Fame, fortune and the Filipino writer

Creative writers don't earn much in this country, unless they lend their talents to someone else, for far less literary reasons than writing a novel or a collection of poems.

- JOSE DALISAY

A senator might need to deliver an important speech to an international audience; a taipan might be marking a milestone like a 75th birthday and fancy having his biography written; a conglomerate might want to have its history written and published, to trumpet its accomplishments and contributions to society.

For all these, many novelists, poets and essayists will drop their pens and exchange their metaphors for the plainer but more remunerative prose of public relations. I know I have; I'm one of these people for whom writing isn't just an art but a profession, a means of livelihood, a trade I'm grateful to be able to ply instead of hauling gravel or fixing carburetors.

I've been writing for a living since I dropped out of college and became a newspaper reporter at 18, and I've been at it ever since, even throughout my whole other life as an academic (yes, I went back to school and got all the right degrees just so I could teach).

At 70, I'm still working on three or four simultaneous book projects for clients, with my own third novel in the back burner. (I've already drawn the line at 70; after these, no more, so I can focus on my own work and live modestly off my professor's pension.)

I daresay, however, that most Filipino writers don't operate like this, either because they can't (you have to park your ego at the door and be extremely adaptable) or they won't (for some, writing for money is selling your soul, although you can always say no to jobs and clients you don't like, as I have). So creative writers have to keep day jobs like teaching or lawyering or newswriting and editing, and tap away at their magnum opuses on the side.