Back in the early 2000s, one of my fonder blog-related memories was being part of an adobo blog-a-thon, back when I was getting my feet wet in blogging. The idea was that different bloggers would write something, anything, about adobo — a short essay, a recipe, even fiction or poetry if it moved them — with the different links to each other’s blogs. It was fun, even exciting, and I felt linked to this community somehow, imagining other writers I barely knew (and now I know some of them pretty well) at their keyboards, crafting their pieces and pressing the Send button simultaneously, our humble digital testaments to this culinary and ethnic connection.

Eight years later, in 2011, I can’t imagine myself being part of something like that anymore. It’s not because I’ve become indifferent to such communal endeavors; it’s mostly because I just don’t have much time. But it’s also because there’s been a shift, on my part, in the substance and mechanics of content creation and how people engage with this. In short, I think my “writing,” in all senses of the word, changed because these writing forums themselves changed as well.
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Not so long ago I was talking with some academics (or some writers, I can’t remember), and the conversation turned to another writer (or academic, I can’t remember) who was — make your choice:

• Getting invited everywhere
• Getting all the editing/teaching gigs
• Getting published everywhere
• Et cetera

And then someone said:

Well — that’s because she’s one of those.

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And so it ends, this experiment in kicking procrastination in the ass. 50,000 words in 29 days. Not a bad thing, considering the fact that I have zero experience in writing fiction and that I started this project with no outline or any real plot. I came up with the one-sentence plot summary only the week before NaNoWriMo began. In that sense it’s not really about procrastination, but simply a way to see if I could actually do it. Guess I’m crossing that off my list now. (I’m also turning 40 in a couple of weeks, and so a novel seemed like a perfect birthday present to myself.)

The story, as it stands, is about a minor catastrophe that occurs in the Philippines: one day, a random bunch of people wake up and discover they are turning into Hollywood celebrities. Something of a disaster, one might argue. The guy I happened to sit next to on a plane a couple of weeks ago said that it reminded him of “The Metamorphosis,” only that this involved “a different kind of grotesque.” The fun thing about this transformation was that it wasn’t exactly a disease; why bother looking for a cure when one could, conceivably, not mind looking like George Clooney?

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So I realized that if I created a one-time character that seemed like he was on, say, amphetamines, and had seen a lot of, say, David Mamet plays, he would talk a lot, and I mean a lot, without having to really engage in dialogue. A great way of increasing your word count, plus he seemed like a good vehicle for some (obviously wrong-headed) ideas to put out there:

— Know what I think? Want to know what I think? I think this is the very… Pol pauses, thinking of the right word in Tagalog. — This is the very fruition of this history, our history. It has all led up to this. You and me, sitting right here. Right here. I think maybe that’s why we were chosen, for the changes, you know? Not happening to anyone else. We were chosen. You were chosen, Pol says, jabbing a finger in Tom Cruise’s direction. — Right? We read in English, we speak English, we write in English. That makes us more adaptable than anyone else. Only learning Tagalog or whatever, that’s what will make us a stunted nation. This is why we get to work all over the world, on cruise ships and ocean liners and restaurants and in Saudi, know what I mean? Because we can speak English. That’s how we got into the Navy in the first place. Because people could give us orders and we could follow them properly. Tagalog doesn’t earn you any money. Tell me of one industry, one profession, anywhere, where speaking Tagalog is an advantage. Just one. Tell me. I can’t think of any. It pulls you down if you ask me. It pulls you down if that’s all you know.

— You have to see the big picture though. What I’m saying is, this may all sound like some horrible disadvantage. Like the Americans and the Japanese and the Spaniards before them came and messed us up. But I can say that we can turn this into some sort of advantage. Advantages and disadvantages again. Turn the disadvantage into an advantage. Pol puts his hands together in a clasp, moves them from left to right. — Turn the disadvantage. Pol moves his hands to the right. — Into an advantage. See what I mean, huh? They may have messed us up, taken our land, polluted our rivers. But you got to think of it this way. It’s not a disadvantage, it’s an advantage. They can’t take our natural resources whatever they do. Our natural resources are our mind. It’s our mind. We must never forget that. It’s inside you, this gift, this gift of the Filipino mind. Forget this sky, forget the trees, all that stuff. Global warming will kill us all eventually, know what I’m saying? Let your kid watch cartoons all day. That will sharpen his mind, teach him better English. It’s our mind, our ingenuity that makes sense, that makes us better people. That capacity to speak English. All these people close their eyes, listen to us speak, and can’t tell us from the real thing. My god, it’s because we speak English in our sleep. We dream in English. We dream in English.

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Also from the same chapter excerpted in the previous post.

You might be wondering what all this is about, come to think of it. The novel, American Idols, is about a call-center employee in the Philippines who wakes up one day and discovers he is turning into Tom Cruise. Here he is at work:

Tom Cruise clears his throat. He is still on mute. Slowly Tom Cruise practices his vowels, stretching them out as long as he can.

Baaaaaseball. In Tom Cruise’s head: Not besbol.

The accents did not come naturally. Tom Cruise had to loosen his tongue, to unlearn years of speech.

Baaaaaaaat. Tom Cruise’s mouth makes a rectangle. Filipinos usually pronounce it closer to But.

He remembers being laughed at by some members of the class when he pronounced the word Salmon with a short A and the letter L, lingering and tucked inside the word.

Peeeeeeetsuh. Not picha like his father used to say. — Tonight we’ll eat some picha pie, Tom Cruise hears his father speak in his head.

Tom Cruise had asked his wife in the morning at the dinner table how Salmon was pronounced and Delphine quickly replied. — With a silent L, she said.

Faaaaaashion. Not pasyon.

Delphine did not know it was a long A either. — Not saaamon? She asked.

Boooooowling. Not balling.

— Salmon, Tom Cruise said properly. — With a long A. It was a fish he had neither tasted nor seen.

Fuhluhpeeeeeenooooow. Not Feeleepeeno.

— Salmon, Tom Cruise tells himself. — Salmon.

— American English is all about exaggerated vowels, he tells himself. AmSpeak is about exaggeration.

You are American, Tom Cruise tells himself to psych himself up. You are American. You are one of them. You are American. Not Fuhluhpeeeeeenooooow.

Tom Cruise logs on and watches the queue fill up with American names.

Time to perform.

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