Not a Pervert Title

Aaaah... read "The First Time I Got Paid For It" at Kinokuniya this afternoon, during a downpour downtown. Mostly 2-pager snippets describing rags-to-riches accounts of (now) famous writers who were scraping-barrel-bottom poor at one point of their lives (but now have their dream Swiss chalets, villa in the country and are just short of heaping more onto their money pile at the expense of the hapless book buyer).

Strange thing is, books as such seem to be very popular, mostly coz they hit a vulnerable spot - a weak link, chink in the armour or what-have-you in their targetted audience (ie, those who walk around with a "In need of recognition... of any kind" sign emblazoned on their foreheads).

Anyways, with nose buried between the pages I read thru' half the book in two hours (had to be extremely good or really bad - go figure...)

Of course the Hollywood bigwigs had their obligatory say, most of them describing how their big break came about. It was pleasant reading, you know, writers reading about other writers, and wishing stuff that happened to them would happen to you too... (actually if they are real writers, probably half the stuff are gross exaggeration anyways...) And it wasn't just about the money either (though that would help). If you are writing for money, you may as well jump into the feng-shui bandwagon and get rich telling people what common sense had been trying to do all these while. While at it, throw in some obligatory seminars, workshops and TV appearances to cash in on the rakings-er-ratings. Perfect.

Anyhow, it was good encouragement to know that even writers like Bocho, Alda, Ephron and Goldberg had suffered the short end of the hustling game at some point... then again, for every Alda, there are probably 376 wannabes still bussing tables trying to edge their scripts onto the studio executives' desks.

One fella they didn't have in there was Akiva Goldsman (he wasn't a 'somebody' during time of print). And who could ever leave Orson Welles out? And live? No matter what stories other writers tell about themselves, nothing beats personal experience, I believe. That way, there's always a ring of authenticity to the story, no matter how many times it has been rehashed.

And yeah, decided to save my money and not contribute to Swiss chalet #3 for some hot writer who already make a ton of money.

Whenever I kick myself senseless over the rubbish I churn out, remind me God, to be thankful for the ability to write in the first place.