Elise Estrella on 
jazzen mae dioneda on 
I found my passion for writing when I was eight years old and my grandfather thought that I should have better use for my imagination than talking to flies on the wall. He handed me a pen and a sheet of paper so I can write instead of act like a stereotypical loon inside a padded cell. Then my grandmother bought me a tiny diary and I would write what happened during the day, what I wish would have happened during the day, and what the people in my head wished had happened during the day. There were some books that I read that I didn’t like the ending, so I re-wrote those stories, a habit that I have yet to kick as my latest finished story is a re-writing of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire where Cedric Diggory lived. They’re called fan fiction these days. My first fanfiction was when I was about nine when I had the audacity to re-write Star Wars. I put myself in the story as Princess Leia’s younger sister. You should also see the notebooks I filled writing fanfics about my favorite boybands… No, maybe not.
The first time I knew that I was a passable writer was when my sixth grade teacher told me so. She was on of my favorite teachers, but as I was a shy little thing, I rarely spoke in her class. She pulled me aside one time and told me what she thought of my essays. She thought I had a future in it, and although I wanted to believe it, I wasn’t sure if she was just pulling my leg.
My very first original novel is a science-fiction story that my elementary school best friend and I worked on for a school project in seventh grade. I channeled my Star Trek : The Next Generation fandom into the book while my best friend provided the illustrations and her aunt typed it using an old typewriter. We got a perfect score.
While I always wanted to be a writer, I only realized that I wanted to make a living writing (and might actually be able to do it) was when I was in college and two of my idols, my professors Pia Arbolleda and Tina Gallardo, also thought that I was good at it. Ma’am Tina always read my stories out loud in our Comm I class, and I even got a special prize for one of them. Ma’am Pia never forgot to leave little notes in my Fil 121 notebook, encouraging me to write.
My first Tagalog novella is actually not Inosenteng Puso. In fact, it had never been published. I was probably thirteen or fourteen when I wrote a Tagalog novella for our helper who was addicted to the stuff. I wasn’t very good at it since I wasn’t very comfortable writing in Filipino. I finally finished the story in a small, blue notebook and gave it to her, then spied on her while I was reading. I saw her laugh, cry, got upset, got angry, and laugh again, so I was encouraged. If I could get her to do that, then I knew I could do it. Even so, my first serious attempt at breaking into the local publishing industry came thirteen years after that.
If you want to know how I started writing Tagalog romance, you can read my blog entry here: May Kwento Ako.
wow! ganda ha.. humaba na ang section na to.. hehe..
o ganito na to dati? sorry ha, nakalimutan ko lang.. hehe.. pero parang feeling ko humaba.. love it!
Ehehe di ko maalala kung dinagdagan ko pa ito mula nung na-publish. Ganun naman talaga pag tumatanda. Kailangan na ng vitamins saka Sustagen Premium ehehe