In asking our pool of writers to write for our school org's newsletter, I have encountered several who cowered behind their fear –- fear, perhaps, of writing.  Writing appears to pose great problems to some of them, especially to those who claim to have no experience in writing at all.  Let me therefore allot this space to give a few hopefully helpful tips to my pool of writers and to those who seem to have qualms in writing as well.

Writing is purely empirical.  Meaning, there is nothing extraterrestrial about it.  It is not something totally foreign to any one of us.  As H.G. Widdowson would say, writing is merely a product of a person's imaginative response which is in turn caused by his or her intuition. 

Intuition is a product of a person’s incessant exposure to different texts.  In literature, the word “text” is not simply limited to the written literary pieces.  Even life itself is a text in such a way that our view of it is discursive, or simply put variated.  Such is the value of literature; it is but a chance for us to exercise our intuition. 

That is why literature experts would say that literature is different from philosophy in a way that philosophy is still out of this world (well, that's just my way of saying it, so don't quote me).  Literature, on the other hand, bridges reality and the sublime.  It is a world where spiritual, intellectual, emotional, imaginative, and realistic perspectives merge to create beautiful works of art.  And the beauty of the written word is such that it is alive.  It captures the imaginations and the sensibilities of the readers and takes them into its own reality slash world. 

You don't have to be an expert in literary theories to be able to write.  In fact, I have encountered several creative writers who are simply not interested in those theories.  But that is not tantamount to saying that they are not literarily competent.  In fact, the truth of the matter is writers do not start as tabula rasa in writing their texts.  We should realize that writers are a product of a society with its own ideology and conventions that can affect/effect the writing of an author.  Their writings are but unconscious expositions of their ideology.  And that is where experts in those theories (i.e. Literature majors, literary academicians, etc.) come in.  They conduct symptomatic readings (to borrow Freud's term) of the texts by using several literary theories in unraveling the ideology present in the text.  But as writers, these theories will come out naturally in your writings.  If you are not a feminist, no matter how hard you try, your gender biases will come out sooner or later.  Therefore, theories are not what move creativity.  Or more properly, theories are simply behind your creativity.

However, I am not saying that writing is a haphazard activity.  As I have commented somewhere in one of those online journals, and as Jonathan Culler would say, literature is a convention, and if we wish to really excel, there are several measures which we can do to be "conventionally natural."  But then again the process of writing is not without life, so the most basic thing to do is be human and write.  That's all it takes to get a text started.

Ronald Gue was born on April 20, 1985. His favorite authors include (but are not limited to) Milan Kundera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Umberto Eco, Angela Manalang Gloria, Marjorie Evasco, J. Neil Garcia, Vicente Groyon III, F. H. Batacan, and Franz Kafka. He is currently on his fourth year at De La Salle University-Manila taking up a double degree and double major course,  BSE English and AB Literature. His favorite critics/professors include Dr. David Bayot, Dr. Paz "Doods" Santos, Dr. Cirilo Bautista, Dr. Isagani Cruz, Dr. Bienvenido Lumbera, among others.  

A Filipino-Chinese living in Binondo, he looks Pinoy and is fluent in Chinese. His undergraduate thesis is a marxist-feminist analysis of selected plays in Teatro Pulitical using theories by Althusser, Spivak, and Alice Guillermo. He is just taking up Education and English courses for the degree, but he loves Literature and his ambition is to be a concert pianist someday.  He is on his way to fulfilling that dream under the tutelage of the renowned concert pianist Mary Anne Espina.

Lastly, Ronald Gue is a vegetarian (no meat, seafoods, onions, garlics, and chives).