On Writing

It's been a while since I've written anything - on my blogs, anyway. Perhaps it's because I'm back to writing professionally, on a regular basis. No longer do I need to polish my craft daily by exercising my written skills, but it's still fun to play with words, especially if I'm doing it for my own entertainment.

I suppose this "career path" was inevitable - I probably should have known early on, when as a grade-schooler I'd write academic essays for compliance's sake and inadvertently end up winning grade-level (and, later in high school, school-wide) competitions. I never knew I had the knack, because I didn't take my inclination very seriously (I wrote notebooks full of juvenile stories, again exclusively for my own diversion). I didn't even think of joining the school paper, or the yearbook committee, because I didn't have the slightest interest of writing for public consumption. All I knew then was that, for as long as I could remember, I loved to read - I would devour any printed matter put in front of me, fiction, non-fiction, comic books, cook books, encyclopedias (I went through a few sets, almost cover to cover except for the boring parts), Perry Mason, Nancy Drew, Chaucer, Orwell (I read 1984 in 1984), S.E. Hinton, Tolkien (again, in 1984, long before the films), Edith Hamilton's Ancient Mythology...all that good stuff (and a lot of the bad stuff - I wasn't spared from the Sweet Dreams syndrome). And I think that built quite a foundation in terms of learning vocabulary, style, and tone - which is why I always tell aspiring writers who come to me for advice to read everything they can get their hands on. Someone who claims to be a writer but refuses to read (for either laziness or lack of interest) anything other than what he's written invariably suffers from literary autism, an exhausting (for the reader) condition that manifests itself in misuse and abuse of literary devices, sloppy diction (as in choice of words, not pronunciation. Pet peeve: although diction is defined secondarily as a degree of clarity in pronunciation, it actually means, in primary usage, choice of words. If someone pronounces her words well, I would rather hear "your pronunciation is impeccable!" It's a dictionary after all darling, not a pronunciary. Grrr.

All right, so why is this entry in my spiritual blog? Mainly because I realized too late that I do not have too many spiritual reflections to share right now, but also because my gift for the written word (and some have told me the same as to the spoken word as well, although I still think far less consistent in my speaking skills), although long unacknowledged until I finally put it to good use, is something that comes only from my Creator, just as whatever is good in me comes only from Him. And I hope to continue to give it back to Him, for His greater glory, and if it means waging war against the illiteracy promoted by text mesage spelling, then so be it. Another pet peeve; thus my battle cry: I would rather spend an extra peso or two to fully convey my message in proper and spelled out English or Tagalog than massacre words by grotesquely mutilating/abbreviating/intermarrying ("san na u? d2 na me.") them. Ugh. Nakapanghihilabot. Try texting me that. Some people even e-mail using "text spelling." For crying out loud, you don't pay extra no matter how long your e-mail message stretches! Writers who used to submit unsolicited contributions, prefaced with "cover" e-mails saying "Hope u find dis ok" immediately got dumped in the trash bin of my computer (or their work did, that is, although I could think of more drastic disposal methods for the errant mutilators of Ernie and Bert's mother tongue...)

Bottom line is, use your God-given gifts wisely, and correctly! Sloppiness and laziness never give glory where it's due.