a novel truth

just read ian's blog and saw this interesting piece about philippine novels. and i can't help but agree, totally agree:

"The first thing we might have to ask ourselves is this: why are we not producing novels in a respectable quantity? (Of course, if you consider "quantity" an important consideration.) Miguel Bernad's much-contested assessment of the "inchoateness" of our literature may indeed still ring true. "Primum est vivere," he had declared in that essay. One must first live. And accordingly, nobody is really able to live on his own writings in the Philippines. This is a country of parttime writers, if we have to be blunt about it: we all produce our stories and poems and plays basically on borrowed time since we are primarily teachers, journalists, copywriters, businessmen, lawyers, priests, and what-not. It is easy enough to understand or imagine the hardship entailed in trying to maintain the sustained effort required in writing a novel without the thought of where to get one's next meal intruding into our consciousness once in a while. Often, it is possible only to write novels in a sustained timeframe when one is mad enough to dive into the deep end without any hesitating preambles (which Dean probably did in the writing of Salamanca). For the most part, novelists who are teachers wait for their sabbaticals to be able to venture forth and finally write that novel; others depend on grants and fellowships to be able to get away from the grind of reality and escape into novel-writing."

RELATE. bow.

sige yun na muna for now. mamya na ulit. will go back to MY novel hehe. :) hope i finish this one.