October Occupations

After a prolonged dry spell, I have started writing a new story earlier this month. I have been quite fired up when I began, but right now I have this growing urge to file it away for a while and start writing another one. But I'm resisting it; abandoning an unfinished story, even temporarily, is something out of character for me. In any case, I'll still plod on and churn out a new story soon. At the same time, reading Kristian Cordero's Palanca-winning story last month had made me start thinking of writing fiction in Filipino, despite my total lack of confidence in and mastery of the language. I have even started thinking of buying Jun Cruz Reyes' Utos ng Hari at Iba Pang Mga Kuwento and Mes de Guzman's Barriotic Punk as an "introduction". The way I see it, it'll be foolish of me to start writing stories in Filipino if I have read so few of them.

Speaking of reading, I have been doing some of that lately. I have already finished Sarge Lacuesta's maddeningly terrific White Elephants: Stories and my friend Vic Torres' wonderful travel book Ciudad Murada, and I'm almost done with Bing Sitoy's provocative Jungle Planet and Other Stories. I plan on reviewing these in the near future. And still on books, I've added three more to my personal library: Gilda Cordero Fernando's The Butcher, the Baker, the Candlestick Maker, the Philippine PEN Anthology of Short Stories 1962, and Philippine Writings. And I purchased all three for the price of one from the just-concluded mini-bookfair in Megamall yesterday.

And finally, today's Sunday Times Magazine published an overdue feature on the Palancas--well, sort of. It focuses on a Bloc mate of mine, but the article underwhelmed me. It really didn't focus on him. I guess the fact that no one is credited as its writer should've been a clue.