Monday, April 25, 2011

A Writer's First Time to post a blog as a Journal... Is this the future of writing?

"Because paper has more patience than people." ---Anne Frank

"Journal writing is a voyage to the interior."---Christina Baldwin


All my life I had dreamt of becoming a writer and as a kid I started out scribbling with pen and paper. Then as a student I had also used what we now consider an antique of the bygone era---the typewriter. The great novelist Ernest Hemingway and many writers of the 20th century wrote with the typewriter.

(Nobel Prize for Literature winner Ernest Hemingway and others of the past used to write with manual typewriters)



(Older, earlier versions of the manual typewriter of a bygone era before we were born)





This more "modern" manual typewriter possibly in the 1980s?


I was still a student too, when the world started shifting to computers. Nowadays, a lot of people write via blogs, Twitter, Facebook and other new media. What is the future of notebooks and even pens in the long-term future, maybe antiques for musuems?

As a kid, I had attempted to keep a journal, like a diary with things I did each day, thoughts, whatever. I never really got around to persist and continue with scribbling my activities or thoughts in a journal, which I'm certain could have been great fun if I did. However, with this my first time ever blogging, I think I could persist and continue on this journal because it wouldn't just be me writing for myself, but I know (and hope) there shall be a few more people out there who would be reading my words.

I am a bit saddened by the seeming obsolescence of writing the way it used to be, the handwriting by pen on paper, because I believe there's something romantic, enjoyable and unique about it as an art form. I used to write essays in school or poems using the pen. But times change, the world moves forward inexorably, and we gain new experiences as well as advantages with this blogging as a new way for journal writing---now the whole world can be our audience and potential readership!






Not only journal writing as blog, what about writing a column for the newspaper like what I do for the Philippine Star usually Sundays and Mondays, what about magazines like the Inside Showbiz magazine which I edit (Note: I stopped being editor-in-chief since March  this year 2012 to focus on my realty business more), what about books? Will this online phenomenon be the ultimate future of newspapers, magazines and even books, via the Internet?







As I write this my first blog at midnight here in Asia in the 21st century, I wish to remember that 14-year-old Jewish journal writer Anne Frank who was a tragic victim of the Holocaust during World War II more than half a century ago. She had used pen to scribble her innermost thoughts and emotions in a journal, her medium was old-fashioned, simple, but it was still the power of her words which is immortal.

Anne Frank's courage, faith, innate optimism, her eloquence with the written word and her indomitable zest for life should inspire not only this aspiring and first-time journal keeper via blogging, but also all of us who believe, who hope, who celebrate life and who ultimately---like me---also love the written word.



I hope I get used to writing blog posts or in this journal, without forgetting to also scribble in notebooks, papers, also handwritten letters, notes and even the old-fashioned but more personal postcards.

Although I read often and a lot via the Internet, I shall still continue to read traditional forms of books, magazines and newspapers on paper.

Thanks for reading!

Feel free to email me your thoughts. willsoonflourish@gmail.com or follow me WilsonLeeFlores at Twitter or "like" the page Wilson Lee Flores page in Facebook