Igniting Ember: The Architecture of Grit

I did not arrive at writing with a thunderclap. There was no single afternoon when the world split open and announced, with certainty: This is what you will be. There was no burning bush, no divine mandate whispered in a moment of repose. Instead, writing came to me the way weather does—quietly at first, a shift in the humidity of the mind, a subtle darkening of the horizon. It was the slow, inevitable accumulation of moments that demanded language when silence felt insufficient. It became a survival mechanism disguised as a hobby: a way of anchoring myself to a world that often felt as fluid and unpredictable as the sea.

I grew up attentive to words long before I knew what to do with them. I was a child who collected phrases the way others collected smooth stones or discarded stamps. I found music in the mundane: conversations overheard through thin apartment walls, the rhythmic, ancient weight of prayers recited in pews that smelled of floor wax and old wood, and jokes sharpened for survival amid the heat of a crowded kitchen. In these stories—told casually but remembered fiercely—language became both my shelter and my instrument. Writing, for me, was not initially an ambition; it was a response. It was my way of answering the world when it asked questions too complicated for speech.

My journey into the obra maestra of the soul began in a fifth-grade classroom under the mentorship of Gerald C. Galindez—known to us as GIK. He treated language not as a school subject, but as a living fire. He was the first to show me that writing did not belong to the sterile pages of textbooks or to the ghosts of dead authors; it belonged to us, here in the SOX region, written in a Tagalog that tasted of our own earth.

The cornerstone of my creative awakening was GIK’s resonant litany: “Maalikabok ka lang pero kaganda mo.” At first, I saw alikabok only as the grit of the road, the haze of the dry season, or the perceived “underdevelopment” of a provincial town. But through GIK’s lens, I realized that dust is the very medium through which light becomes visible. He taught me to look toward the Daguma mountain range at golden hour, when the setting sun strikes the rising dust of Tacurong, turning the atmosphere into a crown of embers—nagabaga. In that light, the “dusty” was no longer a sign of neglect, but a sacred veil of labor and history.

This realization became my manifesto for what I call the Poetics of Grit. It revealed a searing beauty within the mundane struggles of our people—the babu and bapa, the manong and manang—whose dreams fuel the city’s industry. GIK’s words taught me that our "dust" is inclusive; it is a force that giyakap mo lahat ng tribu (embraces every tribe), stitching together the deep wounds of our history into a unified tapestry of song and color. From GIK, I learned that a writer’s duty is to find the kagandahan in the maalikabok—to recognize that our roots are deep and our "dust" contains hidden gold and pearls of laughter. This work is an attempt to honor that lesson: to prove that my hometown stands as a tagboan of the spirit—unapologetically dusty, and profoundly beautiful.

GIK also granted our local voice the right to be loud and unapologetic. His use of SOX Tagalog—a majestic hybrid of Tagalog, Hiligaynon, Bisaya, and Ilocano—proved that identity is most beautiful when it is complex. This was most evident in his use of regional prefixes to reshape the rhythm of the sentence: ginhambal instead of sinabi, or ginahimo instead of ginawa. Most striking was the prefix gi- used to ground words in the visceral present—gi-tapon instead of tinapon. This shift reflects a linguistic soul that refuses to be tamed. This has since become my Principle of Linguistic Hybridity. In my process, I no longer polish dialogue into a “standard” tongue. Instead, I intentionally reinsert the regional “dust,” ensuring that every word remains rooted in the soil that gave it life.

I first tested this principle in practice during my Grade 12 years, in our 21st Century Literature class. Tasked with writing flash fiction, I wrote Siya?, a thriller-horror narrative that used the grotesque and the uncanny to critique the failures of our justice system. The piece was a gamble; it was unconventional in both language and form, yet it was met with a perfect score and profound recognition. More than the grade, that moment affirmed that writing in my own register was not a risk, but a strength. With this, I have come to realize that unconventionality is the engine of resonance. Following a structure ensures a piece is understood, but reforming that structure ensures it is felt. I no longer view unconventionality as a rebellion; I view it as an act of precision. By reforming the syntax and tweaking the rhythm of my prose, I am not just writing; I am witnessing. I am building a structure that can finally hold the weight of my own story.

But if GIK gave my language its soul, the digital revolution of Filipino web literature gave it its skeleton. I am a child of the Wattpad era—a generation that found its pulse in the serialized rhythms of writers like purpleyhan, akosibarra, and ShinichiLaabss. In the complex, logical labyrinths of Project LOKI, the high-stakes investigative tension of Detective Files, and the speculative world-building of Tantei High, I encountered a different kind of permission. These stories taught me the power of the hook: the sacred contract between writer and reader to keep the pages turning through suspense and deduction.

I now see myself as a hybrid of these two worlds: the SOX-rooted, grit-focused realism of GIK and the narrative tension of the digital greats. My writing attempts to bridge that space—to carry the realist weight of the world while infusing it with the sharp, intellectual puzzles of a detective’s mind. I want to write stories where the regional dust of SOX meets the strategic shadows of mystery. This digital influence gifted me more than just a sense of pace; it gave me a detective’s eye for the regional landscape. I began to view the dust of Tacurong not just as atmosphere, but as a series of clues. By merging the strategic tension of a mystery with the unapologetic grit of my heritage, I create stories that do not just show the world, but investigate the very soul of it.

I realize now that I did not begin writing in a vacuum. I stepped into a long, rhythmic breathing that began centuries before my first ink stain. When I trace the lineage of my sentences, I find the red dust of my ancestors’ stories and the salt-thick air of the islands they navigated. To write is to participate in an ancient ceremony of remembering. I am a student of the Filipino experience, where language is never merely a tool for communication but a site of struggle and reclamation. Our history is one of tongues cut and replaced, of names rewritten in the ink of colonizers. When I pick up a pen, I carry the weight of those who were silenced and those who sang in secret. My lyricism is not an escape from responsibility; it is an act of accountability. 

People often imagine writing as a seamless flow, but for me, it is a fracture. In this collection, poetry, scriptwriting, and realist fiction were the hardest stones to quarry. Poetry was unforgiving in its demand for economy; I spent nights wrestling with line breaks, learning that to write a poem is to stand naked before a mirror and describe what is there without ever relying on the word I. Through this process, I came to understand that poetry reveals its craft precisely through constraint—through the deliberate shaping of image, rhythm, and figurative language, where meaning emerges from compression rather than excess.

Playwriting introduced a different kind of agony: the discipline of showing without telling. I had to relinquish authorial control and accept that a script is only half alive until an actor breathes life into it. At the same time, I learned that no performance can exist without a carefully crafted foundation. In the most literal sense, no script, no play. Studying the architecture of dialogue taught me that people rarely say what they mean, and that subtext—what remains unsaid—is where the true story resides.

Realist fiction and nonfiction, however, proved the most jagged stones to shape. Drawing from GIK’s maalikabok philosophy, I resisted the urge to grant my characters easy endings. Realism demands that the writer confront poverty, failed romances, and political unrest without turning away. Writing these pieces often felt like reliving the traumas of my community just to get the sentence right. I learned that writing must carry allegories that demand awareness; it is an avenue for truth and protest. If others refuse to look at the dust of our reality, then I will gladly be the one to gather it. In doing so, I refuse to be an Orientalist. I do not write to package our struggles into something exotic or “charming” for an outsider’s gaze. I do not write to turn our dust into a souvenir; I write to honor it as our home.

However, I have learned that the right to name a reality must be earned through the labor of learning. One cannot write effectively about the "grit" without first understanding the minerals that compose it. I believe a writer must be a student before they can be a storyteller; we must sit in the silence of research to ensure we are not mere tourists in someone else’s pain. This intellectual humility is what prevents a writer from becoming a mere observer of trauma. Before I set pen to paper, I immerse myself in the context of my subject so that my voice is grounded in documented truth rather than surface-level assumption. I have also learned to respect the silence that precedes the sentence. There are days when the "dust" does not settle and the words refuse to ignite. In these moments, I have realized that the architecture of a piece is often built during the hours of not-writing—when I am simply moving through the world with an open ear. This "fermenting" period is not an absence of work; it is the quiet gathering of the grit necessary for the next fire. It has taught me that a writer’s stillness is just as intentional as their syntax.

My process is therefore not a linear march but a tidal pull—messy, recursive, and deeply intuitive. Like the sun rising regardless of our readiness, the work often arrives with its own heat. I usually begin with an image: the tilt of light on a cracked sidewalk, a phrase overheard on a bus, or a question that refuses easy resolution. I write toward what unsettles me, using the page as a laboratory to dissect moments that resist explanation. In these early stages, drafts are spaces of radical permission. I allow myself to write poorly, excessively, even sentimentally. I have learned that the mess is the soil; there can be no bloom without dirt beneath the fingernails.

Revision is where my writing truly becomes itself—it is an act of humility. If early drafts are acts of survival, revision is a deliberate act of craft. To revise is to practice letting go: shedding lines I love, discarding images that are clever but unnecessary, and abandoning endings that feel safe rather than true. Throughout this process, I return to a single question: Is this honest, or merely impressive? I learned to receive feedback without immediately defending my ego, understanding that when a mentor or professor expresses confusion, it is an invitation for me to be clearer, more precise, and more evocative. My method of revision is slow and multi-layered. I begin with macro-revision, examining the bones of the piece to ensure the emotional arc holds. I then step away for a “cold read,” returning with a stranger’s eyes. One of my most vital practices is reading aloud—applied to everything I write—to hear where the rhythm of my written works falters. I also seek a triangulated perspective, gathering responses from fellow writers and non-writers alike. Revision must be handled with care. I have learned that a writer must be a kind creator and a ruthless editor. By deliberately reinserting regional “dust” in the final polish, I ensure that the work does not merely look clean—it feels alive.

This preface is not a declaration of mastery; it is a record of becoming. I am drawn to the "threshold"—the thin space between silence and speech, belonging and estrangement. Writing allows me to inhabit those moments and transform pain into a difficult grace. Ultimately, I write because language remains my most faithful way of listening. I listen to the echoes of mentors like GIK, who saw the writer in me before I could name him. I listen to the digital storytellers who proved that a story can bridge the gap between a smartphone screen and a soul. And I listen to the world—both as it is and as it might yet become. 

These words are an offering: not of final answers, but of sustained attention. I am no longer afraid of the grit; I have learned that to be maalikabok is not a state of being unfinished—it is the state of being vibrantly, unapologetically alive.  In the golden, rising dust of this moment, I find my heritage, my voice, and the only honest place to begin. I did not need a thunderclap to announce my purpose, nor a divine mandate to authorize my tongue. I only needed to look at the embers of the Daguma sunset and realize that the light was already mine to name.  I did not meet writing all at once—I agreed, finally, to let it inhabit me. 

This is how the grit of the journey became the architecture of my embers—shaping both the spirit of the writer and the soul of the writing.