Largely unknown, and who described his face as thin, inexpressive, “betrays no intelligence, no intensity, nothing whatever to make it stand out from the stagnant tide of other faces,” the moustachioed Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) once grumbled against his day job as a bookkeeper.
He spent the rare moments where he can daydream imagining himself “free forever of Rua dos Douradores (a narrow two-lane street in Lisbon, Portugal packed with several floors of apartment units), my boss Vasques, of Mereira the book-keeper, of all the other employees, the errand boy, the post boy, even the cat”.
He found it a burden to eke out a living, to work for another when “My soul is a hidden orchestra; I know not what instruments, what fiddlestrings and harp, drum and tambours I sound and clash inside myself. All I hear is the symphony.”
One can feel the depths of his depression when reading captions in his journal, The Book of Disquiet published by Serpent’s Tail Classics in 1991: “I am the outskirts of some non-existent town, the longwinded prologue of an unwritten book. I’m nobody, nobody. I don’t know how to feel, think or love. I’m a character in a novel as yet unwritten, hovering in the air and undone before I’ve even existed, amongst the dreams of someone who never quite managed to breath life into me […]
“My soul is a black maelstrom, a great madness spinning about a vacuum, the swirling vast ocean around a hole in a void, and in the waters, more like whirlwinds than waters, floating images of all I ever saw or heard in the world: houses, faces, books, boxes, snatches of music and fragments of voices, all caught up in a sinister, bottomless whirlpool. And I, I myself, am the center that exists only because the geometry of the abyss demands it.”
I included Pessoa’s experience because it reflects my own several decades back, and a thousand other would-be writers who needed a day job to survive. Life as we know it, apparently, is not amenable to the crafting of literature. It always stands in the way of creation, the imagination, our moments of daydreaming. Life infringes on our stories and poems without remorse, thereby leaving most would-be writers feeling incomplete as the day wears on.
I started writing sometime in my early teens. Those poor excuses for poems I penned in the wee hours did much to awaken in me a new perspective of the world. I was too sensitive as a child to leave what I see and feel inside of me largely unwritten. By the time they threw me out of college, I was already in the middle of crafting my first haul of fictional stories.
Without a university diploma, I had little choice but to leap from one odd job to the other to make ends meet. As messenger. As office help. A janitor. A stevedore for a meat company. A miserable failure as a seller of encyclopedias in a country who refuses to read beyond a maximum of twenty words.
In the middle of hustling for cash to bring home to my two lovely kids, I stole the time to read and write. Never left the house without a book, a notebook and pen in hand. I wrote my stories and those poor excuses for poetry as a stevedore in the thick of a two- to three-hour ride to Metro Manila’s adjacent provinces. I read novels in-between lunches and dinners by the roadside.
The disquiets of literature haunted me wherever I went. My 20-hour job, which left for me but four hours of sleep (five was a luxury I can’t afford) did little to stop me from reading and writing. It’s safe to say I was trying to build up the confidence to submit to literary publications. The confidence was slow in coming, though, but it came, nonetheless.
Much of my first attempts to get published as a writer of literature were rejected. Thinking that the “symphony” inside me cannot be denied, I grit my teeth. Soon I was accepted as “editorial assistant” (fancy name for modern-day newsroom slave at the time) in one of the nationally-circulated broadsheets. That was one foot in the door of being published.
The little over 20 rejection slips did little to douse my resolve. My poor excuse for a salary I spent for books and food for my children. I read and wrote until I had bouts with fainting spells due to lack of sleep. Once I found myself slumped on the floor, my head right on top of the electrical extension cord where my laptop was plugged in. I was out for roughly two hours.
And since I was terribly cash-strapped, I never got the chance to know what triggered my fainting spells.
Untiring resolve, coupled with learning from my mistakes, soon opened the doors for the publication of my works. And since I had no one to consider as mentor, I learned my mistakes by reading the best authors. These stories now comprise my first collection of short fiction, The Distance of Rhymes and Other Tragedies, published by the UST Publishing House in 2013.
It would be an utter lie to say that mere resolve can get you published. Literary editors are a crazy bunch. They don’t take haphazard writing for an answer. Stories that rattle on and on don’t make the cut. Verbosity offers nothing by way of chances. Characters demanding too much suspension of disbelief should be hung by their necks. Don’t even get me started on the subject of bad grammar.
A few tips to consider:
First, kill your darlings. The phrase came from novelist William Faulkner. “In writing, you must kill your darlings.” The word “darlings” refers to the author’s favorite elements or even writing style which forces the reader to either stumble or roll the eyes. In short, avoid purple prose, highfaluting words, favorite turns of phrases used with repetition, and adjectives unless extremely and unavoidably necessary. Keep the prose or verse simple (something I have a hard time doing), crafted wisely, and more importantly, readable. Refuse the urge to sound intelligent by displaying your vocabulary. To write means to communicate an idea or a tale.
Next, refuse the overly dramatic. One doesn’t have to be overly dramatic to evoke emotion in the reader. Anaïs Nin said, “If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don’t write, because our culture has no use for it.” To cry out, to breathe, to sing through writing means to tell it like it is without the trappings of melodrama. To paint a scene in words as simply as one can without the overuse of metaphors and excessive descriptions, simply said.
Another important thing to consider: craft the first line in a way that will make the reader read on. One doesn’t have to employ shock and awe to get the reader’s attention. A finely-crafted line can do the trick. Some of the best novels I’ve read begin with the most beautiful first lines.
Gabriel García Márquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera: “It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.”
In his monumental novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Marquez wrote his first line: “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”
Simple but powerful, J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan: “All children, except one, grow up.”
In the crafting of the first line, Sarah Jane Abbott, in an article in HuffPost, said, “If the eyes are the windows to the soul, then the first line is the window to the book. A first line can drag you in, shock you, confuse you, or touch you. A first line is what makes you read on.”
Thus, keep your first line spectacular. It is the reader’s doorway to an equally spectacular adventure.
Lastly, write the story only you can tell. Never rehash tired, old plots. Dig deep into yourselves, as the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke once said, “Know the reasons why you must write that poem or story. Expand your horizons and be observant, and do this always in excess of the ordinary man.”
Go beyond what you can just see or feel but never too far as to lose yourself in the search. Challenge your mind to refuse the temptation of copying what is already out there. Write about life and death, love and hate, with all the honesty and uniqueness one can muster. Tell it from your perspective, or from the eyes of an imagined soul. Keep in mind that your own life possesses a wealth of stories. Tell it like it should be told, which only you can tell.
Most of all, never let the everyday troubles hinder you from writing. These disturbances, these hindrances can be mined as materials for your stories and poems. Treasure them as you would treasure a memento.
No matter how fantastical your stories can become, they must mirror life as we know it.