Doing a thing over and over makes one adept to the chore. It is like the routine of washing dishes. You dip your hand into the water, reach in for the rag and scrub the dishes without thinking. Soon all the dishes are done and you realize you are wiping and cleaning the lababo (sink) after yourself. This may sound a far allusion to writing or blogging but I just finished dishes, hence it is the only similarity I could find when writing this post. I am now officially writing in this blog again. It has been quite a while since I posted and I view blogging as a pleasant chore because I will have a few target readers coming to visit via my English teacher friend who thinks his students will learn something from this blog (or not!). So, to you my dear reader/s — Welcome!
Okay, I am not really a great writer nor an average writer, because I have not been published since my staffer days in our college newspaper. And if you would ask just how many published works I wrote back then, I’d say they are few and far between. I was too preoccupied with chasing after the good looking guys and fleeing from some of the not-so-good ones (note: I didn’t put “looking”). This is precisely the reason why I can’t write to save my life, I start off with some idea and go off the rabbit trail about something else. Ramblings are my forte. Don’t get me wrong, I still try to write. I have reams and reams of rough drafts and humongous piles of journals and poems that are gathering cobwebs in a corner somewhere. I have a passionate pursuit to write. I have taken a few writing courses here and there and have tried to submit my works to mainstream publishing but sadly, it is the courage to accept the proverbial no from the publisher that stops me from sending my works to them. I have gathered writing guidelines and researched possible avenues of getting my stuff read, but I feel I am not good enough.
But then again, is this not the way writers are? Where we all fall short of the ideal? Where words flee from our passion? Is it not when we are down and empty then the words flood in waiting to burst the dams of our creative psyche? Where every letter and word becomes an insurmountable challenge and yet the very core of our belief says we can create them into a harmonious assonance? Today is the day to write. My hands tell me so. The clock may tick until the wee hours in the morning and the only sound around the room may come from the lone buzzing fly waiting for lights to go off and wanting to have his fly-sleep but the “need” to write must be satisfied. It is like a loneliness that devours the very joy of life when left in the tundra of the cold and dark recesses of our being. Writing is like using a deliberate comma that splices thought when peppered into the long essays of our lives–it is wrong and right at the same moment. There is neutrality in writing, the writer needs it but it does not need him. Writing is. Only if we subject ourselves to the servitude of this craft that we become.
