Actor Richard E. Grant processed his grief by writing and name-dropping

From latimes.com

When Richard E. Grant was 10 years old, he fell asleep in the backseat of the car. Upon awakening, he saw his mother and a friend of his father’s having sex in the front seat.

This was obviously traumatic, so Grant, having no one he could talk to about it, started keeping a diary. It is a habit that Grant, 66, has maintained ever since. His past diaries produced two fun books about his day job: “With Nails: The Film Diaries of Richard E. Grant,” which takes its name from his breakout role in “Withnail and I”; and “The Wah Wah Diaries,” about directing an autobiographical movie, “Wah-Wah.”

But his writing never meant more to him than it did between December 2020, when his beloved wife, Joan Washington, a highly acclaimed dialect coach, was diagnosed with cancer, and the following September, when she died.

“Your memory forgets stuff and tricks you, and I wanted to have a record of every day and every stage we went through together,” says Grant, whose new book, “A Pocketful of Happiness,” charts those terrible times but also explores their 38 years together. “My diary was a way of trying to hold on to and capture all that.”

It was also important for Grant to capture the generosity of the 99% of his friends who “stepped up and were beyond extraordinary” throughout the crisis, including famous ones like Gabriel Byrne. (“The one percent who didn’t are the ones I’ll never speak to again,” he says vehemently. “I will cross the road and I will blank them.”)

Grant initially refused approaches from publishers this time, but his daughter thought it would be good for him. He agreed to do it only if he could avoid it being “all doom and gloom.” So the book encompasses their full relationship, alongside stories from his career, weaving in his experience making “Can You Ever Forgive Me” with Melissa McCarthy and the Oscar nomination that followed — as well as encounters with Barbra Streisand, whom Grant has been obsessed with nearly his entire life.

Speaking recently by video from his home in England (with the background blurred because “I’m a lifelong hoarder and everything is floor to ceiling stuff”), Grant is alternatively pensive about his wife and charmingly chatty as we discuss celebrities we admire. In other words, the book is an accurate reflection of Grant in real life.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Is it difficult talking about her illness and death all over again now, doing press for the book?

I’m grateful to be talking to you about our life together while sitting in the room where she taught actors. People who are grieved want to talk about the person who is gone. But I don’t want to talk about the suffering part without the other 38 years.

You write that you “travel in hope.” Did that help with this ordeal or did all this change you?

It profoundly changes you, obviously, but your essential nature is unchanged. My DNA glass is three-quarters full now.

You become very conscious of living in the day, for the moment, knowing that time is running out. But there’s a parallel track where the level of exhaustion that the person who’s dying has is so overwhelming.You want them to be relieved of it but you want to hold on to every minute you still have. It’s a fierce mental and emotional battle. But still, I travelled in hope.

Joan’s parting charge for you was to find a “pocketful of happiness” each day. Was that doable in the early days of grieving? What about now?

I’m conscious of trying to follow her mantra and it has been incredibly helpful even though there are days you are tsunamied by grief. I just sold our summer home in France that we had for 35 years and it feels like a second bereavement.

Somebody who read the book carved the title in wood for me so I have three of those around the house as reminders. And I have it on my laptop and my phone.

You write about “memory-charged” objects that you bought together. Do they lose their power without her there with you?

I feel like it’s an ongoing conversation, and I feel reassured by having all of the stuff and all the stories around them.

It’s like how I was so grieved by that idea of not being able to share my day with her in all the detail, [telling her about details like]: Is that an Edward Hopper behind you and a baseball bat on the wall? But then I thought that after 38 years I know what her response would be, how she’d be analysing your accent in Brooklyn. So it’s still an ongoing conversation. Please know that I’m not saying out loud, “Oh, I said to Stuart…” but in my head it’s still there and I find that a very reassuring way of dealing with this loss.

Grant, third from left, on the set of “Spice World” with the Spice Girls. The actor confesses to being “an inveterate name-dropper.”

 

(Photo from Richard E. Grant)

In “The Lesson,” your latest film, you play a father and husband who is a horrific bully, yet he’s also dealing with a deep personal loss. Was that a challenge or was it cathartic?

It was my first job with real substance after Joan died and playing the loss was a good way of channelling and dealing with grief.

Was it tricky to shift from writing about Joan’s radiation to, say, an encounter with Jennifer Aniston or Sting?

I am an inveterate name dropper as you have just very politely pointed out. I left it to the editor to decide whether something was too much of a weird gear shift and she just said, “That is a reflection of how your brain works.”

How much did you edit or rewrite the diary entries for publication?

A diary is not written in the twilight of your life looking back where you can “rosy-glowsy” something and re-edit and re-imagine what happened. In a diary you don’t know what’s coming tomorrow, and that’s what gives it the immediacy and authenticity and value. Nothing was revisited afterwards in the diary entries.

And when I was seesawing backward in time I also relied on diaries and our letters rather than trying to fashion something fancier out of it. I think you would sniff that out very fast.

I found an old biscuit tin that I thought had a piece of Christmas cake left in it, but I found a stash of letters that Joan and I had written to each other. Finding that cake tin stuffed with letters, I could hear her voice was so powerful. It was absolutely golden. I was so thrilled, and, of course, heartsore, but joy overwhelmed the sadness.

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2023-07-28/actor-richard-e-grant-processed-his-grief-by-writing-and-name-dropping

Virginia Woolf, an entire life in a notebook

From english.elpais.com

The writer’s monumental diaries have been published in five volumes. In them, she outlines her novels and essays, mixes genres and records her moods… including suicidal thoughts

The modern self and its restlessness can find fertile ground in diaries. It’s hard to imagine that one can fully understand the complex personality of 19th and 20th century artists without them… especially since they used the medium to give birth to their creations. Between fiction and manifesto, a diary isn’t merely a vehicle for introspection and emotional release. For artists, it’s a way of looking at themselves in the mirror.

One particularly impressive corpus – more than 3,000 pages long – is André Gide’s diary.

The French writer – who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1947 – was greatly admired by Virginia Woolf. In her own personal papers, the British writer wrote, in November of 1939, “how does one compete with Gide’s concentration & lucidity while writing your [own] diary?”

Other famous diaries have been penned by figures such as the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa, whose writings show his alienation from the world; Franz Kafka, whose disappointing intimate experiences are intertwined with his literary defeats; the shocking and delicious 1927 Diary, by Katherine Mansfield, which her husband edited to share with the world. Or the unpublished novel and musings that Irène Némirovski kept in her bag, next to an orange, before perishing in the Holocaust.

From Mansfield’s short stories and diary, Woolf – who wrote iconic novels such as To the Lighthouse and extended essays including A Room of One’s Own – learned to include everyday life in her writing and to link what one observes with what one feels. In A Writer’s Diary – published in 1953, 12 years after her death – one can attest to how she balances the weakness of the spirit with its vitality. Just as she looked at the precipice of the modern world (and at her own existence), Anaïs Nin – a French-born American diarist – noted that the diary “is my hashish and my opium pipe… it drives me to write almost at the same time as I live.”

To this incomplete list would be added The Business of Living, by the Italian writer Cesare Pavese. His diary – born in October of 1935 – ended just a few days before the author’s suicide, in 1950. Similar circumstances occur with Virginia Woolf’s diary, which she completed on March 24, 1941, just four days before she filled her pockets with stones and took her own life, throwing herself in the River Ouse, in East Sussex.

Other dramatic diaries include War: A Memoir (1945), by the French novelist Marguerite Duras, or the solemn Diary, by Witold Gombrowicz, who wrote – between utopia and disenchantment – to save himself, “for fear of degradation and total collapse between the waves of trivial life.” He also admitted to have written “with reluctance,” because “insincere sincerity” tired him. The Polish absurdist often asked the eternal question: Who am I writing for?

Later would come the stark Patricia Highsmith: Her Diaries and Notebooks (1941-1995), published posthumously. She died the same year that her personal writings stopped – they were full of personal demons and powerful opinions. Similarly turbulent works were

Alejandra Pizarnik’s Diary: The Temptation of Failure; Julio Ramón Ribeyro’s Personal Diary; Fickle Dietary, by Enrique Vila-Matas, or The Diaries of Emilio Renzi, by Ricardo Piglia, in which the Argentine author chronicles his shadow self.

Added to this collection of publicly-available diaries are the texts written over the course of 26 years by Virginia Woolf. Crammed into 30 notebooks that are preserved in the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library, they were released in five volumes, in a commendable effort by Anne Olivier Bell, the legendary British art scholar. Across the five edited diaries – released between 1979 and 1985 – the reader can glimpse common themes, as well as the hint of complicity in the intertextual crossroads. Bell – in addition to making the original English editions accessible – also enriched them with an encyclopaedic critical apparatus for literary scholars.

Through these pages, the feminist who fought for women’s rights feels free… albeit not fully emancipated. The reader meets the author and her sister, Vanessa, both members of the Bloomsbury Group – a collective of British writers, philosophers and artists who pushed for modern attitudes in the first-half of the 20th century. Other characters are John Maynard Keynes, Lytton Strachey and E. M. Forster.

In her diaries, the London urbanite attempts to come to terms with the existence of the natural landscape, which, through her novels, she depicts in post-impressionist ways, with a marked propensity for colour. At times, the loyal wife foresees her end… while also noting that her husband, Leonard – who helped publish Virginia’s novels – is working in the garden, pruning flowers.

Apart from the familial and social network – which makes up a large part of the Diaries – Woolf also uses the pages to analyse her moods and the evolution of her personality. “It amuses me to discover how a person develops,” she wrote, in December of 1919. The divine banality of daily life is also dissected in her notebooks, while there’s also correspondence that preceded the drafting of Modern Fiction – a famous essay by Woolf that acted as a guide for writers of modern fiction, encouraging them to write what they feel and observe: “The mind receives endless impressions… trivial, fantastic, evanescent…”

In all five editions, the reader will be able to notice that Woolf doesn’t discriminate between genres when it comes to writing. In this way, her diaries and letters maintain a healthy dialogue surrounding the conception and writing of her great novels and famous essays. She treated these projects as defences against the ravages of life.

At one point, in September of 1922, she unequivocally dismisses James Joyce, writing: “I have finished Ulysses & I think it’s a failed work. I think he doesn’t lack talent… [but the book] is nauseating, pretentious. It’s vulgar.” She’s convinced that “a first-class writer respects writing too much to resort to cheating, provocation or tricks.” She inevitably distanced herself from the Irish writer. In her diaries, she also quoted T.S. Eliot, who supposedly told her that, after writing Ulysses, Joyce had “destroyed the whole of the 19th-century novel. It left [him] with nothing to write another book on.”

A few months before this – before the publication of Jacob’s Room (1922), her third novel – she noted: “I think that, at the age of 40, I’ve discovered how to say something with my own voice.” When looking at the genesis of Mrs. Dalloway (1924), she scribbled about her intention to turn it into “a study on madness and suicide” – concepts that would form part of her stormy intimacy. “What do I feel about my writing?” she wrote in June of 1923. “Dostoevesky said that you have to write from the depths of feeling. Should I do that? Or should I write stories with words, loving them as I so love them?”

When referring to one work she published, she scolds herself, saying that “there’s an excess of ideas.” She is also quite self-aware: “I live totally within my imagination, I depend on those flashes of thought that assail me as I walk… things that go around in my head, as in a perpetual festive parade.” There are worries about critics – who may reproach her – as well as moments of elation: “Now I can write, write and write, the great feeling of happiness in the world.” And, of course, there’s the recognition of language’s fallibility: “All these words cannot express what I want to say,” she lamented, in April of 1935.

In September 1926, Woolf records a moment of depression. It’s not the first, nor the last. In October 1934, she would write: “I’m low in morale. It’s the end of the book. I’ve searched in [past diaries] and I have found the same sadness after [writing] The Waves. After finishing To the Lighthouse, I remember contemplating suicide.” This is the same woman who, in April of 1927, wrote happily under the Sicillian sun: “I would like to travel all my life, wandering among the ruins and watching the schooners arrive. I would prefer to write, but perhaps it’s better to imagine books.” In December of 1929, while looking through the antique shops in Rome, she confesses that “the variations of each phrase and the unsuccessful attempts” in the creative process of The Waves have turned her notebook “into a lunatic’s dream.”

On May 2, 1932, she records that “a lobster has landed in the olive tree.” And, on May 18, she’s “sitting by an open window in the bay where Shelley (the poet) drowned.” She adores Greece and says she wants to buy a big Spanish mule, yet her fondness for London underlies every comment en route.

The diaries contain all sorts of images, from a lighthouse seen through foggy glass, to dragonflies floating in the air. There’s the anguish of glimpsing dementia, the joy of drinking coffee on a balcony above lemon trees and anxiety about paying the rent in Tavistock Square. Frustration about trying to combat social injustice with a text, happiness about strong book sales and doubt about whether a character should have been written differently. There’s the sighting of a German bomber, or the assumption that, following the publication of A Room of One’s Own, the critics will hint that she’s a lesbian. “A mind… [is] life itself in its passing,” she notes, in May of 1929. Her diary is the feverish exercise of translating the stream of consciousness onto a page.

“Writing must be a daily pleasure,” she reminds herself, in December of 1940, near the end of her life. By this point, she’s in the cold winter (of both the seasons and her time on Earth). The diary provides her with a continuous exercise in writing, one that goes beyond the steady composition of her novels. A space opens up that allows writing and intimacy to go hand-in-hand.

Woolf dedicated herself to keeping her diary until end of her days, driven by a need to record her entire life in 30 notebooks “not so much to tell the truth as to justify her state of mind,” as she wrote in the collection Memoirs of a Novelist, referring to Frances Ann Willatt – the fictional writer that Woolf invented to explore the nature of the biography. One of her biographers – Lyndall Gordon – points out that the character is clearly based on Woolf herself.

https://english.elpais.com/culture/2023-07-12/virginia-woolf-an-entire-life-in-a-notebook.html

Why Writers Write

From canadianinquirer.net

By Matte Laurel-Zalko

How society thinks or perceives is based largely on what journalists, columnists, writers, authors, speech-writers and bloggers write. It’s often been said that “history is written by victors” and that according to American novelist and essayist, William H. Gass, “The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words.”  Writing is such a powerful tool used in our everyday lives — it is an essential communication skill utilised to make a permanent record, to store and share information, to convey, and yes, to influence and change the world (for the better hopefully). Writing is believed to be the most high-powered weapon to help shape the world we live in.

The main reason why we write is that it helps us communicate effectively with others. It really is a no-brainer that if one can’t write, one simply can’t communicate with others. When we write to others, it is because we want to stimulate a reaction, an interest, a response, and a conversation from others. When we write for ourselves, we use writing as a tool to help us learn, think, and understand. Writing for ourselves helps us express our feelings, thoughts, and opinions. There are five purposes writers use to write: to persuade their readers, to express their opinions and feelings, to inform their readers, to create a literary work, and lastly, writing activities yield a great number of emotional, physiological, and intellectual benefits to individuals. 

Based on my own experience, there are so many benefits one can gain from writing: it can be therapeutic and can be a form of cathartic stress relief; it gives you an avenue where you can vent and express your feelings, opinions, and frustrations; it allows you to reflect and clarify your thoughts; it keeps your mind refreshed and challenged therefore it’s good for your brain; it turns you into a better reader and a more effective communicator; it’s a great creativity jumpstart; and enables you to be a more passionate version of yourself. 

LEARNING HOW TO WRITE

(Photo of the book, Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl, photo courtesy of Indigo bookstore)

While living and studying in London, England, I discovered my passion for writing at the age of 14 — by keeping a secret diary. I was actually inspired by Anne Frank after reading “The Diary of a Young Girl.” I wrote diligently in my diary every day about what happened at my school, Marymount International School; I wrote about what I ate; what made me sad and angry; what made me happy; what I was thankful for; I wrote about my secret crushes; I wrote about my family, and about my hopes and dreams. 

Mainly, I wrote about my innermost secrets in my life — experiences that I can’t share with anyone, not even to those who are closest to me. My diaries became my sanctuaries and safe havens. I had different types of diaries: I had diaries that had locks, I had colourful and scented notebooks that I used to buy from WHSmith at Oxford Street or from the stalls of the famous Portobello Road in Notting Hill Market. Fast forward to this day, I still keep a diary albeit a digital one! My secret diaries are the doors to my soul, my heart, and my mind. 

LEARNING FROM LITERARY GIANTS 

There are so many writers that one admires and learns from. Through the years, I found myself totally immersed in Dostoevsky’s works — I particularly loved “Crime and Punishment” — I’ve read this masterpiece a hundred times, literally (pardon the pun) and I still read it when I’m in the mood for soul searching. I love George Orwell’s “1984” and “Animal Farm.”  I still swoon over Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice”! If I want a bit of a fright, I’d always turn to Edgar Allan Poe’s classics. I’ve always been a voracious reader ever since I learned to read! Through these literary giants, I learned to avoid using the word “very” as it’s apparently a weak word that diminishes your writing!

(Photo of the book cover, Point of Order by Joe Guevara, photo courtesy of Carousell)

When I was a child, my late maternal grandfather would bribe me with Serg’s chocolates and either Chiz Curls or Chippy snacks if I read him the Manila Bulletin from front to back, even the obituary section on a daily basis! I still remember my grandfather’s preferred column, “Point of View,” by columnist Jose “Joe” Guevara. My grandfather loved reading his articles because they were both Batangueños. Also, my grandfather favoured Joe Guevara’s “bullet points” writing style and tradition over other Manila Bulletin columnists. As per my 8-year-old self, I could barely understand what Joe Guevara wrote about back then! Nevertheless, it was a great introduction to reading well-written articles and I only have my grandfather to thank for!

These days, I have my own favourite modern-day columnists from the Philippines. I may be based now in Vancouver, but thank heavens for modern technology, I’m able to read their articles back home through online. When I read the articles of these much-admired Filipino columnists, I always feel as though I’m transported back to the Philippines sipping my beloved cafe mocha at The Curator while I read their articles! I’m fortunate to be connected with two of these highly esteemed Filipino columnists through Facebook and they’ve been so generous and kind to share with us why they write and how they started as writers. 

MONIQUE TODA: LIFESTYLE COLUMNIST FOR THE PHILIPPINE STAR

(Ms. Monique Toda, photo courtesy of Monique Toda’s Facebook profile.)

Monique Toda is the total package. She’s beauty and brains and a K-Drama connoisseur. In her past life, she headed the public relations and communications department of two of Manila’s top luxury hotels, New World and Raffles Fairmont Hotel. She’s now focusing on her lovable dogs and has a lifestyle column, “All in My Head,” where she writes passionately about anything from post-pandemic anxiety, K-dramas, celebrities, health and wellness, food and beverage and the modern Filipina in the evolution of Maria Clara. She also writes restaurant reviews for The Tatler Dining Guide. 

I’m drawn to Monique not just as a lifestyle writer, but as a woman who is a dog-lover and a woman who has a strong bond with her close female friends — they call themselves Seoul Sisters. Apparently, they meet regularly discussing their passion for anything Korean: K-dramas, celebrities and food — which is something I totally associate with because here in Vancouver, I belong to a group called Sisterhood Tribe and just like Monique’s Seoul Sisters, we also bond over life’s many pleasures and sorrows. I gravitate towards Monique’s articles because I share her love for food, travel, and dramedies. Suffice to say, I find her totally relatable!  I also find it a bonus to know that she’s such a kind person and so willing and generous to share her experiences as a writer. Plus, she shares the same name as my youngest sister! 

My two favourite articles that Monique wrote would have to be “The Reality and Fantasy of Ageing Gracefully” which is about the struggles of ageing gracefully! My other much-loved article of hers is “A Moveable Feast with Peninsulares” — an article about the delectable dishes one could indulge in at the legendary hotel, The Peninsula Manila, which incidentally happens to be my second home because I had my first job there as a young waitress at the Spices restaurant in the early 90’s.

When asked how she started writing for the Philippine Star in 2019, Monique shares, “I was asked to write for the Philippine Star by editor Millet Mananquil. We both had this love for K-Dramas, and she wanted me to share what I knew since I’ve been into it for a few years already. Aside from anything Hallyu, I write about different topics, which is why my column is called All in My Head. I literally write what I am thinking about at the moment.”

Another thing I found relatable to Monique was how she learned to write. Monique says, “I have always been writing, even since I was very young. I would write in journals or diaries constantly. Then I got into PR and Marketing as a career, which involves a lot of writing.”

What made you want to become a journalist? Monique replies, “I never sought out to be a journalist. It just happened. In my opinion, it’s very exciting.”

(Ms. Monique Toda, photo courtesy of Monique Toda’s Facebook profile.)

I just had to ask her about her favourite story to write and why. Monique responds, “Oh, there are too many favourite stories to mention. What really gives me satisfaction from writing is learning new things and meeting new people. My world is so much bigger, and I worked in a hotel. Yet, writing is more expansive in terms of knowledge and scope.” Aha. Another commonality we share: we’re both past hoteliers and we also have common friends in the hospitality industry! 

Lastly, when it comes to interviewing famous personalities, who’s on your bucket list and why? Monique replies, “I want to interview many people. In Korean entertainment, it’s actor Lee Min Ho and King of Kpop G-Dragon. But my ultimate bucket list interview is Elon Musk.” Knowing Monique and her indomitable nature, it’s just a matter of time when we can all read her interview with Elon Musk! 

BOO CHANCO: BUSINESS COLUMNIST FOR THE PHILIPPINE STAR

(Mr. Boo Chanco, photo courtesy of Boo Chanco’s Facebook profile.)

Pedro Chanco III, or famously known as Boo Chanco is an old school journalist with interests in economics and politics. He is a distinguished alumnus of The University of the Philippines College of Mass Communications. At only 19 years old, Boo Chanco was a cub reporter for ABS-CBN and was one of the two reporters who covered Ninoy Aquino’s Opposition Party’s Miting de Avance, which would be known in history as the 1971 Plaza Miranda Bombing. 

Later on, he became the Editor for the now defunct Manila Chronicle and in 2010, he retired as the Senior Vice President for the Lopez Group of Companies’ Corporate Communications. Mr. Chanco is also a multi-awarded journalist having been recently recognized as Newspaper Business Opinion Writer of the Year by the Rotary Club of Manila.  Prior to that, he also received the Glory Awards during the UPCMC annual homecoming in 2018.

If you want to read about the current political or economic pulse of the Philippines, you must read Mr. Chanco’s articles at the Philippine Star, where he is currently its business columnist. My two most favoured articles of Mr. Chanco would have to be: Left Behind, a compelling story about the poor health of most Filipinos, and the other article is Tourism Promotion, an article that is so timely due to the new tourism slogan “Love Philippines” controversy. 

His most recent article, Mass Housing,  about the housing problem in the Philippines is also quite an eye opener and he opines that the only way it can be solved is “if the very profitable private property developers work with the government towards a sustainable solution.” I’m a huge fan of Mr. Boo Chanco, unabashedly.

With regard to how he started writing for Philippine Star, Mr. Chanco says, “I started writing for the Philippine Star in the early 90s on the invitation of Max Soliven, its publisher. I was then writing for the Manila Chronicle in addition to my work as VP News and Public Affairs of ABS-CBN. I had been writing columns for various publications since the 80s. I wrote a Corporate Communications column for Business Day; then I wrote on the op/ed page for the Inquirer after EDSA, moved to Malaya, then was editor of the Manila Chronicle and wrote an op/ed column there too in addition to the day’s editorial. Max was a good friend and he convinced me to move to the Star, writing opinion for its Business section.”

When asked why he writes, Mr. Chanco responds, “Essentially, I write as a means to gather my thoughts in an organised manner so as to make heads and tails of the events of the times. It is like writing a diary except it is very public and involves public issues and personalities. These days, I write to keep my brain working and fight off the onset of Alzheimer. I believe that unless we use our brain, we lose it. And it is a means to again, figure out what is going on in the world around us.”

(Mr. Boo Chanco, photo courtesy of Boo Chanco’s Facebook profile.)

Please share what made you want to become a journalist, Mr. Chanco shares,  “I thought I wanted to be an economist even if being a journalist was something I also wanted to do even back in high school. I was in college during the turbulent 70s with student activism at its height. I figured being in journalism will enable me to get into the middle of it all and also advance the causes which were important to us at that time. Then I took a summer job as a cub reporter at ABS-CBN in the summer before my senior year. I enjoyed it so much I almost didn’t complete my college degree until martial law closed down the network. I enjoyed covering big events, hosting TV news specials and even annotating political rallies like the one in Plaza Miranda that ended in a carnage. I was the youngest among the reporters on coverage and that gave me a sense of doing something important at an early age.”

I wanted to find out what was his favourite story to write and why? He answers, “I really don’t have favourite stories. Stories are stories and it all depends on what seems to be most important to people at that time. I took up graduate units in economics and I like trying to explain economic developments in language that common readers can understand. Economics is important and it is unfortunate that it is not well explained on the whole. The quality of our lives depends on economic decisions being made. Unfortunately, populist politics always end up trying to repeal the economic law of supply and demand, so to speak. So, I find a need to try to make ordinary readers understand what we are getting into.”

When it comes to interviewing famous personalities, who’s on your bucket list and why? Mr. Chanco replies, “I have no favourite personalities. But business entrepreneurs who have made a fortune starting from scratch always fascinate me. It is nice to write their stories because someone out there may get inspired enough to try to replicate the success and that’s good for our country’s economy. But always be careful not to write puff pieces that serve no purpose but to bloat a personality’s ego. Always be ready to ask the tough and often embarrassing questions.”

Ms. Monique Toda and Mr. Boo Chanco are truly inspirational writers. They make me believe in the power of my own thoughts and words as a columnist. In March 2020, I was given a wonderful opportunity to write what’s on one’s mind via “Maria in Vancouver,” a column where I can freely share my musings, opinions, and life experiences publicly. I find it such incredible luck to have one of my dreams turn into a reality: from writing diaries to writing a column for Canada’s largest Filipino-Canadian news website and newspaper. 

As a new columnist, I make it a point to keep learning about writing techniques on a daily basis. I read my favourite columnists’ works and through their writings, I gained a lot of invaluable tips. Recently, I learned from Ms. Monique Toda and Mr. Boo Chanco the importance of expressing one’s viewpoints and beliefs with utmost authenticity — which is really the key secret to writing effectively. You just have to be honest and true to your words and you’ll find that your writing will flow easily!

https://canadianinquirer.net/2023/07/08/why-writers-write/