Heartbreak and Redemption

I have a friend who's a writer.

From what I know of her, she doesn't write because she "has to" or "needs to". My friend writes because it's one way for her to make sense of a world that is totally incomprehensible to logic and reason. She writes because it's one way to make the tiny voice that is her 'self' be heard over the babel of daily life that ignores cries of the heart.

So, this friend of mine tries to break into local literature by going through the motions of the local literature's recognition system. This includes applying for the national writers' workshops, sending contributions to Free Press magazine (the only outlet for writers here), competing for the much-vaunted Palanca awards, yadda-yadda.

So far, no luck.

The thing is, I think my friend's stories are damn good. These are the stories I would like to read. About people living lives we can all identify and sympathize with: stories about sadness, about loneliness, about the search for redemption, about love and its various, distorted faces, etc. These are stories about being human: real-life humans who make mistakes that have consequences not only to themselves but to the people around them.

And not a one about having an epiphany or material impoverishment or... Eh.

Because she writes 'differently'-- because she isn't writing the social-realist scene-- the local writing community doesn't seem to be listening. Which is a depressing thought: I can picture the local literature scene as a giant black hole that gobbles up everything with the apathetical ineptitude of Pac-man. Double eh.

I've been telling her to be upbeat about it because, as a voracious reader, I know what I like and I consider her stories to be great reading. But everytime she gets a no-response from her submissions, she gets more disheartened. And I get more angry.

It's not about seeking recognition for being a writer but about seeking affirmation for her writing. This is her soul on the page; this is her heart in your hand. And it shouldn't be like that. Great writing should not be met with indifference. Nor even silence.

So: my friend is thinking of giving up writing. After all, what's the point, right? In fact, she's downright depressed about it. Me, I'm pissed. Because it would be a crime if she would give up writing, to give up period. Her stories, to paraphrase Kafka, affect me like a disaster, that grieve me deeply like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide.

And to stop that, to stop writing would be another senseless act of an indifferent world.