Women Wordsmiths

In literary concourses like the Palanca Awards, the good news is that there is no standard norm for doing quality literary work, and that neither age, gender, experience nor affiliation to any school of writing will come into play on which work will win or whose name will be recognized.

The Novel and the Nobela categories are much awaited categories. For one, these categories are open only once every two years; also, the length of each manuscript submitted as entry can go from at least 50 to 250 (or more) pages. Also, the categories have no runners-up; only a grand prize is chosen from an average of 20 to 30 entries whenever it is open.

The winning entry gets a cash prize of ₱40,000 – and the possibility of it being published subsequently translates to royalties and a growing interest with the writer’s work. The likes of F. Sionil Jose (National Artist for Literature), F. H. Batacan, Lualhati Bautista, Jose Dalisay Jr., Domingo Landicho, Jun Cruz Reyes, Miguel Syjuco and Alfred Yuson have won in these categories and their Palanca-winning novels have become literary canon for this genre. Some, like Syjuco’s Ilustrado, have even gained recognition outside the country and translated in different languages.

For Victorette Joy Campilan and Charmaine Mercader Lasar, young women writers with roots outside Metro Manila’s literary atmosphere, the sweetness of their win comes from the fact that it was their first time to join the country’s most prestigious and longest-running writing competition. Some even refer to it as the “Pulitzers” of the Philippines, and any writer who gets his/her first Palanca win has, in a way, “come of age” in the literary world.

On diaspora and belonging to the world

Campilan’s opus, All My Lonely Islands, tells about a young woman’s physical and emotional journey and struggles as an expatriate Filipino kid growing up in different countries. “Crisanta’s (the protagonist) struggle is that of so many Third-Culture Kids [and] coming to terms with their identities as Filipinos and international citizens,” she said. The experience resonates deeply with her, it becoming the seed to her writing. “My personal experiences as a TCK living in Bangladesh helped me a lot,” she shared, as her parents worked there as missionaries and community developers. Even in her teens, she has already dabbled with writing what she considered as ‘novels’ – “as to be expected they were very raw and more like writing exercises than novels,” she humored.

The Gen. Trias, Cavite-based scribe would then take up her master’s degree in creative writing at De La Salle University, where her work was submitted as a thesis requirement. “Going through the MFA Creative Writing program was a tremendous help because it taught me to be a good reader, which is really the foundation of being a good writer.”

It took her four months to complete, strictly adhering to a regimen of allocating three hours a day including weekends. There were days though that she had doubts during the course of its writing. “There were days when I wanted to delete the entire manuscript because I couldn’t seem to keep the story flowing. There were lots of frustrations and dead ends,” she confessed. “I wanted to be very disciplined about it or else I would never have finished. I had to pick myself up and keep going. I didn’t want to be a quitter.”

Joy also admitted to being a fan of British fantasy and children’s story writers “because they have such dark, dry humor.” “C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien are my absolute favorites – the former for his use of tone and wit, the latter for his sheer imagination.”

She is not one to rest on her laurels, though: she revealed that has just finished writing a sci-fi novel, which she said she enjoyed writing a lot. But since the win, she has been very contemplative on how she wanted to publish All My Lonely Islands. “I’m still thinking of how best to publish it. There are so many avenues for publication nowadays, you really have to sit down and think about how your book will reach its target readers.“

A business writer by day, Joy’s idea of relaxation is “a great Saturday morning, watercoloring and playing jazz piano.”

Of journeys and a sense of home

Twenty-year old Batangas lass Charmaine ‘Maine’ Lasar’s Toto O. topped the Nobela (novel written in Filipino) category. It tells about a boy stuck in a financial rut that forces him out of the comforts of his rural home, getting immersed in an adventure of “meeting new friends, surviving different struggles, achieving some milestones in life and realizing that there’s no place like home.” As a millennial writer, Wattpad (a free writing and reading site) and blogging became her platform in expressing her creative ideas.

In fact, Toto O., her prize-winning work, is just one of the three novels born out of that endeavor. “I get inspired by everything – the people around me, the news on the television, the status update of my Facebook friends, and (even) the cold shower. This novel is no exception,” she revealed. Her win has proven that not all Wattpad writers turn out hackneyed stories, and that a literary gem can come even from the popular Internet site. “I wanted to prove, especially to myself, that I can write a (Wattpad) novel that can win a Palanca, and that [it] is a springboard for writers,” she said.

Interesting though is the fact that Maine (a dead-ringer for the rising Internet and TV personality Yayadub who, coincidentally, is named Maine Mendoza) is still a student, just months away from completing her bachelor’s degree in Accountancy at the Lyceum of the Philippines University. She considered her win not as an affirmation of her coming full-age as a writer, but more of a motivation. “For now, my goal is to pass the CPA board exam. But writing will always be dear to me and will forever be my passion, and yes, I would love to take Creative Writing in the near future,” she admitted.

One fuel for Maine’s writing vocation is an extensive reading list of local and foreign writers, and even those by starting writers like her. “As long as they got me by the first chapter, the name or the background of the author doesn’t really matter,” she said. Her favorite writers include Bob Ong, Eros Atalia, BebangSiy, Mitch Albom and Colleen Hoover.

Maine thought of her win as a validation that it only takes guts and commitment to the craft. “I really don’t know what particular thing or things push me into writing this kind of genre, well maybe, sometimes, all you need is guts,” she said.