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Tag: achievement

Struggling with a place where people don’t use Twitter…
So the book I’m reading of how to build an author platform informs me that I should use Twitter, yep that very popular social network that works everywhere but in Bolivia, and I don’t mean that you can access the site here, but that people just don’t get it and hence don’t use it.

Many people in my country use Facebook, WhatsApp, and many other social networs, plainly frequently, but Twitter is the exception, it has been left out, the poor one 🙁 . So when the author platform book said “start gathering your followers with your friends and work colleages…” I was “hello? is anybody here using Twitter?”. After some blank stares, I must have found only 3 people who used it, but never actually “USED IT” in the sense of the word, just opened the account some time ago, and that was it, they were officially in twitter.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

That left me wondering? why? but why? as I got into Twitter, started tweeting, retweeting, using hashtags, and all the things you do on Twitter, I started understanding why this platform wasn’t popular in my country.
- First, people here are not into expressing and opening to the outer world. In twitter, for example, you can post an awesome picture and, with the right followers, and hashtags, you could get “Twitter-famous” from one day to the other.
- Other social networks are more about your circle of friends, the people you know, the pictures where you recognize friends’ gatherings, families, etc. We’re still a closed society here, and there’s a lot of: who you are friends with, who do you know, etc., so everything happens among the people you know, not strangers. People here are not into making random friends from elsewhere… And yep, Twitter is mostly all about that. I mostly don’t know the people that follow me, and unless I’ve been following some famous person or a celebrity, I usually follow people that seem cool according to what they tweet, even if I don’t really don’t know them.
So I made a quick poll, among friends, I asked them “Why don’t you use Twitter? or Why do you think bolivians are not into Twitter?. These are some answers I got:
- People here are not so used to express in few words (the 140 restriction which drives me insane)
- It´s about gossip worst than Facebook
- Because I don´t see any benefit on it
- It´s enough with Facebook, why would I have Twitter?
- People here are used to personalize social networks and are more into wanting to know what their friends will say or tell. They’re not into free expression, not because it’s banned, but because it’s not motivated, and we feel inhibited. (I like this one, it comes from a friend that actually uses twitter, thanks Vanessa 🙂
So after all these reasons and opinions, I really don’t have a strong opinion about Twitter, all I know is that it’s good to have it for an author platform. So for any of you of my brilliant blog followers out there, if any of you would like to follow me on Twitter, please do so at: @carlisdm

And if you have any strong opinions of why you like or don’t like twitter, please feel free to leave your comments!!!
November 24, 2014
I started to kill my darlings and it feels so liberating…

For those who have been following my blog, you know I’ve been writing my first novel during these months, and now I’m totally trying to finish my first manuscript by the hand of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). But being my first time experience as a writer, I’ve discovered so many writing tips during these months, that I would lie if I say I knew all of them existed, like the infamous darlings for example.

But could you imagine if I were oblivious to these writer’s tips, notes, methods, etc.? For a first time novelist, the most possible outcome would be a dreadful first draft. Of course, I’m perfectly aware that my fist draft will not be the best, neither the second, or not even the first novel; it could take me years (hopefully not decades) to learn to write properly; but I believe that with practice and huge receptivity for criticism (read my previous post), I can actually improve a lot.

Image source: lilliemcferrin.blogspot.com

But enough of rambling about all this writing learning-curve-process, I wanted to talk you about my darlings, yes you read well, my darlings, and I’m not talking about my beloved ones, or my several stacked virtual boyfriends (who happen to exist in a quantity equivalent to zero), but I’m talking about William Faulkner’ famous darlings. For those who are not into writing, a quick definition will help you not close this blog post immediately.

What is a darling in writing? A darling, according to the Urban Dictionary, is a literary advice that refers to the dangers of an author using personal favorite elements. In other words, I interpret the darlings as those phrases that look so cute or so wording abundant and excessive vocabulary that although, they make writers feel proud, they can actually cause readers to roll their eyes.

Image source: www.rubescloset.com

I’ve been struggling with darlings for months, in my excuse to find my unique voice (which for some reasons started to come with darlings) until recently, when I realized that I only needed to stop worrying about them. That all I needed was to start writing a story with truthful characters and strong emotions, and that was it.

Darlings have started to disappear, and whenever I read my first chapters (which of course I will have to revisit later when I finish my first draft), I will be ready to push my magic Delete button on the keyboard, and kill all the darlings mercilessly, for they are only barriers that stop us telling a truthful story (no need of decoration).

And you have you ever heard about these darlings? If you haven’t, well now you know that writers are not crazy murderers whenever they talk about killing their darlings.

And if you’ve heard about them, how do you cope with them? Do they usually chase you in your writing?

P.S. I tried to google images related to “kill your darlings” but it seems that there’s a movie with Harry Potter in it (I mean the actor).

November 6, 2014
Why we all need feedback and why we should embrace it…

I love feedback and with the time I´ve gotten more receptive of it. Many years ago, it would have been different. I would have taken it too harsh and felt discouraged. I think that´s sign of growing up and I embrace this idea.

Since I began writing this year, I’ve felt insecure about my writing. The plot, the characters, the stories, have always been abundant in my head, but my problem was translating them into paper. Having never had writing classes and having a different native language than English, there were times where I questioned myself “What am I getting myself into?”

Image source: crossfictampmabry.com

Due to all in these insecurities, I’ve always looked forward for feedback, and expected the worst. However, some people have given me excellent feedback and I thank them deeply for that (even though I still feel they were condescending with me). You see, I’m actually my toughest reviewer, but isn’t´that the idea? If I were to believe that I write very well and that my writing doesn’t need improve, it would be a tragedy, I would be a mediocre writer.

Image source: linkedin.com

Being able to realize that there´s always room for improvement is awesome; I mean the “realization” part. The fact that you´re not that blinded and that you can find your own mistakes, it’s rewarding. And believe me, there must be a bunch of people out there who still get sensitive with feedback, BS! This is not a career for being sensitive, it´s a career for those who accept all sorts of criticism, absorb them, and continue forward! The more you detect your mistakes, the more you’ll be able to improve and learn.

Image source: blog-synergita.com

Thanks for all the harsh reviewers out there. That´s what writers really need and I´m hoping to get as many as possible. That´s the only way up!

And you, how do you handle feedback? Do you let it get to you when it´s too harsh? I would love to hear what you think! Come on express yourselves in the comments section, if you want to complain against harsh reviewers do it! this is your chance 🙂

November 3, 2014
Is Halloween a big source of inspiration for good horror storytelling?

So this new Halloween paraphernalia has arrived to my country in the last recent years. It should be due to Globalization since I never grew up with this. However, it gets me in the mood for writing, and maybe it´s also because we’re close to NaNoWriMo and I´m getting excited about it as well.

But I’m also a sucker for good horror/suspense stories. Edgar Allan Poe was one of the first writers I was introduced to when I was a kid and loved all his stories. Then, Mr. Stephen King arrived and blew me away.

This doesn’t mean I´m only dedicated to this genre, I love reading good thrillers and even had read a couple of romance novels long time ago. My first novel is a Thriller now (no horror elements for this one) but trying to fill it with much of suspense as possible.

Image source: hopsa.co.za

What I love most about the horror/suspense genre is the possibility of describing anti-heroes as main characters. I also love good suspense, page-turning books that can make me lose my sleep at night.

I know many people who just stare me plain blankly when I mention my favoritism for this genre. I hear comments “Oh, I don´t like that” “I try to get away from that”. I guess most of my friends would fall into this category.

However, literature, writing is universal, the ability to create powerful characters, create overwhelming settings, develop emotions, and the turn all of these elements into wonderful storytelling is art for me.

And you what do you feel about horror/suspense stories? Why do you think many people turn away from this genre? I want to hear your thoughts!

October 29, 2014
Hang in there November, NaNoWriMo is coming!

NaNoWriMo???? I must be crazy. For those of you that don´t know about this, you can take a look here.

But basically is the National Novel Writing Month, and any writer can register in this event. You just need to have the courage to do it and all the energy of the world. In order to win (many people can win), you need to write 50 000 words in all the month, so that would mean 1666,66 words per day, and yes I´m taking into account, weekends, which for me is the challenge.

nanowrimo.org

Image source: nanowrimo.org

I don´t feel it too bad to write that amount of words per day. I usually write between 1000 and 1500 per day, but I must confess that I don´t write all days of the week. I may write perhaps 4 days and no more. Usually, I will spend 2 days per week with my inner Editor on (which sooner is going to let me insane, I´ll tell you about this in another post); and Sundays, I don´t write, the lazy worm invades me completely. There are so many things going on Sunday, from doing laundry, cooking for the family, etc, to just spending lazy comforting time with my loved ones. Whenever my mom says on Sundays, let´s watch a movie, believe me I never think of rejecting it, it´s golden time to be able to spend time with her; and well writing gets mostly postponed on Sundays.

But if I don’t write Sundays in NaNoWriMo, I will have to write almost 2000 words per day, and that is a lot. I usually get burned at 1500 and sometimes 1000 is my best of the day.

sarahcradit.wordpress

Image source: sarahcradit.wordpress

So maybe I should consider, waking up early on Sundays, the only day I get to oversleep? Hell yeah! I will do it! because is NaNoWriMo and not LazyWormMo, and I need to take this challenge and put my 100% in doing it!

It´s going to be a hell of challenge, but I can imagine the satisfaction at the end of the month, when you know you have written 50 000 words… overwhelming!!!

So getting ready for the craziest months of the year!!! Hang in there November, you´re going to be my month!!!

Image source: www.trashionista.com

October 22, 2014
Writing helps me to be sane…

This is a continuation from my last post (Once I forgot the typewriter, I forgot how to live) and final part (I promise):

From those writing experiences and my relationship with my typewriter in my child years. I sadly left the writing world, and forgot about my dreams. Many years later, I started to pay attention to other things in life, and stopped writing until I was probably out of college, or even after I had finished some postgraduate studies.

I studied a career that was never meant for me, so when I read about a short-story local contest in the newspaper, I heard a voice calling me again… I didn´t win anything, but being more mature this time, I acknowledged that writing was truly a passion for me.

For many years, I had several jobs in a career that I never liked, and a life situation where I was always unhappy. Finally, I decided that I had to find what I really wanted to do in my life and shout it to the world, and I did.

Now, I´m a writer, even if I don´t write that well yet, or even when I have so much to learn, I consider myself a writer, because writing helps me to be sane, it helps me communicate with the world, and it helps me discover a life where I feel everything is possible.

Image source: archolatheatre.com

I have started writing this year, and I chose to do it in English (because all the books I read are in English and writers tend to write according to what they read) and I feel absolute and totally happy and satisfied with my life, because for the first time I´m acknowledging who I am, what I want to do for the rest of my life, and I´m totally confident that I´m working hard on it.

September 25, 2014
Once I forgot the typewriter I forgot how to live…

(This is a continuation of the previous post: How to make your kid an avid reader/writer)

I still remember when I was little, no computer yet in my house (I got my first computer when I started University) but we used to have a typewriter (well, we still do, it´s there forgotten somewhere in a dark place of my house). I had read in the newspaper about a writing contest, sponsored by the government in my city, and I thought it was a hell of opportunity for me. I was no more than eight years old, and decided to enter this contest for ‘novel writers’. I´m convinced that it was just for adults but I didn´t pay attention to it. I just wrote with my typewriter a wonderful story (that shamefully I never kept a copy) of a fantasy world. Since typewriters didn´t allow you to make mistakes, my presentation was extremely awful. Being a kid, I wasn´t conscious yet about having to redo a whole page whenever I had a mistake on the typewriter, I would just use an eraser and type over the mistake.

Image source: site.xavier.edu

When I was done, I begged my Aunt Nancy, who used to live near the post office, to put the papers in an envelope and submit it to the P.O. box of the contest. Of course, I never won or anything and the writing must had been really embarrassing, but I was just eight years old! Nevertheless, having such a wonderful imagination (that I still have fortunately), the story in itself must had been a lot of fun.

At that age, I felt there was no limit for me and no barriers to achieve whatever I wanted. What a shame, I was never encouraged to follow these dreams. I wrote short stories for my mom and some members of my family before I was 10. I have a couple of them stored in a box, and of course the writing is terrible but the stories, the creativity, the characters were great. But what I remember the most is that I always felt fulfilled whenever I wrote those stories.That sense of fulfilment shouldn´t be forgotten, we should live our lives with the intention of feeling always like that.

However, I did forget it… and it was shameful because it led me to years and years of an unsatisfied and unhappy life….

P.S. will continue…

September 23, 2014
How to make your kid an avid reader/writer

I never post advice for parents, but I thought this title was actually the objective of this post.

“This is your vacation homework.” my mom would say. When I was a kid, my mother used to prepare vacation homework for me. I was the only kid in the family and didn´t have many friends, so on school vacation, I actually got bored watching TV. Since I was an obedient kid, I would think of my mom´s “vacation homework” as something I had comply with or I would be facing some severe scolding. Most of this homework was reading, and that is the best gift that my mom ever gave me.

Image source: www.elizabethstreet.com

I was born, grew up, and still live in Bolivia, a country where if you say you´re a writer, people would look at you with disbelief and even pity. Writers don´t make any decent earnings here, and of course it´s never a good career choice. So as a normal young girl, with very good grades, I went for what I thought was an excellent career choice for me and for everybody else in my family: “Industrial Engineering”. Just the name sounded good, hard, complicated, and something that everybody else could be proud of, with lots of job´s opportunities, good salaries, and all the things that people advised you when you graduate from high school.

I´ve never received the advice “do you what you love to do, what you´re passionate about” and I wish I had.

story will continue…

P.S. I came up to the conclusion, that in our current lives where we get tons of emails, blog posts, and so on… the shorter the better, so I decided to write short posts from now on…but I will try to make them to sound as complete as possible on their own…

September 22, 2014
Oh men! we´d better achieve our dreams or….

Image source: blog.princetontutorial.com

Oh men, If I thought I would had a weekend like the previous one, years ago, I would have laughed really hard. I´ve always envisioned myself writing a novel in the late years of my life. I would say “SOMEDAY I will write a book, when I´m retired, and have time, and blah blah…”, but then one day I just decided to say that is BS! I will accomplish this dream “RIGHT NOW RIGHT HERE”, not in the near future, or someday when I´m in a retirement house, but NOW, when I have a day job and almost no time. I made the right decision…

For the past months, I´ve been trying to write my first novel. I started writing short stories first but when I got what I thought an interesting idea for a novel, I decided to give it a go. I decided I was going to put ‘writing´ as number one in my priorities list. No more “extra activities” that would drive me away from it. I would write everyday, if possible, until I actually made a habit of it.

Then, to not bore you anymore with the process to achieve this goal, I started to research about the process of writing books, how to build up characters, plots, etc. So much material about it, you wouldn´t believe me.

Image source: www.arcolatheatre.com

Finally, I decided to enroll myself in the Writer´s Digest bootcamp: Agent One-on-One: First ten pages, which basically focused in the first ten pages of a novel. We got a video tutorial from Ms. Paula Munier of Talcott Notch Literary Agency, who was brilliant, the cleverest person I´ve ever listened to. She gave excellent advice of what Agents were looking for and what she expected to find in the first pages of a novel. She also talked about all clichés, and all the times she got to reject queries from writers. I was “Oh my, I´ve never going to make it!” I did some research about her clients, looked in the web for their books, and believe me , those were quality material, beautiful books, written so amazingly that I was “I don’t stand a chance, English is not even my native language! I´ve never going to be at that level” But I was already registered in the course, with 200 $us invested, which here in my country is a LOT of money.

Image source: www.trinitylgbt.com

So to shorten things, Paula Munier was assigned as the agent who would review my pages (out of five agents in the bootcamp). I was thrilled, maybe she was the toughest one, but the one I´ve imagined myself working with. I sent my pages, expecting to receive a critique that would say “this is not good, you really have to improve, you should consider changing careers, or are you sure you want to be a writer?” I was already mentally preparing myself for that, telling me that I would try not to take it so bad, that I would improve, that this was just a course, and that I was there to learn and to improve.

What I got was: “Nice work, Easy and Fun to read, Engaging premise, Likable hero, Colorful cast of characters, Unique great style” and I was … My god I was stunned.

Of course she also described the parts where I could improve, like improving the flow of the scenes, avoiding overwriting, American grammar and punctuation (the British influence of course), and some issues with my second scene. But nonetheless, I was thrilled.

Image source: www.kariwolfe.com

And true, there is still a lot to improve, but it is all about the HARD WORK, and nothing else. If you want to write, you have to do it all the time. You have to read millions of books, if you want to improve your craft. It´s hard work and nothing else. Revision after revision and craziness along the way of course! I usually find myself about to go nuts when I get into one of those hard “revision” sessions, like I would dream with characters and get traumatized with grammar rules. But it is worth it.

In the end, we don´t get a second life, we only have this one, we´d better make the best of it. That means we only have NOW and THIS LIFE to make our dreams come true. We’d better devote ourselves and work our asses off to achieve our dreams, or else when are we going to do it? There is no other way around.

Believe in your dreams and just work the hell out of yourself to make them come true!

August 25, 2014
Writing for a reason

Writing is about unveiling yourself. It is about taking out all the layers that surround you. A true writer digs into his heart and exposes everything. He leaves himself vulnerable.

The richness of words only come from honesty. Characters come from the most enchanted places and they are nurtured by the writer´s believes, hopes, and fears. When the writer writes, he submerges himself into a trance where ideas flow naturally, a small voice wakes in his mind telling him secrets of the story.

I write because it heals my soul, because it makes me honest, because it lets me be myself. I write because I free myself and reach a mind state where everything is possible. I dive into a land of power, because writers do have power, a mighty power that can touch readers’ hearts, speak to them, and convince them of whispers, voices, and feelings. There is nothing more fulfilling than this: to let yourself be enveloped into a world where you let your heart speak and touch others on the way.

June 26, 2014