And Virginia Woolf said,

Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind, is written large in his works.

Writing for the most part, to me, was both delightful and stressful. Thankfully, the delight outweighed the stress. I have this strong love-hate relation with writing where constant merry-go-round of inspirations coming in and out have compelled me to confront what it means to be a writer. I could be a content writer, a journalist, an author, a blogger, and that still makes me a writer, regardless of what people have to say. Each piece that I’ve put out is a form of expression and if it makes people feel some time of way about it, it is art in its own right.

Though I love writing and started out with reading fan-fictions for ideas, I never got into writing fan-fictions but I did enjoy hearing the stories that my peers wrote for their own pleasure. College was memorable, I met people who would write for plays, songs, and poetry. I would sit with these people for hours, see their expressions as they describe their characters, the flow of their stories, and we would then write about anything our imagination brought us in that moment. It was beautiful to be able to not care how absurd the stories sounded and how they wrote it.

Yet, the more inspired I was, the more fearful I became. As I grew older and started making a living as a copywriter and web content writer, I have been more conscious in what I have written. This too, falls back to my current work-in-progress, Yung & Jess — a coming of age story where the protagonist, Yung, who is struggling to fit in a world of not only prejudice and firm standards, but even serious legal sanctions as she falls for a woman named Jess. This friendship turned into romance creates a love and longing between these two individuals, one that is genuine and earnest, especially when their inclination and acts are deemed `unspeakable’, and Yung’s future, career and family ties can be at stake.

I would like to be clear on the path that I am with as I write this book, but there’s always a fear at the back of my mind fearing the readers will not understand or think there is no direction in it. Ironically, I am also terrified at them understanding it and being able to encode the messages behind certain paragraphs that hold my deepest of emotions. To a certain extent, I believe each writer have dealt with these feelings where we write from experiences, but not exact experiences. I have too many unwritten stories and while some managed to be on paper, they bring back unpleasant memories of my trauma. Pieces that I have written at 4.00 am in the morning, in the darkest times of my life, where my fingers came to life and typed words that were breathed in with vehemence; where I my tears would drip on the keyboard and I was relieved towards the end.

Now when those scenarios replay vividly in my memory, I realize that I was in such a dark place and I still am, but writing gave me a voice, it became the voice I was looking for in my state of brokenness and emptiness. More importantly, the old pieces of writing allows me to reflect on myself and remind me how far I’ve come. I have gone through a lot, and I will continue to face adversity and keep thriving. I’ll laugh at the scars and bruises and smile later on when I am healed. To say the least, I look forward to this journey in writing my book, Yung & Jess.