The late Prof. Maricon Alfiler once told our PA 11 class, "Read, Think, Write - or die intellectually." I have always tried to keep this little bit of advice close to heart, but I have to admit I'm not a very intelligent reader. Sure, I pick up puns and other side-references, but, and this is embarrassing to admit, I don't understand half the things I read. Often, I have to refer to SparkNotes; I just can't think in the right direction without 'Guide Questions'. Sometimes, even with hints pointing me to the right path, I still don't get the point.
Reading, however, still ranks high in my list of favorite hobbies. Just like writing. I may suck at it, but hey, it's fun. I love writing because it forces me to think 'creatively', to dream up of many potential answers to the question 'What happens next?'. Being a bit, er, whacked up, however, I tend to deviate too far from my original intention - and my story ends up scrambled.
For example: When I was in high school, and I fancied myself a future writer, I volunteered to write scripts for a couple of role plays. One of them was this thing for English class, a family drama/romance thing. I'm sure it wasn't that bad; it even got chosen over two other works to represent our class in the department-wide role play contest.
There I was, ecstatic that my work had been chosen, convinced that making the Gio's delinquent character confess to Jen's grade-conscious med student one over dinner with the rest of the dysfunctional family was the best idea I had ever come up with. We had to present our 'final revised role play' in front of the whole school, competing with the Seniors - we were Juniors then. The 'final outcome' turned out to be a bit complicated - my signature. After incorporating so many new characters into the play, and I think I even put in a homicide scene involving a sexy stepmother or something, my ending turned out to be an easy way out. I just turned everything into a dream; it turned out the protagonist had just dreamed up everything that had happened.
Personally, I don't think the story was that bad. It was a bit too complicated, yes, but a lot of telenovelas are complicated, noh? And about that dream ending, people didn't throw tantrums when the same thing happened in Lovers in Paris. I think the problem was that I squeezed in too much detail into a story that was meant to unfold in less than 30 minutes. That was the problem.
I didn't think much of it until one day, the directress/principal turned up in our classroom requesting to talk to the people who wrote and directed the play. Big surprise: I wrote and directed the whole production. My classmates didn't squeal though, so to compromise, the Head spoke to our whole class about how poorly she thought we had performed. I don't remember much of what she said, but her point was, she didn't like the play at all - I think the part where everything turns out to be a dream hit her pretty hard. And then she left.
I won't be so obnoxious as to attribute my never having pursued writing seriously because her words scarred me for life. Nooo, in fact, I still write, school reports and articles for the org newsletter, and I'm currently planning a supposedly simple fanfic in my head. I just wanted to share this story because it illustrates how complicated my output can be. Think of it as a warning; after all, I'm starting a blog.
