THAT PERFECT ARTICLE

by Ayn

A topic you thought was brilliant dawns on you and you are compelled to write a full-page essay about it. Upon drafting the first line, you hear yourself sounding like Thoreau or Longfellow. You fail to finish it in one sitting, save the file, and proceed with the thing you were originally doing. After a few hours (or days), feeling like you already are back on your feet to add a few more words to the envisioned masterpiece, you open the file and type your heart away. Upon editing, you realize that from the line where you picked up after having left off, you sounded like Knipfel or Foote. Edit, edit, edit. Yet no matter what kind of surgery you do, you still feel the tear. So you decide not to publish it, thinking maybe another topic shall come down to you next Tuesday afternoon. Or maybe a Thursday morning. Or never.

For two minutes there I was talking to myself.

For years I struggled writing that perfect article. Every single day I get a good amount of topics and perspectives which I believe can give me a little push to get back seriously into writing. But I never finished even one lame page, or if ever I did, it was a blurry rendition of something-I-could-have-said-this-way-but-did-otherwise because I didn't want everybody to know what I was talking about --- call it poetry and Twain will kill you. Or, I simply never published them at all.

I stopped blogging regularly for two reasons: one, I felt like pretty much everyone was doing it (and I'm anti-fad as most people would know) and two, I get the feel that those people just wrote like writing was as easy as saying what you want to say and getting enough publicity for it. It was a third crime in writing, next to cliches and plagiarism.

Writing for me has always been a serious thing, more than an art or an expression. Whether it's a line, a verse, or a whole page, I always believed every single word should bear a certain kind of responsibility. And I'm going back now for the same reason, not to mention a friend who's inspired me to do so (Hi Xiaoi! :)). In a world where blogging has been about the latest food joint or gadget or bullying people like Christopher Lao, I dare write about your most hated topics on the philosophy of life and a healthy dose of current events and the new culture. Or anything that needs a little boost apart from this materialistic and consumerism-injected generation. Call me boring, corny, or out-dated, but hey, I'm just trying to be a Filipino here.

Oh and that perfect article? It will follow. #

* Thanks to Sharon Lumanog ---> http://akosisharon.wordpress.com/ :)