How to keep on writing in 365 days

THIS WEEK’S WINNER

MANILA, Philippines - Lio Soriano, 24, is currently working as an IT auditor at SGV and Co. “While my job has a lot to do with numbers, my first and real love is the printed word. I write a blog, which is a repository of all the random thought bubbles I frequently pop.”

I have a hunch that whatever mediocre ability I have in writing is lost. Or at the very least, is slowly trickling down the drain.

If that happens, my ultimate dream of penning a novel will eventually become a lackluster star whose brilliance will wear out soon. I am afraid that with the banality of living the young, urban professional’s life, I shall forget everything that I once aspired to be and shall be content with the boredom of the friggin’ swivel chair.

An activity that will test my wavering resolve with words:

Write whatever thoughts I may have every day until I get to be reacquainted with the feel of the lost language, its peculiarities and nuances. It doesn’t matter whether they may be trivial or redundant or downright uninteresting. The writing exercise is not intended for public viewing anyway. What matters is that I write. And that I don’t forget it.

Which is why I am leaving the Grammar Nazi and all the editing by the door. Let me get a tinge of how it is to write without diction. To string sentences together just because you feel like writing (or ought to, for that matter) regardless if the thought churned out has any rhyme or reason. That will come once your pen has been polished to the core. In the meantime, I need a lot of catching up to court the inspirational muse and recover what was once mine all along.

In his book On Writing: A Memoir on the Craft, Stephen King, the wordsmith I unwaveringly worship, said that to be a good writer, one must never tire to read and write. Wolf down whatever printed page your eyes may gaze upon. And then form your own print. But, of course! For what better way to write brilliantly than to hone that skill and cultivate the anorexic appetite for reading?

The first part of the exercise is not a problem, I think. I am lucky to have been exposed to a family surrounded by books and newspapers. I read anything — boring textbooks, stupid EDSA billboards, wonderful storybooks, ill-constructed signage (“Bawal Umehe Dito”), repetitive sex manuals. Whatever predilection I have towards reading I owe it to the folks who gave me this incredible pool of genes.

The second part of the exercise is, I think, a bit tricky. For how can you sustain your interest in an activity that requires you to create thoughts of your own? The most prolific writers are not exempt from the tragic pitfall that is writer’s block. Note that these people are the sort of folks that should have had the expertise in this field. They are the masters of wayward words, of drunk clauses and sentences walking like madmen in habitual inebriation. If their pens run out of thoughts to scribble, what are the chances that mere mortals dreaming baloney can get a little fresh start from their novel absurdities?

And so I return from the point raised by the Great Big Mac of American Literature:

To sustain your interest in writing, the interest must in itself be strong enough. Which means you need more than the usual dose of drive and inspiration to make it through. There must be a goal out of all this sh*t that you’re willing to do and that goal must be at least rewarding to avoid the eventual wear. It helps to visualize the dream, to relive the fantasy regardless of how farfetched the whole idea may be.

I know a lot of people who have started this kind of writing exercise and failed miserably. Blogger friends who swore to write day after every friggin’ day without stop even if it means posting the boorish and inconsequential details of their goddamn lives. Their own Project 365 looked good in the beginning, writing healthy doses of silliness and nonsense but as in all starts, the resolve went on to dwindle until the drive was there no more.

Aware that I may strike the same chord their fate once encountered, I am starting my own Project 365 in the hopes that by the time I reach the 365th scribble, I have acquired whatever necessary skill a writer-wannabe ought to have. It wouldn’t hurt to think either that in that span of 365 days my pen has learned the ropes of tricky English pitfalls and the language’s bloody nuances.

It’s pretty hard, I know, and walking the talk is as difficult as producing those first few pages of paragraphs that ought to fit perfectly and make sense and ultimately form that ruddy novel. But Stephen King is an inspiration. He was me when writing about a bunch of female teenagers taunting another girl because of biology, and he doubted the brilliance of that 20-page manuscript and threw it away into the garbage bin. When his wife saved it from the trash, she read the beginnings of what would become a celebrated macabre tale about a girl with telekinesis and told her depressed husband to continue writing the story.

The rest of, course, is history. King threw away his self-doubt about his ability to write and pushed his pen towards the finish line to craft a novel called Carrie, the one that got him away from the rubble of writing gridlock and economic stagnation.

It is this incredible anecdote from the contemporary horror master that teaches those dreaming writer wannabes out there to never quit, that teaches a novice like me to never be discouraged by the difficulties I encounter while attempting to write the Great Filipino Novel:

Never doubt yourself and have faith in your work.

Of course, I am very well aware that penning the Great Filipino Novel will be a pain in the ass. Like the famous one-liner of that much beloved Pinoy movie icon-turned-presidential contender, “Marami pa ‘kong kakaining bigas.” But this does not deter me from realizing this dream. I am pretty much sure that getting the thoughts down, shaping the sentences and paragraphs into pictures that paint a wonderful story will be difficult. With the fast-paced lifestyle of a yuppie trudging the Ayala underpass day after day, it will be extremely tortuous. Or torturing. Or probably both. But having Stephen King as a writing inspiration, I am prepared to slave at it.

This is Day 1 of 365 and editing has been shoved down somebody’s know-it-all throat. Just so we’re clear, Grammar Nazi.