There are days when all I want is to write.

As a writer and a poet, I wish that every moment of my life is packed with sudden sparks of literary ideas or empyreal inspirations; an unending torrent of words that would go straight into my hands and with a mind of their own, simply type as fast as they could as if the very survival of my life depended on it. I want to experience the kind of epiphany that Gabriel Garcia Marquez had when one day it all became divinely lucid to him how he was to write his then untitled novel “Cien Años de Soledad (One Hundred Years of Solitude),” that became one of the greatest literary masterpieces of the last century. I want to lock myself in a room for eighteen months like he did -- hungry, tired, and almost dying when he came out but never felt more alive his entire life upon the completion of his book. I want to write something everyday – a poem, an article, a blog entry, a short story, whatever – just as long as I am able to produce any sort of worth-reading amalgamation of words.

Everyday that treasure chest of ideas is waiting to be unlocked. Everyday there is that chance to be immortal.

I want my mind to be a dam that needs to be consistently opened or else the gushing water would build up and ultimately break it. I want to be prolific and productive like my great literary heroes and writer-friends continually pissing out literary pieces for they are so drunk and full of them. I want my mind to be potent as poison creating phrases that will make a reader gasp and die… or healing as a panacea that will save him and give him life.

Yes, there are days when life, my artist’s muse, and Whoever Is Above are so gracious and giving in their bountiful harvest of ideas that I seem to easily vomit all the thoughts in my head in one prompting like a bulimic. There are days when the heavens freely open up with sweet aspersions and all I have to do is get drenched in the magical downpour of words and phrases. There are days when I feel like a conduit of a mystical and magical force when everything flows naturally, the words on the blank paper assuming a life of their own, life becoming a world of words, a phase of phrases, and a universe of verses.

But alas, most of the time, this kind of days doesn’t happen. I am only human and no genius of a writer.

There are days when writing is a struggle between life and death.

There are days when a piece of blank paper (or Word document) remains blank for hours, as I stare at it with no ideas coming into mind or the perfect first line selfishly playing hide and seek with me. There are days when to write is to make fire by hitting two stones until a spark appears after countless attempts. There are days when the Sandman is asleep, Calliope is dead, and the gods are selfish that I have to rely on all my inner strengths to write.

There are days when every letter I put on paper is a bubble of breath that leaves me as I drown in a sea of frustration. There are days when I have to fall on my knees and endlessly grope in the dark to find words like insects hiding in the forgotten fissures and fractures of the floor in my brain. There are days when each word I write is a dot of blood trickling from a cut in my wounded mind. There are days when the construction of every sentence is like laboriously creating a gigantic mural painting with an unsharpened pencil. There are days when finishing one paragraph is like chiseling marble with a needle to create a Statue of David. There are days when eternity seems to pass a thousand times before I could write one literary piece.

There are days when one has to suffer for his art.

And write from his heart.


This is one of those days.