Writing my heart out

I used to write a lot. At least a lot more than I write these days.

I remember starting my first diary in third grade, with someone's Christmas gift of a fancy-enough hard-cover diary with plastic jacket, and a title that claimed that it was. My penmanship was big and loopy (I didn't have the beautiful script that I now believe I possess!). I think I just wrote about my day and my crushes.

I kept on writing from one notebook to another since then. I had notebooks of all shapes and sizes, and I wrote in different styles (depending on what genre I was into--it was a phase thing). But I remember clearly writing as if I was writing to someone very dear. It was the only way to share my thoughts without feeling the need to censor them.

When computers came and I learned Prince of Persia and Wordstar, I hacked away--this time writing my own stories. I did this as a kid, of course, in Disney workbooks bought second-hand from missionaries' garage sales. It really gave me a kick weaving a story out of the picture given.

My Wordstar stories were of course attempts at an actual book-length story, but they never reached it. I had a lot of starts though, and a lot of characters, and a lot of plots. I printed them out, I think I may still have some of them stashed somewhere. I remember that what I enjoyed about it most was writing something I would have loved to read, but never found. So in a sense, I was really just writing for myself, because no one had yet bothered to write this or that story for me.

I enjoyed reading my first chapters--in the end I was stuck with just first chapters! I must have had a dozen of them.

I stopped writing some time in college, or maybe after. I got lazy somewhere in between diaries and stories. I'm not sure if I still read, either. I did write news feature stories for the university paper, though. It was kind of the same, but different: I dug up a piece of news each week, and I'd write it in a more fascinating way, rather than just serve it up in your usual 5 Ws and 1 H journalistic style.

I didn't do much writing and reading after that. I started a blog a few years back but got tired of that, too. But now, towards the 2nd half of 2007, I somehow found myself reading more, again. It was a peculiar kind of electric jolt I got scouring through book sales and finding something like Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale at Php35, or Michael Crichton's Congo at Php30! I also once found a Salman Rushdie, but since I had bought two of his works before and never really could find what most other people found in him, I thought I should just skip his Midnight's Children. One of my latest finds is Michael Crichton's Prey, hardcover, for Php25.

So now, I want to write again. I want to write about what I'm reading, if anything else. I want to write about books. I want to write about readers. Books turned into films. Books in the Philippines. Readers in the Philippines. Art in children's books. Audiobooks, e-books, that nifty new toy called Kindle, and all sorts of things abuzz in my head. For what reason, I'm not really sure, except that whenever I look back and take stock of my life, I realize that I always light up inside in moments I've spent within pages and chapters, and dipped in ink.

That's really why there is this The Book Buzz that you're reading today, and hopefully for days to come.