Poetics_Prelims_draftlong

For as long as I've had a mind of my own, I had been writing.

I still do -- it's why I took on this program -- but looking back, I could only ever consider myself a conscious writer for half of my life. Most of the things I wrote back then were done by rote to pass school requirements, with little in the way of literary value. I once tried my hand at fanfiction only to get too lost to continue where I started. Upon reaching high school, I learned journalism for a radio show competition, but I didn't know it was my first step. Even in the four years that I skipped school to take care of my aunt, I lurked and lingered in car and hobby forums as well as Reddit, reading and watching and learning writing but never fully grasping what it would take to hone the craft, much less make a living. Most of my posts on Oppositelock, a commenter-run blog, were structureless musings made for an audience living on the other side of the globe. Only when I finally entered a small IT college to reintegrate did I realise where my true competencies lie. Once I did, STI-Muñoz proved to be a poor fit for me.

What I am sure of is that I am a good speaker, or at least good enough to come up with a five-minute speech with little preparation and still be considered worthy of trophies and medals and certificates. Without knowing it, my extemporaneous speaking stints in high school turned out to be my first test for how well I can form coherent arguments and narratives, how to deliver them to an audience with persuasion, and how to perform under pressure. Such talent and constant training saved me from demotion and expulsion as I discarded a vital scientific research subject for a more rewarding foray into language and writing. It may also be saving my sanity today.

Thing is, I wasn't one to put ideas to paper all the time. Rather, I talked to myself. Aloud. In silence. Whether I mumbled or dramatised, my brain worked best when I could hear myself, treating an empty room as though it was a conference hall where I interview the man of the hour about the most pressing matters. Like tonight's news, whether Sebastian Vettel was overrated, or even just finding that damned gel pen. If not, I start a movie or TV series in my head, populating it with disparate characters all voiced by me, complete with season after season of events and scenes that I reckon will win every award in Hollywood. Sometimes it's in English, other times in Filipino, or a deliberately claused combination of the two. I've since lamented how I should have had a voice recorder for all that, as I tended to forget what I said to myself just a moment prior, the habit of writing left unattended until 2019.

So I suppose that's where I can find one personally useful answer for why I write. I write to remember, to set in an accessible and lasting medium an unshakeable idea or lucid snapshot. I write because, for all my brainpower, my memory is imperfect, and has only become spottier with time and crisis. I've had enough of wasting any more precious concepts, potentially quotable lines, and key moments of introspection. Indeed, writing has become the one thing that's held off on me forgetting my first kiss, my first rebellion against my parents, my spelling bee successes and devastating failings, and a lifetime's worth of movies, television and web video.

Oddly, however, some thought that memory, speaking and writing have a bit of a problem with each other.

In an article on Scientific American, Maria Konnikova talked about a relationship between tasks and remembering them. A study by Gestalt psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik in 1927 found that most people tend to forget a task after they're done with it and remember the tasks that they were interrupted from doing twice as well as a finished thing. "Psychologist Arie Kruglanski calls this a Need for Closure, a desire of our minds to end states of uncertainty and resolve unfinished business," Konnikova wrote about what she now called the Zeigarnik effect. "It adds impetus to minds that may otherwise be too busy or oversaturated to bother with the details." From this, Konnikova, using Socrates and Hemingway, lays out a fearsome thought: to talk is to finish, and to write just as much, making it a memory that can be discarded upon completion, even if, surely, a certain piece of work isn't realised in full.

This became doubly true in my case: out of every single season of lucid dreaming I've had, none of them ever came out on paper, and I struggled to turn them into something tangible even if my mind's eye watches in 12K resolution. Most of the moments and scenes I imagine faded away after I woke up, along with whatever dreams and nightmares I've had. It isn't surprising -- I've become aware of this phenomenon all my life -- but it is no less alarming when I strain to recall something only to give up and eat a cookie sandwich instead. I can't even remember the exact words of my contest speeches.

But isn't part of the reason why we write to remember? To never forget our origins, our triumphs and tribulations, the people and places and events and things and emotions? To produce proof that it all happened, that we laughed and cried and were hurt and were overjoyed? It seems counterintuitive and brings out a sort of "tyranny" of memory, yet we write anyway.

Why?

On a personal level, I write precisely because of that conundrum. Not to solve it or provide a final answer, but to constantly face a myriad of selves who I simultaneously know from the inside out -- and are total strangers -- every day. Every time I open my archive, it feels more like a return visit to an old school or hometown, unchanged except for my current mental state that soon changes everything there. The colours are the same, but their names are different. The characters I've birthed have grown into people who now find me unfamiliar, even if I know them all by heart. Less than satisfactory, sure, but at the same time, those drafts are still alive enough for me to use in later activities, as foundations for later, greater work, and as a place to fall back on if I've run out of things to do.

Moreover, I write with both my voice and hands to continue that process, to hone it, even at times improperly, to make it sharp enough for the rest of the world. It's an eternal dialogue, a never-ending, meandering conversation that may conclude somewhere but stops at nothing, only moving on until it's time to see how far I've come.

That, to me, is why I do this. While most cliched ideas about writing apply, I don't wholly subscribe to them because I find them to be self-evident; it comes with the territory. Instead, I see my work comparable to that of the room I write, eat and sleep in as I finish this piece: no matter where I go, I'll still want to come back here and stay for a while.