Am I a Whiner or a Writer?

For hours, I stared at the emptiness of my room’s ceiling while trying to make pertinent thoughts and words flow like stream water running. I was on the verge of considering my colloquial style as my greatest difficulty in writing. It was what my friends / critics have pointed out on numerous occasions that now, I feel that it has hindered me from producing good articles. I breezed through some of my essays, short stories and pseudo-poems (pseudo for I find my poems silly and totally unacceptable even by the contemporary standards, they are mere blah-blahs). It was all in the hope of finding inspiration from previous works. In no time, I figured out what my greatest difficulty is.

My writing has always been, and I guess, will always be dependent upon my mood. But here’s the catch, I only write when there’s something to complain about. That makes me more of a whiner. I am a self indulgent writer. That for me is a very big problem, especially after I read what Margo Jefferson has to say about essays.

“I love essays ... but I do want to feel they’re part of a larger whole. Not just an indication of the writer’s sensibility… but as proof of the writer’s sustained concentration.”

Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo interpreted it as a warning against writing for self indulgence. I feel that I am one eligible candidate for being guilty of such pleasure.

I have written a lot of works which will verify my being a self indulgent whiner err, writer. “Ang Laki Kasi ng Boobs Ko” was about how I’m inconvenienced by my big breasts, “Di ka Masyado Kagandahan” was about how I hate it when good-looking women can’t accept the fact that normal-looking women like me can date drop-dead gorgeous guys, “The Failure of An Achiever” talked about how I complained about being an achiever in the eyes of the people around me. These are things which are normally considered as blessings by other people. I, on the other hand, write essays about these topics while whining nonstop. I never intend to just whine while writing, it just happens. Like it’s some inevitable event that I have to go through.

Just like any budding writer, I want my works to be of relevance to other people. The question remains, how am I going to achieve that? It’s hard when the things I write about only expose my own imperfection, my own insecurities, my own dilemma. I can’t go on discussing my states of depression, how I hate it when the guys I date are all not into commitment, or how I despise being stuck with horny men. How do I address this difficulty when I find pleasure in self indulgence? When in fact, I consider my writing as a form of outlet, a form of therapy?

The resolution to my dilemma lies in how I whine. It was Gutkind who asked the question, “Aside from the people directly involved in the story, who cares?” I must make my readers care without giving them the idea that I’m just a whiner in disguise. I must convince them that the things I write matter to them without sounding too desperate or eager to please. I must be able to write about topics which interest them and which also bring a point. May it be a point which will convince them or make them disagree, I must make my readers relate to the stories I tell, the dilemmas I whine about and the insights I am able to share. Writing is a form of “MUSTerbation”. So what am I? I’m a whining writer who finds pleasure not only in self indulgence but also in my readers’ stories of how I have touched them in ways I can never imagine.