A Feast of Granola Bars

Whatever I commit to writing in this blog is something that I've thought about for some time already. True, I write spontaneously; I don't plan whatever comes out of the keyboard. All I do is hold one thought, a nameless and amorphous thought that has been floating around in my head, and I try to make it solid, to bring it into material existence using words. There are a lot of tumbling, bodiless thoughts in my mind. The purpose of this blog is to give them life.

However, I don't see myself as a good writer. I can admit that I write better than average in the sense that I know how to manipulate words, how to make them say exactly what I want said. But writing isn't all about words. In fact, writing has little to do with words the way painting has little to do with paint. You can use crayolas, color pencils, oil paints, water colors, but the medium is only a medium without an idea or a thought to direct its impression on the canvas. You can use interesting idioms, intelligent figures of speech, artfully placed commas, strategically placed periods—but they are only words, and without an idea or a thought to direct them on paper or on a screen, they will remain only words forever—disembodied and meaningless

I am not a good writer because my ideas are too vague. I would even go so far as to say that my ideas are uneducated. I haven't read enough. I haven't studied enough. Reading my past creations make me cringe because they are painfully juvenile. You see, good writers are those who have brilliant ideas, ideas no one has thought of before. It doesn't matter if the ideas are written down in simple words so long as they are understood. That, for me, is the essence of writing.

It would help if the writer knows his or her spelling, grammar, idioms, figures of speech, commas and the like. It's easier to bluff if the writer knows how to wield these things because a lot of people are easily impressed. But who will the writer be kidding? Deep inside the writer knows that he or she is only regurgitating what other people said or wrote. Deep inside the writer knows that the creation is only a rag doll sewed in with scraps of forgotten or current ideas by other people. Tell me, where's the joy in that?

Oh, people can tell you "I like what you wrote" and that would make you feel good because you think that whatever you create is original and fresh. Why shouldn't you? You gave a bit of yourself to it; it is yours, yourself. But give it a few months, a few years. Read it again. If you are a real writer, someone who thinks and therefore evolves, you'll realize that you're not good at all. That's where your inspiration should come from: the drive to improve. Once you think you're a good writer, you reach a dead end. 

I suppose you wouldn't want that.