once your previous life. Sometimes the goodbyes are as swift as clicking the Delete button, and with one second, more than a year’s worth of posts is obliterated. Nothing backed up. Nothing to go back to.

Sometimes you grieve over each of them as you would the passing away of a friend who knew all your secrets and stood by you through thick and thin. But sometimes, in the darkest hours, you wonder why abandoning ship was the final option. Maybe it was because you didn’t want to be documented while you were picking up the pieces of your life together. Maybe because you needed the privacy to grieve.

How to Write a Book in Six Months

I wrote this in April, when I was in the middle of writing a book. I still haven’t finished the book, dammit! (I promise to finish it soon, so help me God.)

1. Announce to all the world, “I am writing a book.” That makes you accountable to it, and it would be a shame if you never got to finish it. (Yes, I am deeply ashamed at the thought.)
2. Procrastinate. Wait for those days when creativity just strikes you.
3. Complain about so many things. Fill in the blanks. “I can’t write because . . .” Reasons may range from the summer heat, the lack of sleep, the need to shop and reward one’s self before one is compelled to lift a finger and type an entire paragraph.
4. Write a thousand words every month. Congratulations, you now have 2,000 words; 18,000 more to go and you have only four months left.
5. Repeat to yourself, “I am writing a book.”
6. Disappear on the sixth month. That’s when you’ll finish the rest of the 18,000 words. (I’m still in that missing mode and I haven’t finished the book yet!)

Missing Writer

Yes, I’ve been missing, but for a good cause. The last couple of months have been busy, busy, busy.

Let me say that again. B-U-S-Y.

It’s the kind of busy that sees me plopping into bed when I get home and tinkering with the latest time-management game, which puts me to sleep. I complained to K, a fellow writer, that I hardly have time to write these days because work is absorbing all my energy, and at the end of the day, I fall asleep in front of WordPress.

Lately I’ve been thinking about real writing and how I miss it. By real writing, I don’t mean SEO writing or Web content writing or blogging or copywriting, which is what I do at work. But one has to do all this professional writing to make money, because there’s no money in book writing. There’s no money in writing about the arts. As much as I want to write about the things I love, the things that stir the soul, the things that make us all feel alive, at the end of the day I need to bring home a paycheck.

And it’s just sad how this has become.

I told N the other day that I wish I had that love back, that same brand of energy I had many years ago when we started this other site. Maybe, like most love affairs, it was a case of “too much, too soon,” and I had wrung out my energy, because one’s enthusiasm can dampen when one has to think about bills at the end of the month.

Okay, enough of the ranting.

I’m proud to say that while I haven’t been doing some real writing, I (well, my company) did get an award from an e-mail marketing site for best performance. Ain’t that swell? At least I can add that to my CV one day.

Also, finally, after two long years of being with the company, we’re finally overhauling the shamefully bad copy and rewriting them. My Chicago Manual is happy to be of use again, I can sense it. KC, whom I hired as a freelancer to help us out in rewriting the copy for all the product descriptions, expressed glee that finally, what we had been wanting to do back then, when we first joined the firm, is finally falling into place. It’s a landmark in itself:  a company that never really cared about good content on its Website, finally getting a facelift. I’m energized enough just thinking about it and knowing that all is not lost. What I learned back at Xlibris and Global Sources and with good old Joan Orendain isn’t lost. Content is king!

Currently Reading: He’s Just Not That into You

Dear Greg,

There’s this guy I met a couple of weeks back, and he seems really funny and cool and so interested in me. I honestly thought we were on the same page. In fact, we’ve “gone out” a couple of times (mainly to a fast-food place, because it’s the only thing open at 4 a.m.), and the conversations through SMS and chat (despite the fact that he’s just an arm’s throw away) have been warm, romantic, and intimate, I must say.

But the last two weeks, I’ve been getting a 404, which I initially dismissed as just a grumpy middle-age guy having those moments because of a recent operation.I mean, really, Greg, when you’re in so much pain, how can you think about romance? He tells me he’s just in so much pain, so he can’t text me back or go out for a walk, which I believed for some time.

And then a good friend at work thought she had to intervene because I was starting to fall, and she gave me your book, He’s Just Not That into You. I heard about this book years ago but never bought a copy because I didn’t want a complete stranger giving me advice about a guy I know very well. Hello? I get all that from my friends. Why would I want to know what you think?

I read the book in just one day. It was funny and wicked and enlightening, and you really had me there, Greg. You’re right. He just wants something else. He’s not a bit interested in the book I’m writing. He doesn’t seem to want to get to know me more. I really thought we connected, but then, it was just as well. I was starting to get distracted, and I can’t afford that. Not when I’m writing a book.

So thanks, Greg. You were a lot of help. But I’m still looking for a way to prove you wrong. He can’t be not that into me!

The Single Writer and Her Book

I’ve come to realize that I cannot write and be in a romantic relationship at the same time.  The energies that I use for writing are about as intense as those I exert when I am madly, passionately in love with someone.

I never believed it, and I’ve been in denial for the majority of my adult writing life, but it’s true. When I look back at the years before, I was either happily writing singly or happily involved but on a dry writing spell (but productive elsewhere). I can’t seem to handle both–me whom I consider to have superior multitasking skills.

I mean, really, should you even ask what one should choose between spending a night of romance or staying up all night writing a chapter? Never mind being broke. I’d choose the former. Which is why I’m usually in love and broke or single but earning well. You know what they say: You can’t have everything.

So maybe I should thank my stars that this recent affair has ended and I can happily go back to writing after exorcising the demons of a recent past. Four months more to go, and five chapters to complete. I can do it! (Yes! That’s the spirit!)

Notes on Writing a Book

Writing isn’t a fun process. It is laborious. It feels like giving birth (and I know the feeling). The thought of writing may seem like a piece of cake, but the act isn’t. And the idea of a looming deadline doesn’t make it any easier.

So here’s the plan to get things done in the next five months:

1. Send the child to the grandparents for the summer. Thankfully, it was my little boy’s last day in first grade today, and he is so excited about vacation that I am just so happy to ship him south in a balikbayan box. Not that I want to get rid of him, but I simply cannot write and play mommy at the same time.

2. Take it one chapter at a time. My writing/editing “associate” is doing the work for one chapter, while I will do the final rewrite and edit. That should lessen the burden on me.

3. Prepare the tools of the trade. Last Sunday, I finally picked up the recorder and noted how it has morphed into something else in the last three months that I did not touch it. My sister was able to break open the battery holder, and despite fear of a leaking battery, she was able to dislodge the AA battery that was stuck inside and growing moss (no, really).

4. Send off questions and wait. No, really, because I am in Manila and can only do so much, while my resource people are in various parts of the world.

5. Have faith. Because writing is an act of faith. You got to believe you’ll get done. Or you won’t get paid. So help me God.

The Busy Freelancer

The busy freelancer never gets to blog.

Which explains why I have been silent for a month. I’m happy to say that my freelance career hasn’t been idle the last month. On the contrary, it’s been sizzling!

Just this month, my design partner finally completed the illustrations for a financial management book that we translated into comics. My part of the work had long been done as early as mid-January, but it was the illustrations that took ages–and for good reason too. D would never submit anything half-baked. The lesson? We’re now more realistic about setting deadlines after realizing you can’t finish a comic book in two weeks.

I’m pretty excited about this comic book thing, precisely because it is my first time to be “writing” a comic book. (You won’t see us in the credits, and we signed a contract saying we can’t include the gig in our portfolio.) I was understandably anxious in the beginning and scoured the bookstores for teenage comic books to familiarize myself with the nuances and the tone of comic book writing (I’m used to writing business stories). The Australian-based client was quite happy, thankfully, and appreciated the fact that I was still around to do the proofreading a month after completing the project.

And then there’s the coffee table book, the work for which started this month. February is ending, and I find my pace a bit slow, as there were management issues to address, such as finding a cover designer and surveying a list of local publishers for rates. We still don’t know whether we’re going local or international (Lulu or Blurb comes to mind), but maybe that is something I should not worry about. Getting the book finished first should be priority #1.

Which also means that the next five months will see me uber busy. The research for this book means I will be going out of town, something I haven’t prepared for yet, but I hope to go to Dipolog (Zamboanga del Norte) for it, sometime before Easter.

This is a new thing, seeing a book from nothing to something, and it’s something I’m really excited about. Already, I’ve negotiated with my boss at work (my full-time job) for a flexible schedule (nothing later than 9 a.m. PST), and I just got approval to work at home on Wednesdays! Oh glory! Now that is what you call “work from home.”

I’m still apprehensive about this “work from home” thing, as I know every person who does it for the first time is, but it will probably curb my control problem, so I can learn to trust others to bring their fair share to the table even though I am not around. Of course, this new “work from home” bit says something about how my boss trusts me enough to allow me to work outside the HQ, and I certainly don’t want anyone thinking I’m slacking off when nobody’s watching.

So there. It’s been exciting, and I’m breathless while I look forward to the next six months (oh, there’s another book project coming up–something, uh, fishy!) of lucrative, productive freelancing.

How about you? Any good thing happened to you?

P.S. Did I mention I was actually in the hospital for five days this February? Not stress-related, thank you (although I would have believed so), but something related to a previous appendectomy. The time away helped me a lot. I realize now how I miss (1) not doing anything, (2) getting 8 hours of sleep, and (3) sleeping at night.

Are You Where You Want to Be?

Two people asked me this question today: my sister and an old friend–also a writer–when we were talking about colleagues from workplaces past.

While the conversation with a friend brought back some painful memories in my career, I realized that I like where I am now. I have a great job that pays well (it could pay more–hint, hint, boss) and teaches me so many new things. Now, I do more than writing–I also do e-mail marketing. It’s exciting and it keeps me on my feet.

On top of that, I have an equally exciting site on arts and culture–it gives me this happy feeling of being alive. And the projects haven’t stopped coming! (Thank God!) Right now, I’m writing a comic strip for a financial management book. I’m learning so much, not just with the nuances of writing for comics but also about managing my finances well.

We have different ideas of where we want to be, but in the course of life, our routes change and steer to another direction. I don’t think I am where I wanted to be (I wanted to be a novelist and a reporter for Time magazine when I was younger), but I am loving where I am now. And I think that matters a lot.

Are you happy where you are now, career wise?

Writing resolutions

I’ve been writing for close to 10 years, but I’ve never started writing an article with the idea that I could breeze through it in an hour. Starting is almost always the hardest thing to do when you’re writing, so sometimes when I’m stuck without a lead, I move on to the middle part simply because I refuse to stare at my monitor for hours thinking of a good intro. When I upload an article online or send it off to a managing editor, there’s always this idea at the back of my mind that I could have done better.

I should cut myself some slack, I know. Writing, like any other type of work, doesn’t come easily. (Well, sometimes the best leads come to you in the middle of the night, so you have to listen to those voices in your head–hopefully not the sort urging you to kill someone.)

William Zinsser, writer and teacher, in his book On Writing Well gives this advice on fighting off those fears of disapproval and failure:  “Write about subjects that interest you and that you care about.”

That’s why I make it a point to write about writers and artists and works that I believe in so the writing doesn’t feel so difficult. Of course, it isn’t always the case, and if you’re a professional writer, you’ll have to come up with articles on things that you have had no previous interest in, say promotional products, Christmas lights in mainland China, or a designer whose philosophy I don’t understand.

But to add to Zinsser’s idea, if you have to write about something that doesn’t interest you, approach it with a mindset of “What do I take away from this?” or “How will this change my life?”  or even “How will this help other people?” You never know what you’ll learn.

This year, I’ve made it a resolution to face this fear of writing and tackle new topics. What’s your writing resolution?