A Loss For Words

“Congratulations,” the e-mail read; I got accepted for a writing fellowship to the 48th National Writers’ Workshop, scheduled for next month at Silliman University.  Those weeks I spent locked up in my room writing on an empty stomach, those days I spent roaming the streets looking for a story to tell, those mornings I fell sick, and those evenings I typed furiously and desperately, came down to the letter from Silliman.  That it meant something more than just taking a potshot at a pipe dream (I love the pun).  In a small way, I’m a step closer to realizing my dream of becoming a writer.

I’m not a writer.  To be a writer, my name has to be on a book.  My room has sort of become a wreck of books with the names of writers I admire; writers like Jorge Luis Borges, Alexandre Dumas, Upton Sinclair, Emile Zola, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Joseph Conrad, the list goes on.  To call myself a “writer” would be to put myself on the same league as they are.  I like to think that I’m an office worker who happens to have a fellowship, an opportunity to learn from – and to learn with – some of the best writers in the country.  That’s kind of a big thing if you’re an office worker whose sole goal in life is to write just one book.  That’s kind of a big thing if you’ve got wrecked hands from writing every day.

That’s kind of a big thing if that’s what you always wanted to do, if that’s the one reason why you’re so far away from home.  Why you’d sacrifice a lot of things, if not everything, in the name of the written word.  That, and the promise it holds.

For the first time in quite a while, I’m at a loss for words.  I don’t know what to say, or what to write down in the way of epiphanies.

Somewhere there, though, are people who believed in me when I became my own best non-believer.  To them, I offer my sincerest thanks and appreciation.  Those who encouraged, those who inspired, those who pushed and shoved to make me do what I have to do, even if it hurts.  Those who believe can now count me in.

I can be a writer.  I think I can, I think I can, I think I can…