I love writing but it doesn't love me back

I love writing but it doesn’t love me back

I love writing but it doesn’t love me back. Now that’s an irony considering that I get my “allowance” – I cannot exactly call it a pay or salary, but yes it is in so far as they see it, because I cannot even sustain myself with it (although I know that there are so many families in our country right now subsisting on amount lesser than what I get) – from working as researcher and writer for a business organization and business magazine. That’s also ironic because I graduated from a course that has got everything to do with writing complicated and nitty-gritty reports about man’s supposed perpetual curiosity about life, wisdom and what takes place in between the nerves in our unstable and imaginary minds. I always have grammatical lapses (ashamed as I may be to admit it, but yes even in Tagalog, I commit some grave grammatical errors, now that’s another story altogether). Not that I am proud of it but I have come to accept that it would take me quite some time before I can master the language. This being the case despite having graduated from a course that has been instructed in English and despite debating or adjudicating for several years during my college years.

Anyway, I have acknowledged my difficulty in expressing what’s on mind using the English language even when I was just high school. I realized that for a time before writing, I could still take hold of word, ideas in my head and yet when I am about to raise my pen and write in a blank sheet of paper, I realize the words quickly escape my mind. I love writing, I really do. Yet I find not enough strength to overcome my insecurities about how my words will form themselves to be able to make sense and about how I would be able to get the message across. They say that when writing, the first thing is to simply write without thinking what’s on my mind and allow the thoughts to flow from my head to my fingers. Letting no arrangements take place whatsoever, not minding the tenses, grammar, the point. I saw this movie, I forgot the title about a writer who suddenly disappeared from the circle and who became a friend of a boy. Finding Forrester, yep the title of the movie. I was so touched by the movie because it hit me right where my really aching. Not that I’m like the boy, Jamal, in the story, whose greatness and skill is undermined by the insecurities and envy of the people around him. Whose lives have been mitigated from discriminations both by people of other color and even those within their own racial shade.

I also want to give shape and form to the ideas in my head. To give life to them as if they are an intrinsic part of the world. But every time I try to do so, my skills are dwarfed by the numerous great articles and essays that have been printed and I am more afraid to be compared to them. I know that one of my weaknesses is to cave in to the criticisms of critics.

Im working on my writing though. Im working to make it better, if not at par with great essayists or journalists or writers or what-do-you-call those who write good works of literature..hahaha.. I will I know and I claim it. AMDG.