About Me and This Newsletter
What I write
As a beach mom, chef’s spouse, and literature academic, these dimensions of my life (beach, food, literature) inform my creative nonfiction, short fiction, prose poems, and personal essays about motherhood and family.
I’m currently based in the city (Manila, Philippines), but ever since I lived on the beach (Boracay Island, also in my homeland, the Philippines), I find myself going back to that self over and over again in my writing. The beach as material, metaphor, and memory is my muse, my mental subconscious with its ebbs and flows, tides, waves, and currents.
I also write about my spousal life to a chef whose world is very alien and very interesting to my book-bound, school-bound professional existence. When I became a parent, like most people I went into it blissfully ignorant, and so was surprised to find myself capable of devotion to my children. I write a lot about that, too, this domestic sphere of mothering, of keeping house, while also trying to live a meaningful life outside of it—keeping a career or leaving one, as my present case may be, because with the pandemic drastically upsetting and reorganizing my personal circumstances, I’m leaning more now towards moving on, towards exploring other (and varied) ways of living.
I write on random topics and themes. I try, but I can’t keep to a singular/signature voice, style, or maintain a so-called “author’s brand”—intentionally, at least. I’ve been writing for years (online these past two pandemic years), and my whole being delights to militate against it, this imperative to come off as a coherent character, a predictable personality, a writer whose body of work is neat and shiny like a carefully curated folio. It probably doesn’t serve me well as a writer to be so devoted to variety, multiplicity, open-endedness. So please expect a merry miscellany when you go through my work here on Substack (and elsewhere).
These were my primary motivations when I opened this newsletter
To take a look at the body of written work I’ve miraculously managed to put together, little by little, during these two years of the pandemic that had sent me home to simultaneously work and mother two small children. Miraculously, because even as an overworked academic pressured to “publish-or-perish,” I barely wrote anything save for the occasional paper that was the minimal requirement to keep my job. But with the pandemic that put me in existential crisis mode, at my most worried-stricken, burnt-out state ever, and without what appears to me now as trivial publication metrics and scholarly incentives that used to haunt my professional life, I found myself writing to breathe—when I’m barely holding on, when I’m slipping away from myself. Now, more than ever, I feel very immobilized to write, immobilized by a deep sense of ruin and uncertainty about the future, and too overburdened by child care, homeschooling, and homemaking; but somehow it is in this state that I found myself driven to write, or else lose my mind.
To take a careful look at the scraps of writing that had slowly accrued into a mound of finished pieces, written in several places (on Medium and other sites, notebooks and scratch papers, journals and books), and gather the better ones for polishing and republishing in one place (Substack).
To invite friends IRL, who had been following my microblogging on Facebook for years, to subscribe for free.
Even if no one subscribes, or just a handful, I’ll carry on with this project for my own sake as a writer who needs to center herself in her (developing) work. You’re welcome to come along for the ride.
Why the newsletter is free
The republished pieces here had their first roll behind paywalls and less accessible places. I’m putting them up here for free for friends who may want to read longer, more creative work than the ones they were used to reading from me on Facebook.
Subscription is also free because, as a housebound mother with an erratic work life (I took a leave from teaching to focus on my children, and to hustle), I cannot commit to a regular publishing schedule. I’ve been on Medium, the platform I’ve been using these past two years for drafting whenever I felt compelled, and realized that I can’t publish often no matter how hard I try (and I’ve been pretty much a workaholic as a literature/writing scholar, teacher, editor). On the one hand, it could be due to the stresses of pandemic parenting. On the other hand, maybe even without a day job or the kids to look after, I’m really just a slow writer. I don’t think I’ll be prolific even with deadlines and lots of focused time to write.
How often will I update this newsletter
Once a week or so. Maybe even less frequent. I’ve got a bank of stories ready for a bit of scrubbing before sending them to your inbox, if you’ll graciously subscribe.
Are other subscribers welcome, aside from friends?
Of course. If you chanced upon this newsletter, and wouldn’t mind receiving an occasional creative work of nonfiction, short fiction, prose poetry, and personal essays, please accept this invitation to subscribe.
A final note about names
Friends IRL will find the names of my husband Donny, and my children Sofie and Theo, changed to their second names in my stories. So in textual space, they appear as Francis, Dione, and Joaquin. At first, I did it to simply hide their real names, since I began writing about them using a public platform. When I began Substack and invited friends IRL to subscribe, I thought about changing their fictional names back to their real names to avoid confusion. When I did that, it didn’t feel right. That’s because though Francis, Dione, and Joaquin were based on real people in my life, they’re not the same.
Thus, friends IRL who are also subscribers will recognize Francis, Dione, and Joaquin as my husband and children. But a fine line still exists between who they really are that I cannot adequately depict, and who they appear to be as characters in my memoirs. The boundary keeps me, their writer, in line. It keeps me respectful of their privacies even as I share a lot about our family life.
