It Just Feels Write

As some of you might already know, I do contribute blues album reviews for a popular music magazine here in Manila (who said it doesn't pay to have the blues? Hehehe). How I got the sideline job is a story in itself. I emailed the magazine's editor in chief asking for them to feature the Philippine blues music scene. He replied back asking if I knew anyone who would be interested in sustaining a blues column, I hinted I could. I submitted a sampler and voila, I got the job. No interviews, no contract signing. Come to think of it, after four years I haven't even met any of the magazine's staff personally. I just send my articles via email, they publish it and I get a small check delivered to me.

I don't get to submit articles as often as I used to mainly because of my primary occupation as an account manager slash husband slash dad. But every time I do, I get so much kick out of actually seeing my work in print. I love the excitement I get when I rush to the magazine stand to quickly browse through the pages to search for my article. I love seeing what it finally looks like in an actual glossy magazine page as compared to a typical Word document in the computer. I know, I sound like I'm so full of myself. I do realize how for people who studied literature or journalism and ended up writing for a living, that isn't much of a big deal. But for someone who has absolutely no writing credit under his belt, to be a paid contributor for a leading music magazine published nationwide is really something else.

Still, I cringe at the thought of being called a writer mainly because I know I'm far from actually being one. Writing stuff doesn't make one a writer, in the same way being able to play a guitar qualifies a person to be called a musician or even an artist.

Writing has simply been a hobby. I started to like writing when I was in high school. I kept a daily journal that I actually allowed people to read. I comically documented my thoughts and the daily accounts of my life as a high school student. Being young and in love, I also wrote a lot of rhyme schemed quatrains about unrequited love. When Cathy came along and became my girlfriend, I surrendered to her my past journals and started to write her daily love letters, daily love letters.

I was no consistent honor student, but I had good grades in my English subjects and even won an award for an English Quiz Bee. One of my favorite English teachers even gave me nice comments on a sample article I submitted for a school write up. I also became the features editor for the school paper, though unfortunately due to budget constraints the actual maiden issue of our publication never saw print.

Somewhere between all of that I entertained the possibility of developing the skill of writing. But just when I was about to graduate high school, I got what was perhaps the most hurtful advise an aspiring writer could ever get: Forget it, writing won’t get you anywhere. The advice came from someone that had a good grasp on technical writing and was incidentally someone very close to me. Though I realize that the counsel to literally burn my works and park my pen was more of a pragmatic rationale (lightly seasoned with sincere good intentions), my young fragile spirit was crushed. Maybe he’s right; maybe the thought of taking up a course related to writing was a stupid and impractical idea. I’ve consulted this person on writing and even read out loud to him most of the stuff I’ve written; maybe it is destined for nothing but mediocrity. Fearing failure, I heeded the advice and enrolled in a college of Science and Technology. Life is not without a weird sense of humor. To make a long story short, things didn’t go well in that episode of my life.

To the utter disappointment of my parents, I ended up taking a different course in the college of Arts and Letters. Freshman college was a tough time mainly because I came in late during the enrollment period and had to settle being an irregular student with no permanent set of classmates or friends. It was during this time that I decided to regroup and maintain a journal again. I had about five notebooks I filled up with silly commentaries on college life and personal thoughts on just about anything. Like my high school journal, I allowed close classmates and friends to read my entries. It was never meant to be read by others, but since word got out that my personal diary could be borrowed and read, people just started taking turns. I didn’t mind, it was actually fun to have other people read and react to my personal opinions. One of my most gratifying moments was when a pretty poet classmate of mine in senior year asked if she could borrow one of my journals in the middle of a class. She read it inconspicuously during a classroom lecture. From where I was sitting I caught her smile and even saw how she desperately tried to silently contain her laughter as she read my entries. Before returning, she scribbled on the blank page of my diary thanking me for letting her borrow it and for making her laugh without even trying. I kept writing journals until the end of college.

Five years ago, I wrote the then-not-so-famous Katrina Nadal a long and nauseating fan email that painstakingly reviewed her first band’s first album. She replied saying that it was the first letter that she ever got the chance to write back to. She even said she was impressed on how the letter was written. Then two years ago, when we met for the second time, she immediately remembered my name from the very same letter I sent her. She even referred to me as a “writer”. I corrected her of course, but not after blushing red like a cooked lobster. I know the letter was so cheesy it could be actually be used as a salad dressing, but I couldn’t be any happier simply being remembered and acknowledged for what I wrote.

I’ve always known the reason why I write. I write because it’s fun and it’s therapeutic for me (of course writing about kicking someone’s ass would never be as therapeutic as the real thing, but it helps). Still, I also realized how I should write. Writing shouldn’t be simply to convey a message. The end result of writing anything should also be to evoke a desired response from the reader. I haven’t had any formal training on writing other than the English subjects I took so I suppose that realization is already an established fundamental rule.

I’m not sure if I’ve come a long way from my high school scribblings, or if that person who told me to incinerate my prose and poetry would reconsider his earlier comments. But as crushed as I was at the time I was told to pack up, I never really did baby-sit the criticism longer than I should. It was not because I knew I was good and would one day be paid to have my articles published in what would be referred to as the Official Music Magazine of the Philippines, but simply because I knew I was having fun whether it did lead to something or not. Happiness is always a practical choice.