someday soon

one of my life long dream is to write a novel and win a Palanca Award for it. or maybe one of the two mentioned. whether to finish a novel or to win a Palanca Award would be rewarding enough for me.

the thing is, i lack the confidence and motivation to even start something that i'd like to submit. sure i did win awards for writing and was praised by teachers for my so-called "talent". for a time in my life i became confident that writing was one of my talents, that i could further develop it to reap fruitful rewards. but when i see better writers who write better than i do, i retreat back to the shadows and watch them do their thing while criticizing my own. an example is the fact that i haven't been a productive culture writer for the school paper lately. it seems that i cannot write what people want me to write. i feel that i write better when my heart is set to it. plus, i feel that my writing (compared to theirs) is amateur and high schoolish to be published on print for the whole school to read.

sometimes i sit in front of the monitor with a blank page at MS Word. try as i might to rack out ideas inside my head, i could not find anything to write about. someone said "write about what you know." i know a lot of things: i know that i love rain, i love hearing people laugh, i love it when people smile at me, i love sharing stories, i love to write, i am in love with LIFE, and that i am a dork... to name a few. but where do authors get their ideas for their novels? where do they start to write an award winning novel? does one need training to write a book?

writing is a hobby for me and to write that book or win that Palanca would definitely make me the happiest person alive. it might be a dorky thing to say but hey! i'm a self-confessed dork and everyone knows that. so why hide it now?