A.D. Capili

What was your favorite book as a child?

There was this American textbook that I found in the library when I was in grade 2 or 3 — it was probably donated to our school or bought secondhand because it had the name of an American school stamped on some pages and the names of the kids who had borrowed it scrawled in big round letters at the back. It had many stories, like one about a man who didn’t want to wash his dishes, a patchwork kind of animal, and another about a Chinese boy (which has been criticized in recent years for stereotyping). But I loved that book and I remember reading all the stories over and over again.

What was the original reason or motivation why you started writing creatively?

When I got to university I started reading short stories in Filipino written by some of our great authors like Jun Cruz Reyes, Luwalhati Bautista, and Benjamin Pascual. And I thought, every time I finished a story, if I could write like that, if I could touch my readers the way these stories moved me, that’d be something. I knew then I wanted to become a writer. But I also had this false idea that I had to be a great, famous writer. The problem was, I didn’t know how to write then and that big idea got in the way. I didn’t know where to begin and my parents probably wouldn’t have paid for creative writing classes. I wrote poetry actively in the 2010s, but I didn’t have the courage to submit my work for publication. It was only a year ago (in the summer of 2024) that I began taking online creative writing classes and submitting my work to journals.

What was the most adventurous or thrilling thing you ever did/experienced?

During our autumn break last year, my wife and I went to Edinburgh in Scotland and we hiked up to Arthur’s Seat. The view at the top was magnificent. On the way down, we were already exhausted and we wanted to be able to get down to the road faster so we looked for a short cut. We ended up going down a steep ravine and when we got safely down to the human-made steps we looked up at it and realized that the path we took was rather dangerous.

Do you listen to music while reading or writing?

Almost never. When I’m just doing clerical things on my computer like recording grades or deleting email I do. But when I’m writing, I really need to concentrate. So I turn off all distractions and I use social media blockers on my browser. If I’m writing in the kitchen, I’d use the oven timer. My phone has to be in another room otherwise I don’t get anything done.