Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Here lies the irony

Upon reviewing my old blog (the one filled with all the post-college emo-laden entries), I realized that a spark had died. That spark that could make me get up in the middle of the night to sleepily pen a poem, or lose myself in thought as while writing another short story. It has been ages since I felt that spark, the one that made me sure that, indeed, I was meant to wield a pen and be a writer.

I don't know if that spark really just dies out once you begin to write for a living. As you find yourself creating charts to keep track of what needs to be written and by when, you wonder how you factor in being hit by inspiration. Is it something you can even schedule? Being a writer by profession has forced me to be able to just write, whether I feel like it or not.

Many say that real writers don't wait for inspiration; they just write, period. While I agree, I worry that writing for a living has caused me to come up with coping mechanisms that my idealistic fresh-out-of-college self would disagree with. Reading an article, copying the quotes I'd like to use, then stringing them together into a coherent piece was not the way I envisioned my writing to be. I always took pride in coming up with something out of nothing, in having a blank sheet as my canvas, pinning thoughts unto paper as fast as my hands would permit. I never wanted to have a template for my writing, but upon discovering that --without conscious effort-- I could write press releases that fit exactly one page, I realized that a template is exactly what I have hardwired into my system.

Maybe the existence of such a template has made it difficult for me to spontaneously come up with a blog entry that's coherent and substantial. After churning out press release after press release, there's hardly any time to stop and think about something that really matters to me enough to write about it. Trying to sit in front of my blog to write about my thoughts is an exercise in futility-- anything that comes out of me feels forced, and I am forced to just delete everything and forego writing an entry. How ironic, to be a writer who cannot even write about things that truly mean something to me, things that I actually care about.

Yet, such is life. This is the profession I chose, and this is the talent I was gifted with. Template or no template, I was meant to write. So all I can do today is hope that the spark returns someday, to remind me what it feels like to fall in love with writing all over again.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Oops, I did it again

I should really be banned from entering bookstores, especially Fully Booked in Bonifacio High Street.

A recent side trip there had me walking out of the store with not one, but two new books. That brings my current reading list up to twenty. A fellow book hoarder lover likes to justify, "Twenty is a very nice, rounded number. Just like thirty and forty!" I'll stop at twenty, thankyouverymuch.

So what were the books I just had to buy?

After reading My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult, I got curious about her other books and decided to do my research. Of all the stories, I found this one the most intriguing. The Pact is the love story between two teenagers whose families have been friends since they were born. What happens when the parents find the girl dead and the boy holding the gun that killed her?

A colleague pointed out that Jodi Picoult loves to talk about moral dilemmas. It makes me think that all her stories are built on "the boat-is-sinking/house-is-burning, you can only save either your parent-or-spouse/spouse-or-child. Who would you save?" Or something like that. Anyway, add the intriguing premise to the fact that this book was so hard to find. And when I finally saw it in Fully Booked, it was in a trade paperback version with nice paper, the ones with jagged edges that look like they've been cut by hand. I wasn't about to let it go.

I came across this book on one of my previous trips to Fully Booked, when I go through the aisles from A to Z. I thought it would be an entertaining read as the premise is that Matthew has been her lover for years, but now that he's leaving his wife for her, she realizes that she doesn't want him anymore. So as the title suggests, how does she get rid of him?

Also read up on Amazon reviews and it's supposed to be a fun read. Why did I buy it? Well, first, because it was the last copy on the shelf, and I've been keeping an eye out for it for months. Second, because I realized that majority of what's left in my book list is pretty heavy stuff, so I may need something to balance that out. I know, I know, excuses excuses.


So now my reading list is up to twenty. I'm currently reading Raising the Peaceable Kingdom, but I haven't gotten far because I've been watching CSI more often, playing Restaurant City on Facebook every night, and trying to catch up on precious sleep. Here's hoping I finish all twenty books before the year ends! (Hey, I'm just being realistic here!)