Indulgence

from Youngstar to Super

Liz Phair from Little Digger
What does it mean when something changes how it's always been?

Today (or yesterday, to be more precise) I got the last issue of Youngstar and collected my last check from them. For 2 and a half years, I've been honing some of my writing craft with that magazine. At first, I wrote generic articles, celebrity interviews written in the way the other magazine writers wrote. I was following their formula, reading other articles and seeing how the publishing world wanted their articles to read like. Eventually, I got to write for other magazines, my articles appearing in the pages of Press, Flip and Manual. I also got to publish some essays in newspapers like Today and Youngstar. Eventually, I started to adjust my voice. Youngstar, being the magazine I contributed to on a monthly basis, was the guinea pig for my "writer's voice."

When people started recognising my name as that writer; I began to slowly adapt and bring in more of my personality into the articles. I let myself become more apparent in my interviews, allowing myself to have a voice within the piece. I slowly started making my opinions regarding each subject known. I read articles from Entertainment Weekly and Details trying to grasp how the writers there add character and personality to their pieces. With the limited word count I had in Youngstar, adding my personality which would sacrifice some information about the subject became a game. Soon, it came naturally to me.

I am not sure, but in terms of magazine writing, I think my writing in the February 2005, Body Issue of Youngstar is my best work yet. It isn't literary and with such little space in which to really flesh out an article, I think I did pretty well in humanizing my subjects. I've really learned a lot about writing from my tenure in Youngstar and knowing that this is the last issue and I will no longer be writing there saddens me. It's over.

Now, I am writing spiels for my hosts in TXTube and it is a very different thing. I'm lucky to have scored a gig as a contributor for Philippine Daily Inquirer's Super, the Saturday lifestyle section. My first article, which is on my Dad, was well-received and people reacted well saying it was a good read. I hope that similar comments can be said about my up-coming article, either this weekend (later) or next week. With more space to write, I can really and try to be more in-depth with my piece and really try to bring out both my "writer's voice" and the humanization of my subject.

Writing for me, really, is a wonderful thing. Even if it isn't literary, just the idea of trying to find some level of connection between the assignment and something bigger and abstract that the readers would hopefully be surprised with when presented in my articles. I'd be happier with writing poems and fiction but there is also a joy in seeing my name in print and it's there, beside a picture of the subject. There is a connection there, between my words, my subject and the reader. It's what makes working in this job so much fun.

From Youngstar to, hopefully, more work in Super, a fresh and exciting (and rather well-read) lifestyle section on a newspaper. I have always been afraid of having my own column because I would be afraid of having nothing to write about then I take a look at my blog and realise that I can trivialise simple things and write whole entries about nothing here. Sometimes, these trivialisations lead to some larger concept and actually becomes fascinating, all by accident, and then there is something worth reading here.

I hold on to that, that I indulge myself here on this blog because, sometimes, a little stroke of magick comes in and elevates a simple ranting into something worth reading, something enjoyable and something that makes some people think.

I wrote a poem recently and it reads differently from my previous work. I have taken for granted how easy it is to put my thoughts into words. So, maybe, I haven't noticed what changed exactly in my writing style -- what the influences are and when did it happen. But it is development, it is growth.

And I can be happy about that, right? So I'm going to keep writing because it comes naturally for me and I find so much enjoyment in it and I can't do a lot of things well; so I'm going to do what I love to do and milk it for all its worth.

My Dad always told me: Don't love what you do, do what you love.

It's good advice.

posted by wanggo @ 3:24 AM