BY BORDI JAEN
IF A TIME traveller went back in time and told a young Bordi Jaen that he would start writing for Panay News in a few years’ time, his reaction would be the following:
a) in disbelief that time travel really does exist and hence thinks of the time traveller as perhaps needing psychological intervention
b) in even greater disbelief that Mr. bad-hand-writing-and-verbose-writer Jaen would be writing for a paper and no less than the Panay News
When I was younger I never seemed to be cut out for writing. My handwriting was terrible. I was consistently recognized as the student with the worst handwriting in class.
My mother cautiously warned, “Bordi, if you want to pass the Bar, you really need to improve your handwriting because lawyers need to have good penmanship.”
My teachers all painstakingly tried to correct my terrible handwriting by threats of minus points and chastisement. My father even tried to buy this specialized kind of paper with grids and squares to practice my writing on in an effort to curb my sloppy, chicken feet handwriting. It was all futile.
I was also verbose. It was evident in the essay portion of our long tests, our book reports and other required academic writers. One memory stands out. A writing teacher constructively critiqued the “summary” portion of my book report about Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” by saying it wasn’t much of a summary at all.
She said something along the lines of “Mr. Jaen, you don’t need to write everything that you remember! Just write the general plot.” Then again, when you have a “number of words” requirement to reach, aren’t all high school students verbose essayists?
Perhaps it was this combination of factors, along with the fact that I didn’t do well writing under time pressure, that I never really did well in journalism competitions. It didn’t really bother me much since my focus for most of my high school years was public speaking and debate. I have always loved expressing my ideas in whatever medium I can use. I was more comfortable with articulation rather than writing as a form of expression.
Even so, it didn’t mean I disliked writing in totality. I wrote a few articles for my school paper but my reputation was never with writing. However, the pandemic kicked in. There weren’t many suitable competitions to join in the two aforementioned activities of my liking. With nothing much left to do at home, for recreational activity I thought the only reasonable thing to do was practice and hopefully master the activity I had a love-hate relationship with: Writing.
In a way, this pandemic is really God-sent in blossoming my journey as a writer. Since online classes don’t require you to write by hand, all we have to do is type our essays on our laptops. So it saves my teachers and myself from my messy handwriting.
The asynchronous classes really help since it gives a greater span to write, allowing to me review and edit my work better and with ease.
Lastly, the pandemic has given me the opportunity to read and learn from some of the greatest writers in human history. I sought to stand upon the shoulders of such giants as Cicero, Dostoyevsky, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Nick Joaquin. They give me great insights on how to improve the quality of my writing.
I, of course, have also added in the things that I have discovered and liked that give my writing its own unique style. However, I still find it necessary to credit the people from whom I drew inspiration. In tackling my verbosity, I had great help from an unlikely source, my ABM teacher. Business has always been a no-nonsense subject and when it came to writing business essays or doing business presentations, she wanted her ABM students to write more with less. Through her pressure, I was able to make my writing style more precise and to the point rather than flowery and unnecessary. Although still with a need for improvement, the loquacious was diluted by the laconic.
I never planned on writing for Panay News. I just wanted to write good essays for my teachers to appreciate. However, during the George Floyd incident (if you remember that), I was overcome with the emotion that I wrote a short but impassioned commentary about it on my Facebook account entitled “Who will guard the guards?”
A very good friend saw this commentary and goaded me to submit an application to Panay News. This friend believed in me before I believed in myself. With her motivating me, I decided to try my luck and write an essay on something I had an inkling for: debate.
Hence, on the first Tuesday of August last year, I began my PN career with my first ever article entitled “Debate: The art of critical thinking”.
It is writing for Panay News that allows me to sharpen my writing skills better than any high school essay could. I pressure myself greatly to write only the best outputs. Before writing, I ask myself, “Is this good enough for Panay News?” and “Will my readers benefit and enjoy reading what I write?”
I only have the highest respect for this newspaper, the most prestigious in the region, and is honored to be considered worthy enough to write for it. It is a great medium to write my thoughts, my advocacies, my commentaries, and many more. It gives my voice greater reach.
Something I learned from this is that reinvention is possible. As Bear Grylls would have put it, one must improvise, adapt, and overcome. Sometimes, the Almighty opens opportunities for us to do better in things we previously thought was anathema to us. However, it is not enough to have the opportunity to improve; one must have the heart and the will to seize it and be better than yesterday.
Most importantly, when jumping into new ventures, sometimes it takes not only the heart’s will within but the heart from a good friend who pushes you to greater heights. This is why having a small but sure circle of friends is beneficial.
It has now been a year since I started writing for Panay News. I need not tell you, my reader, the benefits of writing for it is common sense. I hope, however, that a takeaway from reading about the journey of my writing will suffice./PN
