I think writing, aside from conveying a message and/or a story and of course putting in your own style and also telling in the truth (which rarely happens, more often than not the truth is expanded to this elaborated ruse just to keep people at the edge of their seats), is something spontaneous and true. In classrooms, it is mandatory that students write to pass levels. They need to write an essay during an exam if the test paper urges so, a reaction paper with a certain deadline or a laboratory report at the end of each lab class. All these with preempted answers. (But of course the students don't know that.) Whatever it maybe, formal or informal, scientific or artistic, the writer should not feel pushed into writing. The urge to write should just come naturally. And not just naturally but because it is true. That I think is why there are no aptitude exams on becoming a writer. Unlike chemists or engineers, mostly people from the scientific community, lawyers, architects, non-medical doctors (they're still doctors), there is no label for writers because simply you can't be a writer.
You write a name on a paper, a random name. does that make you a writer?
You write a best-selling novel that creates a generation of fanfics of the same caliber and fangirls dying to watch the movie version. Your sales are off the roof. Does that make you a writer?
There's so many questions. There's many justifications but still, no unifying simplified truth.
How does one become a writer?
So let's go back to writing. I think writing should be taught not just so a student can pass or so that some can say that he/she can write. It should be so that the person has a truth he/she wants to share - a helpful contribution. It should inspire and spawn a breed of other truths, truths that are not afraid of the universe's dogma on almost everything. Bold truths. Truths not often heard. And please, let us not 9gag about this. Humor can compensate for many awkward events but let us not hide from it to shadow the truth. We have something for that - ignorance. Ignorance is the mother of all that that generate hate - racism, gender bias, anarchy, poverty and so many more. And another sad truth about that is there are manifestos that support these schools of thought. They all used writing to empower these issues which I cannot help but point that there are certain truths about them but somehow twisted in a way that these things happen because it is simply the way to be.
The way to be. Why can't anyone think, even just for a minute, that things come to be because of their will to make it that way? Why can't they choose not to be that way? If they don't want it that way, change. Don't stay and settle. Be productive. As they say, "Be the change you want to be."
And then we do that. We write. We create new manifestos. We try and do good by our neighbors. We all try and change and suddenly, we are stepping on each other's toes. And we realize a whole new group of truths. And then we settle because we know that anywhere we look there is nothing to save us from this chaos. This mess we call life. This beautiful mess that we constantly thrive and breathe in.
And we start making no sense again. Looking aimlessly at the horizon like the monotonic blinking of the cursor on the computer monitor. Stuck again.
And so we go back to writing, for that is the only way to be.
Truth: There is no unifying truth. Just chaos.
