August 18, 2005

What Happened on Monday

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It took me this long to write about it. Did I kill the tension?

Ok. So there I was, with only 200 words written down and 3,300 words to go, and how many hours left till five, which was my set deadline. I was working as hard and fast as I could and the best I could do is five hundred words per hour (that, considering grammar, punctuation, plot consistency and so on). Five o’ clock arrived and I still had 800 words to write. Should I quit? Is this the end of everything?

When you’ve written almost 80 per cent of the content, you don’t quit. It didn’t matter if I couldn’t publish it anymore (it’s my fault anyway, the project was announced last month); the thing is, I’m doing this because I’m a writer, and I am definitely enjoying the story. You know that feeling when you’re just about to work and you’re like, “Oh this again. Boo hoo,” and then later after doing a few lines you can’t leave your work? That’s exactly what happened. I submitted my story around 8 in the evening, via email. Hey, you want a sample?

Jose thought it strange for a half-American, half-Filipino living in the States to be interested in Philippine history more than anyone he had ever encountered, with the exception of his history teachers and an author he had met during a field trip some years back, and those were enough reasons to be interested in a country. Amanda was neither; she was a high school sophomore who swims, skates, watches TV, and plans to study psychology, get a decent job, get married, have kids, and live happily ever after.

They met in a Pinoy chatroom. Amanda appeared an hour after Jose logged in and immediately began asking about the Philippines, its history and present situation, and other interesting trivia. The other chatters were eager to help, and soon the discussion shifted from everybody’s asl’s to a comparison of the socio-economic condition of the country from the present back to a thousand years ago. Jose, who had no inclination or interest in the subject, began looking at the profile of everyone in the chatroom. They were a regular group, all students like Jose living in different parts of the world having ordinary hobbies, except for one who used inline skates to cross a tightrope. One guy was a self-proclaimed rockstar. Another had nothing in her profile. Jose then absent-mindedly selected Amanda’s profile for review.

She was gorgeous! Her picture revealed a gracefully slim girl with dark, lustrous hair sleeping like a child on the milk-white curve of her neck and shoulders, parting to show a round, angelic face with a smile that released a thousand summers, eyes that were kind and innocent, and a nose delicately shaped to perfection. Seeing her webcam appearance confirmed that she was the same person in the picture, and Jose immediately sent her a private message.

I’m glad that’s over. Now it’s time for my poetry submission. Yes, I’ve learned my lesson. I’m starting that right away, after I’ve reorganized my computer files. I become messy when I procrastinate.