Writing

Writing - What it means to me? That's the question I asked myself when I somehow managed to flip over to the teen section in the paper this morning. One of them wrote that writing means a whole lot than meets the eyes to her. Wow! Amazed I was of her style of writing. At the mere age of 18, her suave writing was prominent throughout the whole article. Oh, and the other kids too. Yeah, they are kids to me, cause that's just how old I feel of late. I am certainly nowhere near their level and I'm 20, turning 21 2 months from now. Most of them it seems are avid readers and that, they attributed as the impetus for their matured level of English proficiency.

In stark contrast, I don't read a lot. That habit was just never been instilled into my upbringing. Book stores were and are still never a haven for me. Walking into the libraries, abundant with a variant colours of book covers never fails to intimidate me.

It is television which made up most of my childhood and teen-age. Television is my addiction and honestly, without it, life would be like McChicken without the mayonnaise, keropok lekor without the sweet chili sauce and of course a picture without its colours. It's the apparently insignificant detail but something which taints the supposedly perfection of life.

I love writing, I really do. I, in fact, have always wanted to make a living out of writing alone which explains my fantasy jobs like journalist, columnist, and author. But am I good enough to make them my rice bowls bearing in mind that even a 16-year-old can write better than me? Sigh... But beyond that question, I realise that my hunger for it cannot possibly match that of theirs.

So, what writing means to me? - Writing is an art. Constructing a sentence is an art. Selection of words to be fitted into a sentence is also an art. It's a way of drawing a picture with precision, pale from exaggeration and distant from voids. And so does TV. But is writing something I can't live without? No - I can live without the art. The same goes with TV too. But it's just that my life wouldn't be perfect, that's all.

So does that mean writing no longer carries the degree of importance I used to think it does? - Well, perhaps the hunger to write may backfire once in a while. You may get to unleash all hidden weapons at a go but that would also disrupt the balance in that piece. I would like to think writing is something I would do when something naturally inspires me and it is after all a medium to convey a thought, or a story or more accurately, a theme. It is the content of the piece of work which matters the most. The writing - as always, is an art which serves as a conduit to deliver the theme to its readers. With that in the back of the writer's mind would surely facilitates the flowing of the ink. We all love a simple love story, don't we? And writing with too many twists shuns away the fun and invites the whirlpool of confusion.

In a nutshell, writing doesn't hold the key to the centre stage in my life. It is something I do to release my emotional entrapment or just to share something with my fellow friends. I can live without it ... cause I still have got the 42-inch LCD TV fixated in the living hall (Fine, that's a lame joke I'll admit).