Growing Into Writing

GROWING INTO WRITING
by Verne Ahyong

          It is the finals of the martial arts tournament. My opponent is standing across me, pondering his next move. He then lunges at me and launches a flurry of kicks, but I am able to block his attacks. He stops for a moment to collect himself and I take the chance to retaliate. I shoot a fireball the size of my fist from the palm of my hands. He tries to avoid it, but it is already too late. The fireball singes his arm.

          “What in the world are you doing, Verne?” My mom yelled at me, snapping me back to reality. I was lying down on the back seat of my dad’s car. My arms were outstretched in front of me, my hands locked together in a crescent shape.

          “I’m just playing, mommy,” I replied.

          “Stop acting weird,” she said.

* * *

          When I think about how I got into writing, I look back on my days as a young child. It would not be unusual to see me talking with, boxing, and kicking some invisible person when I was alone. My imaginary enemies would be villains I saw on television shows such as Dragon Ball Z and Ghost Fighter. I would pretend I was Son Goku or Eugene, fighting in martial arts tournaments and beating my opponents one after another.

          I would sometimes play these games with my neighbors. We would Volt in and attack imaginary giant monsters, or morph into our own version of the Power Rangers. I was always Red Ranger, leading the others into battle. Many times, we would get into arguments because they would want to destroy the enemy quickly and play another game such as langit-lupa or patintero. I, on the other hand, preferred to keep the story going. I was bad at real games that required actual skill and where I would usually lose. I preferred playing games where I could control the outcome. I loved playing in my own imaginary world.

          When I entered grade school, I noticed that nobody was playing with imaginary friends like I was. Sometimes I still imagined scenes in my head. I got lost in my imagination and inadvertently blurted out phrases or acted out scenes I was thinking about. Most of the time, I would get away with these lapses without anybody noticing. Other times, those around me would stare at me like I was some alien.

          It took time and effort, but I was able to reign in my imagination until my classmates and parents all forgot about my quirkiness. I began to think I would never be able to revisit my imaginary world again. Then, I met Josh during grade four. He struck me as quite an intimidating person because weighed thrice as much as me. I often imagined him squashing me like a bug if ever I got on his bad side.

          When he began to talk however, my perception of completely changed. He sounded so nice and approachable that I immediately tried making friends with him. One of the things we both had in common and which also became our usual topic of conversation was video games.

          We both had PlayStation consoles, but we played different types of games. I played adventure games such as Crash Bandicoot and racing games such as Gran Turismo. Josh preferred role-playing games (RPGs) such as Monster Rancher and Front Mission. During our recess and lunch breaks we would exchange stories about the games we played and how we were progressing in them. We would imagine that we ourselves were the ones living in our video games.

          I tried to interest him in what I was playing, but there was really nothing more to them than collecting apples and buying cars. He, on the other hand, told stories about how he was raising his pet dinosaurs and phoenixes. His world of robots battling one another all across the globe just seemed more interesting than those in the games I played.

          One time, I asked him what RPG he was planning to play next, so we could talk about the same game and so I could put his otherworldly stories to the test. I was convinced he was just making the stories up, and that the RPGs really were not as fantastic as he made them out to be.
I bought my copy of Final Fantasy Tactics that weekend and I got addicted to it immediately. In the game, I took control of a young knight named Ramza and his friends. Set in the medieval fantasy-world of Ivalice, the game allowed me to choose jobs such as that of a knight, archer, wizard, and priest, for each of my characters. I could also interact with other characters and make decisions like people in the real world do. Furthermore, the decisions I made would impact on how the game would progress. It was an entire world enclosed in a compact disc.

          On flipside, the thing that disappointed me most about RPG games was that they always ended with the same happy singing and dancing in a parade ending after you save the world from the evils plaguing it. Rarely were there any sequels to these games. And if there were, like in the Final Fantasy series, the succeeding games would have completely new characters and story lines.

          Every new game would require sixty to eighty hours of my life. I would get to know the characters, journey with them in their adventures, and then the game would just end. I felt it was a waste of the time and effort I invested in it. When I played out stories in my head I had a limitless storyline.
Nevertheless, although games did have their limits on the imagination, they were the closest I had gotten to my imaginary world since I stopped visiting it a few years back. Thus, I continued playing one game after another. However, I could never get attached enough to any RPG to actually finish it after completing Final Fantasy Tactics.

          Josh and I both changed as we grew older. One thing in particular change that I noticed in him was that he began bringing pocketbooks and an extra notebook with him in our first year of high school. During our recess and lunch breaks, he would ask my opinion on dialogues for stories he was writing on his notebook.

          When I asked him about his new hobby, he said that he had been a fan of Stephen King and the author’s works for the longest time, and that he got into writing because of this. I asked if I could borrow one of his books after he encouraged me to read one myself, but he suggested I get a copy of my own instead. He prized his book collection very much.

          The book I should start with, he said, was Carrie, Stephen King’s first published novel. Thus, I dropped by National Book Store after school that day. I knew exactly where the novel I was looking for would be located. I noticed the large section dedicated to the author when I was buying the required readings for English class before the school year began. Nevertheless, I decided to take it slow this time around, paying attention to book spines and covers, and reading the synopses at the back.

          That night, I read Carrie from cover-to-cover, only stopping when my parents forced me to eat dinner with the family. I finished the entire story in less than three hours, and I enjoyed it more than any video game I had ever played. There were no pictures or voices fed to me through the television, but the descriptions in writing gave my imagination enough to play around with and interpret for myself.

          I enjoyed RPGs because I could change the appearance and the attributes of my characters. But although I could direct the storyline, I was never satisfied with the cheesy endings. In Carrie, the ending was sad— even disturbing. I liked it, and it took me only a few hours to finish. Why waste sixty hours of my life playing an RPG only to end up disappointed when I can read a book for three hours and be happy?

          However, the topic of the novel itself was not really to my liking. All the sex, blood, and death were a bit too violent for me. The story had me hooked for other reasons. I could relate with Carrie White, the main character of the novel, because like her, I too was the outcast who was always bullied in school. I was very quiet and physically weak— how I wished I had the power of telekinesis like she did. I would pull a couple of pranks on those bullies if I could.

          I frequented bookstores more often after that. I made a habit of saving my lunch money so I could purchase new novels. At first, I continued reading more works by Stephen King such as The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon and The Shining. However, these failed to give me the same thrill as Carrie. This, together with my mother’s threats to cut my allowance if I continued purchasing ‘demonic’ books, led to my exploring new horizons in terms of reading material.

          I read works by authors such as J.K. Rowling, Nicholas Sparks, Mitch Albom, and Paolo Coelho, and found them to be enjoyable. After a few months of reading works by various writers I realized that I liked reading in general, as long as the story appealed to me. Thus, I immersed myself in a variety of authors rather than focusing on one like Josh did. Like Josh, however, I wanted to try my hand in writing. It became my dream to one day see my own novels among the bestsellers in bookstores all across the globe.

          As my high school years went by, I noticed a significant increase in my English, Filipino, and History grades, specifically in essay writing exams and papers. From low ‘80s’ my grades went up to high ‘90s.’

          During my junior year in high school, my history teacher gave me and my classmates regular essay exams that required practical input and application from our daily lives. My classmates belonging to the honor roll got furious every time I received a higher grade than they did. I always gave creative answers containing my own life experiences and insights from the novels I read, and they could not accept that these could merit higher marks than all the names and dates they memorized from history books.

          Although Josh migrated to America after our freshman year in high school, I continued to write in my own notebooks and read more novels. Then, in my fourth year of high school, it was finally time to complete my college application forms. My school provided me skill competency exams to help in making my decisions. My scores indicated that I should either enter the priesthood or become a writer.

          I decided to follow the latter piece of advice.