For Ricky Lee, To Write Is To Be Free. For Frank A Hilario, To Write Is For Farmers To Be Free From Poverty!

Pauline Miranda says, “For Ricky Lee, To Write Is To Be Free” (30 Oct 2024, Lifestyle.Inq, lifestyle.inquirer.net). In my case, to write is for the Filipino farmers to be free from poverty. When you are a writer, you are free to choose why you write after all.

Ms Pauline says, “What truly makes (Lee’s) career as a writer fulfilling is in how it frees him:

“Every act of writing ay isang act ng pagpapalaya ko sa sarili,” he says. “Mahiyain akong tao, since childhood. May feeling ako na nakakulong ako sa… being unworthy, feeling inferior, or kung ano man ’yong mga problema ko at depekto. May feeling akong ganon. … Pero every time na nagsusulat ako … nagiging ako ’yong ibang tao na hindi ako. So nakakalaya. … nakakalaya ako in so many ways when I write.

We write for our respective kinds of readers, of course. Differently, Ricky Lee writes to open the hearts – I write to open the minds. Writing frees Ricky Lee’s opinion of himself as a limited human being. Writing, I hope to free the Filipino farmers’ opinion of themselves as limited human beings!
“Creativity is a wild mind with a disciplined eye” (image from sg.images.search.yahoo.com)

For whatever reason you write, you should learn to be creative. Ricky Lee’s creativity comes from his desire to free himself from feeling unworthy – into feeling socially worthy. My creativity comes from my desire to free others from their unfree thinking! And to look for leaders with the Vision to steer the people from Poverty to Prosperity with intelligence and without bloodletting.

Ricky Lee is into fiction. Frank A Hilario is into nonfiction – the science of agriculture.

Ricky Lee wants his name known and admired throughout the educated world of the Philippines and even abroad; I want not my name known but the social ideas I espouse: Communication For Development Of Vibrant Villages (ComDev2), which is the title of the blog where this appears). For Ricky Lee, let me say he is after communication for development of vibrant readers.

As a creative writer myself – having authored and blogged at least 40,000 essays in the last 24 years – google for “Frank A Hilario” if you wish. Going digital, I don’t need publishers for my works.

I repeat: I write to help free the millions of Filipino farmers from their poverty, which even my alma mater, UP Los Baños (UPLB) has neglected in all of her 116 years (1908-2024)!

“Pag nagsusulat ako, at marami akong characters nasulat, and feeling ko nag-succeed ako, nabasa ng iba at nagustuhan nila sa book fair, nagpapa-autograph sila, I feel that I’m seen. I feel that I’m validated as Ricky. I feel that nabuo ako. That’s why I write.”

I Frank A Hilario write not to validate myself, not to validate those farmers themselves, but to validate their poverty and, for the poor farmers to appreciate their poverty and appreciate the fact that they can free themselves – without resorting to violence!@517