JESSICA ZAFRA ON WRITING DURING THE PANDEMIC
Award-winning Jessica Zafra talks about deciding to study writing, working for different publications, going freelance, putting up a magazine and the changing the landscape of technology that profoundly impact writing and being a writer First of two parts
Renowned fictionist and essayist Jessica Zafra underscored the importance of writing in the time of a pandemic and the contemporaneous turmoils in society.
“Today, the pandemic is destroying the economy in our institutions. Newspapers and magazines have shut down. The largest TV network was shut down, adding 11,000 people, many of them writers, to the ranks of the unemployed. It was hard enough to make a living as a writer before the pandemic,” she said. “And now, I can’t imagine what’s going to happen, but we cannot stop writing. We have to keep looking for ways to live off our work. Writing is an essential service vital to the survival of humanity and it should be treated as such.”
The author of the books Twisted; Manananggal Terrorizes Manila and Other Short Stories; The 500 People You Meet in Hell; Twisted Travels and The Collected Stories of Jessica Zafra also related the travails of making a living as a writer in a series of writers’ fora of the Unyon ng mga Manunulat sa Pilipinas (UMPIL) or the Writer’s Union of the Philippines, which tackled theme “Writing (in) the New Normal/Pagsulat ng/sa Bagong Normal.”
Zafra was the guest in the inaugural episode of “UMPILan,” which was supported by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA), and co-presented by the Ateneo de Manila University Press and the Association of Philippine Medical Colleges-Student Network (APMC).
Soon, I discovered that if you have a following as a writer and you’re comfortable with speaking in public, you will be offered jobs in other media.
“The writers’ forum is a regular feature of the organization’s annual National Writers Congress, which is held on National Literature Month in April. But the world was ravaged by the Covid-19 pandemic, and all celebrations were postponed,” Louie Jon Sanchez, treasurer of UMPIL and teacher at the Ateneo de Manila University, explained in Filipino.
The whole month of August 2020, “UMPILan” presented four episodes featuring four writers, which was streamed live on UMPIL’s Facebook page, as well as on the Facebook pages of the NCCA, APMC, Savage Mind: Arts, Books, Cinema, Likhaan: UP Institute of Creative Writing, Linangan sa Imahen, Retorika at Anyo and Filipinas Institute of Translation. The Zafra episode was streamed on 5 August and moderated by Sanchez.
Informed by the speakers’ disciplines and writerly interests, the series attempted to respond to several questions, such as, according to Sanchez, “How do we face the new normal? How does one write it? How does one write, imagine this new event, which seems to be a moment when all of history and human life have been put to a halt? How does one go on living, and steadfastly clinging on to faith in goodness, justice and hope? What does one wish for the self and others? What becomes of literature and writing in the midst of suffering and social inequality? Where do we turn to for healing? In the end, how must we imagine a new post-pandemic world?”
One of the notable voices from the generation that grew up between the 1990s to 2000, Zafra admitted that she just stayed home during the lockdowns imposed to curb the spread of Covid-19: “Hindi talaga ako lumalabas ng bahay. Masuwerte ako na mag-isa ako sa bahay kasama ko lang ‘yung mga pusa kaya puwede akong magbasa, puwedeng magsulat, manood ng mga lumang DVD. May DVD player pa ko (I really did not go out of the house. I am fortunate that I live alone with my cats so I can read, write and watch old DVDs. I still have a DVD player).”
She aptly titled her talk “Living by Our Wits When Everyone is Scared Out of Theirs,” which recounted her experiences such as deciding to study writing, working for different publications, going freelance, putting up a magazine and the changing landscape of technology that profoundly impacts writing and being a writer. Basically, these all illustrated how writers earn a living.
Essential for writers
“I’d like to talk about something essential that is rarely discussed in the open. Writers are expected to talk about the profound philosophical issues of the day, and this topic is considered tacky and crass. However, we cannot live without it. I am talking about money. And the difficulty of making a living by writing. Especially now that existing problems have been magnified by the pandemic,” she said.
We live in a society where poverty is rampant, and yet it is considered the worst insult to be called poor even when it’s a fact.
For her, one of the major changes in recent times that writers have to cope with is the increasing role of technology and the transitions that go with it.
“I would argue that even before the pandemic upended our lives, online was increasingly becoming the home of writers. With the onset of the digital age and the decline of print media, many of us found new employment online,” she said.
“And with the ridiculous road traffic that no one misses in ‘quarantine,’ traveling any distance to a meeting had begun to resemble a hostage situation. I’m still surprised today when people say, ‘Sorry ha, hindi ako ‘techie’ (Sorry, I am not techie). I can’t open the file,’ and request a printed copy. We all love paper. If I had my way, I would write everything longhand on parchment and send it out by ravens. There is nothing like a book, the smell of ink and paper, the weight on your hands, but it’s the 21st century, and online is just faster, cheaper, more convenient and now safer.
“The resistance to digital technology is understandable, given privacy issues, cybercrime and the way social media has disrupted the democratic process. Like it or not, until we have mastered telepathy, we’re going to have to deal with it. I don’t believe that the resistance to technology is a function of age. I’m older than many of you. I think this feeling of helplessness goes back to when people had secretaries and assistants to handle their correspondence.”
Here are excerpts from her talk:
Becoming a writer in a poor country
“In the Philippines, and in many other countries but especially the Philippines, when you tell your elders that you want to be a writer, the usual reaction is ‘wala namang pera diyan (there is no money in it).’ This is true, of course, and if you listened to your elders, you would probably not be at this forum. My elders didn’t shoot down my aspirations completely but they approached it from an angle. “Why don’t you study law or medicine or something that will lead to a lucrative profession and then write on the side?” Practical advice, though it doesn’t speak well of our attitude towards culture in general and literature in particular.
“We’re not alone in this. I’ve been told that in France, a country that is admired for the importance it gives culture, parents wish that their children will become engineers so that their children’s children can be writers and artists. Money is always a consideration. We live in a society where poverty is rampant, and yet it is considered the worst insult to be called poor even when it’s a fact. I have heard otherwise nice people disparage others by saying, ‘Wala namang pera ‘yan (But he/she has no money).’ You can write magnificent books that change the lives of the people who read them, but if you have no money, you’re nothing.
“Worse, you’re an idiot for dedicating your abilities to something that will not make you rich. At the same time, there seems to be a rule that if you’re a writer, you’re already doing what you love and so you don’t need to get paid for your writing.”
On being a freelance writer
“I have been a freelance writer all my life. I sold my first magazine article when I had just graduated high school, and I paid for my tuition fees at the University of the Philippines by freelance writing. Marita Nuque, the editor of Woman Today magazine, gave me a regular gig writing cover stories. I interviewed a lot of artista (actors) and fashion models. At that time, my ambition was to profile bands for Rolling Stone magazine. So, I wrote about aspiring actors as if they were rock stars. I got paid P150 for an 800-word article. My tuition fee during my first semester at UP was P360. So, it was doable. When I got out of college, I decided to get my own apartment. I shared an apartment with two friends. My share of the rent was P2,000. By that time, the magazine was paying P300 per article. So if I wrote 10 articles in one month, my rent and utilities were covered.
“I found other freelance work. Publicists paid decent money for me to write 10 versions of a press release about their products. I wrote copy for in-house corporate publications. I won a Palanca award for the short story and the prize was P10,000. Sometimes, I was hired to write the copy for advertising supplements. Those paid well. Then I started writing a newspaper column. It was a small paper but I got P2,000, then P3,000, for an 800-word column. My column appeared three times a week. I wrote so many columns that I developed a counter in my brain that automatically told me to stop when I reach 1,000 words. Between the 12 columns a month and other freelance jobs, I managed to pay the bills. I never had a regular salary or benefits. I got paid by volume.
“Soon, I discovered that if you have a following as a writer and you’re comfortable with speaking in public, you will be offered jobs in other media. I started doing a radio talk show, then a TV talk show. These paid more than writing because nearly anything pays more than writing. I told myself that in my free time I could write a novel that I’ve been threatening to write since I was in high school. This was harder than I thought. Some people can write in their day jobs and write novels at night. It turns out I can’t. I need focus and momentum. I started several novels and never got past 50 pages. Some of them became short stories. Some were just terrible. And then the 90s ended.”
To be continued