My not-so-secret love affair

            While still a law student, one of the few places I used to hang out to relax was the PowerBooks in Megamall. It was (still is) a nifty place to unwind during weekends for a cash-strapped student with a hungry mind: reading within the store premises is allowed, the sofas are comfortable, the aircon is free, and coffee and food is within easy reach (although not free).

            In one of those forays in the bookstore, I found a gem of a book which I believed had an unexplainable spiritual connection to the quintessential me---the book described, if not summed up, what I had long wanted to do since I was in high school. The book is Writing from Personal Experience: How to Turn Your Life into Salable Prose by Nancy Davidoff Kelton. The price: close to a thousand. (Quite steep for a penniless student.)

            I picked up the book and scanned a few chapters. Exactly what I wanted---or more appropriately, needed.

            “At this price, no way would I be able to buy this book,” I sighed as I replaced the book on the shelf while my mind conjured images of the student essentials I have to give up to afford this non-essential. At that moment, I felt like the mythical Tantalus who, whenever he stretched out for a branch of pomegranate hanging above his head, the branch would sway in the opposite direction.

            Indeed, akin to Tantalus was what I felt for the past thirteen years up until that point in my life. You see, I have always wanted to write (and become a writer or journalist) since I was in high school but life “got in the way”---- life and the related realities of parental pressure and expectations (both my parents are frustrated lawyers and they have passed their career frustrations to me since I was the one who always excelled academically and hence expected, rightly or wrongly, to carry the family “torch”), practical considerations and other concomitant twists and turns. In other words, instead of following my passion for writing, I finished a business course in college and proceeded to and graduated from law school. But through all those time, I still harbored the desire to express myself through the written word. Deep in my heart I knew the book would be the impetus to help me realize my heart’s desire.

            Then one fine day, my Tita Helen (a doctor based in Australia) vacationed in the Philippines. A book-lover, bookstores are one of her favorite haunts. Every time she visits the Philippines, book-shopping is at the top of her to-do list. (She reasoned that her dollar allowed her to buy more in the Philippines than if she were to spend it Down Under.)

                  And book shopping we did!

            That day when my aunt bought for me Writing from Personal Experience was quite huge for me. In my heart I knew somehow “something” was going to happen . . . for the better.

            Writing from Personal Experience: How to Turn Your Life into Salable Prose was my “get-out-of-jail-free card,” in a manner of speaking. It allowed me to finally and fully express what is in my heart and mind. In fact, it still allows me to express what is in my heart and mind long after, figuratively speaking, I had passed “Go!”

            Thanks to the book, I have since started writing while in law school. The book gave me wonderful insights into the writing process and what it takes to be a writer which would have taken me a difficult and long time to discover on my own. More significantly, the book has guided me to sift through the mess of my varied personal experiences and translate them into prose (and be pecuniarily rewarded in the process!).

            I was transformed from merely dreaming or pining about writing or being a writer to actually sitting my fanny down and pouring out my emotions and experiences unto paper. Nothing compares to insights I gleaned from the book: insights which allowed me to bear to fruition a life---or at least a slice of a life---I had wanted.

            Since that fateful moment I read Writing from Personal Experience: How to Turn Your Life into Salable Prose, I have churned out pieces which appeared in the Manila Bulletin, Philippine Daily Inquirer, and (several times in) The Philippine Star. One of my essays was included in a book published by the FEU Press. I also won a prestigious Palanca Award (for Peace Essays: 2nd prize). Recently, Iwas asked to write a column in a regional newspaper. With all the frustrations I had been through, this development is nothing short of an inspirational story!

            I am still happily writing: part-time; if not for publication then at least for myself, in my journals. Whatever else I do, writing has become my secret love affair; like an illicit lover waiting in the bushes for that illicit yet exhilarating tryst.

            By now the book belies its near-thousand price. It is a shadow to its expensive-looking, glossy old self: dirty, dog-eared, brownish due to incessant rereading. Yet every time I reread the book, I see the quintessential me. 

            Uncannily, it was the book that breathed life into me and pulled me out of my shell to hang out with my best self.     

[ This was written sometime in 2006. I found it in my journal. This is my first blog entry in 2012]