A Letter To Mbak Dina

Good Morning Mbak Dina Oktaviani

I hope you read this in the morning so my greeting won’t be in vain.

My name’s Hary Prasojo S, a 20 years old boy who usually called Jojo by my friend. Mr .., oh no Mas Labo Dalih, since he doesn’t want to be addressed with ‘Mas’, showed me your letter in our previous class. As I mentioned in the previous sentence Mas Dalih only showed us the letter and then he asked one of us to read it for the entire class. I was so excited because it seems that your feeling and idea are just flowing into every sentence wrote, informal and casual.

Well what I learned from your letter is that your past, your childhood seems miserable. You lived a difficult life with your family, home, and even in the school. In the age of 13 you started to write and I assume now you are a good writer, even though I haven’t read any of your writing but this letter. Well, If you ask me what makes me think that you are a good writer? The answer is because of your letter and Mas Dalih showed it to the whole class, which makes me sure that you are a good example for us.

What I’m trying to say is why is every good writer or someone who very good at writing always dealing with such horrible past? I don’t know how terrible it was for you but still it was worse for me. My writer friends whose name can’t be mentioned also met the same fate in their past. Some of them ware abused and abandoned by their family, lived with danger that could kill them at any time, and growing up while taking care of their parents in the asylum.

You also said that we don’t have to suffer, to feel what you felt, to start or to be a good writer. But still you experience adds the fact that most of the good writer raise through the suffering. Well, it’s just a personal opinion and observation, maybe you can tell me it there are other good writer who never feel the suffering, it will raise my knowledge too.

For the last, I wanna ask you one thing. What does it takes to be acknowledged as a writer? Is our writing must be published first and then taking compliment from the writer?  Or is it enough to have it only as our hobby and keep the writing for some friends?  Because Sometimes I think the one who mostly called as a writer is the one who’s work has been read by many people and the one who has a good writing skill with published work is considered as a person with writing as the hobby.

However, personally I think that whether you are a famous writer or not, those who write are writers. And writing is an activity to carve something for the civilization and to be known as an existence through the ages.

Thank you very much.

Yogyakarta, 13 March 2013

Secretariat of Unit Fotografi UGM

Hary Prasojo Stafa’atillah