Because she was caving under the pressures of life, etc. and also ’cause she can’t interview herself, Wina Puangco asked me to help her out with the interviews this December Book Events Season. As a result, I got to chat with her about MoarBooks, fiction and how the pains of being in a pre-med course can be converted into a pretty interesting collation of short stories.
S: Alright, let’s start from the start of this whole thing and try not to ignore the elephant in the room: you started MoarBooks with a couple of friends, yes?
W: Right. It’s mostly me though. Except when people help out or when I ask people to help out. Like you. *laughs* When we say “we”, “we” usually means “I”. Or me and Trizha.
S: What made you decide to put something like MoarBooks up, anyway? I mean, not to be tactless or mean but it can’t be too profitable, can it?
W: Yeah, it definitely isn’t. But I don’t think that profit is the point, anyway. To a certain extent it IS the point in that we need money to keep publishing things but it isn’t in that I think my priorities are fucked up enough to not really care if this can sustain me. I don’t mean that I don’t care about my sustenance but that I don’t mind working other “normal” jobs to be able to sustain this.
Anyway, I put it up because I wanted there to be somewhere where we could put out small projects–things that have been labored over and are really good but are too short to be sent out to bigger publishing houses or stuff by people who aren’t necessarily winners of anything except locking themselves up in their rooms, writing or drawing or whatever. And it’s nice that they can keep their rights (MoarBooks doesn’t take your rights) so they can send it to bigger places after. It doesn’t feel like we’re holding anyone back.
Plus I feel like it encourages people to learn how to write and to find ways to improve their craft, whether or not they have someone to teach them.
S: Where did you “learn to write”? *laughs* Siyempre, not literally.
W: In Malate (Literary Folio)? *laughs* not JUST literally rin. Although, make no mistake about it I don’t mean to say that I learned to write (or more appropriately, like Noel said, to “read”) from Malate as an organization (because a lot of the stuff we did during “org time” was goof around or get newbies to impersonate Gollum–wait ako pala yun HAHAHA), but I mean that the two people (Francine Yulo and Erika Carreon) who were my editors in Malate are really good readers and have taught me almost everything I know with regard to language and how to make something seamless or as seamless as you can manage. I dunno. I was kind of a crap editor so I think you really just get lucky sometimes.
S: How would you encourage people who don’t have the luxury of being in a school org or having people teach them what works and what doesn’t?
W: Use the internet? I don’t mean get on some crap-o tumblr and carelessly write about love using two or more adjectives in every sentence. I mean find people who are willing to critique your work and try to research about how to close-read and brush up on the basics of fiction. It’s like driving or any other skill that you learn naman eh: you just try and try and try to keep getting better.
S: How do you feel about the term “aspiring writer”?
W: Me likey. I think that’s a great term. And I think that the “aspiring” bit is always key: what kind of writer doesn’t aspire to be better? Probably someone who’s really full of him/herself. I don’t mean that I don’t want to be an established writer or someone who can do this for a living someday, I do want to be that. I’ve been sending out work and really practicing and practicing so I can get to that goal. But I just mean that all writers worth reading are people who still aspire to be better, I think.
S: What is different about your fiction?
W: I write in a format which I like to call “small fiction”. Yasunari Kawabata did something similar, later on in his life: he wrote really concise short fiction. Donald Barthelme also did something similar and Samuel Beckett too, sometimes. (Although by no means do I mean that my work is that good *laughs*) I feel like my brain has a broken processing unit. It’s difficult for me not to think in run-on sentences. Or in really short sentences. Anyway. Yeah. I’m always trying to write stories in the best possible way and I feel like while that doesn’t necessarily mean “in the shortest way”, it does imply a certain pickiness with words which results in the often short length of my stories.
S: How does that differ from flash fiction?
W: Flash fiction is always just one scene. And I feel like a lot of people write flash fiction because they’re lazy or they assume their audience to be lazy so they’re like “meh, eto maikli babasahin yan”. JEEZUS. I think even if something is short–moreso if it’s short actually–it should still be complete. This Malate alumni Carlo (Flordeliza) used to always say, “Parang anorexic na babae, wala kang makapa” whenever an incomplete story would be turned in for the mini-workshop. It shouldn’t be short just to be easy. On the contrary, I feel like shorter fiction should be more challenging to read because it gives you less clues to go on?
S: What is the Chlorine Atom Girl about?
W: It’s the first few bits of this thing I’m working on called Science Lessons. In my course (BS Psychology), we have a brutal amount of chem, bio and physics subjects–or at least brutal to someone like me to whom things like that don’t come the most naturally, so this began as a way for me to keep interested in the lessons. I wrote bit stories to go with concepts like Air Hunger in BioChem or Electromagnetic Fields in Physics (the latter isn’t included in this one though, this first volume is mostly Chemistry concepts). I also spend a lot of time in class so the dynamics of teacher-student interactions have sort of burned themselves into my brain: bored teacher/bored students, passionate teacher/bored students, passionate teacher/passionate students. So, yeah. These are short (small?) stories as science lessons. Science lessons masquerading as stories and vice versa.
S:Why Chlorine?
W: *laughs* I have an obsession with the Halogen family (Chlorine, Flourine, Bromine, Iodine) because they’re highly attractive (electronegative) but also leave really easily because of those attractions. They leave but they’re necessary to some reactions. Like Substitution and Elimination–you NEED a good leaving group for that to happen. So I just liked that. And how it feels like it’s the same way with relationships. Like people need to be with you (or with someone who will leave them) before they find whoever they’re going to be with for keeps.
S: Do you think you’re like the chlorine atom girl?
W: Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
S: Who do you think will enjoy these stories?
W: People who enjoy fiction?? I seriously don’t know. But people (read: my friends) who liked the work are usually people who like playing around with sentence construction? People who like melancholy/funny things, I guess. But that makes it sound like I mean everyone. *laughs*
S: Who are your favorite writers?
W: Siri Hustdvedt, Audrey Niffenegger, Margaret Atwood, Donald Barthelme, Samuel Beckett, Diana Wynne-Jones (kahit hindi halata).
S: Alright, thanks for your time Wina.
W: What are you talking about? I asked you to help me out with the interviews!
S: You said that to everyone else.
W: *laughs* Fine. Thanks for agreeing to help me out with the interview thangs.
S: No problem! *laughs*
For more information on Wina, head over to thechlorineatomgirl.wordpress.com; Science Lessons, Volume 1: The Chlorine Atom Girl (click here for a downloadable preview) is going to be released at Filipino Readercon (December 7th @ the Rizal Library, Ateneo De Manila University). For reservations/advanced orders, click here.
-S
The Typewriter Dailies 