Everybody's Sin

I've found some very very good blogs of late, and some of them are actual writers. As I read their fluent prose and sentences, I started to lament my own shortcomings as an aspiring writer. Yes, I've always wanted to write for a living. Unfortunately I have nothing to show for even after all these years of aspiring.

For a while back then, I wrote poetry (yeah, laugh it up!). My mom wrote Malay poems which often reminds me of Usman Awang, whether she's aware of it or not. I wrote english ones, which upon rereading it now, reads like a bad attempt at Poe. At best. Dozens more remain unfinished, some are just one liners even.

I used to write short stories too, most of it left unfinished when I lost the plot midway. There were a few grand plans with Ainaa to write a collaboration-style novella which never saw completion. Nothing new there.

I bought the laptop with the plan of writing something worthwhile for once, so that I won't make an excuse that the PC is hidden behind a wall of junk that I can't use it to type out my premier work. Ahh, the follies of the lazy.

Perhaps, perhaps I'm not cut out to be a writer after all. My grammar is atrocious, my mom the English teacher has long given up on trying to correct it. I've always been told I have a good vocabulary, but even that is no longer my forte I feel. I'm beginning to go lazy and use the same old words over and over, leaving the more flamboyant or colourful ones disused. Left to rit and die in my mind.

I am 25, but not far from turning 26. Is this it? Am I going to accept defeat now and live free of the nagging feeling that I'm wasting my talents away. Do forgive my self-indulgent use of the word talent, since I subscribe to the mantra 'if I don't think highly of myself first, who will?'. Misleading? Tak kisah lah.

But then, the twist is, writing keeps me sane. I write because I have to. I blog because it's the easiest way to write now. I think I may have forgotten how to write with a pen. I write to let my thoughts out, lest they be trapped and go stale inside my mind. Stale thoughts are poison, mark my words. Thence I keep holding on to this dream of someday seeing something I wrote in print. It might be in the bargain bin after a few weeks, but I wouldn't feel bad about it. At least that one lifelong dream will be fulfilled at last - to be a writer.

You may say that I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. Right on, John.