To Write, Perchance to Dream

I used to astonish people whenever I told them I was a writer. Many of them went catatonic for a millisecond not really grasping whether it was a gag or if I had been taking Valium (the local version of Prozac). The word writer does have a mystical ring to it.

Of course I was young then, a teenager. I had that self-important look on my face when I uttered those words. Some of those poor people stared at me, mouth agape, as if the earth were ready to devour me anytime.

I was proud of my poems, crude as they were. I had an early fan base you might say. My weepy love poems were a hit among friends and classmates who harassed me for copies, whether to give as a gift to their inamorata or to use as a target practice I really do not know.

My poetic career fizzled out once I learned I couldn't really make money out of it. I wrote on the side though, hoping and wishing, that maybe, the Muse would tap me on my shoulder once more and say, “Come with me, and you’ll be in a world of pure imagination.” with a Lou Rawls totally cool boom voice.

I switched to writing Filipino romances for a while. After a few titles, (which I know in my heart had become hard to find books collected by my fans) , I decided that it was time to move on and become “serious”, so I wrote a World Lit textbook.
So there.


And here I am, writing another romance that I'm not sure would see the light of day, but who knows. I promised myself to write one paragraph at a time. Who knows, maybe next millennium I will...