There is something I needed to write. But just like before, I don't know what is it so urgent that makes my mind go ballistic with words.
Perhaps, it was just me... the writer in me. Or, for another I was just KSP (kulang sa pansin) dude that would want to honker my horn at any given chance just to get noticed. Or maybe, I am just plainly insane, just like most writers are. Oh well.
When I was younger, I dreamt of becoming the best, the youngest and the most celebrated. Yes, that sounded so grand that even the Great Wall Of China cannot parry its vastness. I have imagined myself, in tux with bow tie, smiling all-tooth bared as I proudly waved my hand, a trophy/plaque with it plus the sweet sweet cash prize that comes with the recognition, fame and literary stature of anybody who has won The Nobel Prize for Literature, or the Pulitzer, The Man Asian or even the Palanca Awards. But more than the money, it's the inert subtlety that's with those awards that makes one feel elated with pride and sense of accomplishment-that your peers recognize your craft as of superior quality.
So every night since I was nine, when I first discovered the joy of writing, I practiced, I labored and I wrote. But the muse had always been eluding me. I could not find the right words and write in the right context. My works, as some of my mentors would say, are purely derivative and purely for impressing others with my wide lexicon and good grammar.
I could not accept that my works were duplicate of someone else's more original, first work. For a writer, that is the gravest insult. But who am I to argue? They are seasoned and knew the good from the bad. I really hated workshops.
Sheesh, I hate to admit but I almost gave up on my pen. But due to some fortunate circumstances, I came to read about writing for the sake of writing. Its basic notion was that we do not write for anybody. We write for ourselves, because that is the basics of a writer. We write. We write on things that we want to write about. Forget about the frivolities, the novel can exist without them. Forget the awards, they may be sweet but if meant succumbing to other people's "standards for writing", it would do you no good.Write what it is you want to write. The subject maybe trivial, but that's the writer's job. We see life in the littlest of things. We open windows on the other side of humanity that goes unnoticed or even ignored. We rekindle the thoughts that in a day-today rut we are in seemed so mundane and ordinary. That is us, writers. We write because there is something inside us that wanted to be heard. Otherwise, what is the joy of writing?
I am a writer, yes. I write about people. I write about things. I write about humanity.
I am a writer and I yearn the world to listen. Someday, somehow, they will.
