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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
Guest post: Blogger interview

A Wrestlingwriter has posted a guest blogger interview with wonderful questions of what drives me into writing. Check out my answers, and don´t forget to check our her wonderful and inspiring blog http://awrestlingwriter.wordpress.com/

via Guest post: Blogger interview.

October 24, 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
So what is it with young-adult fiction novels? I’m no teenager yet I can’t seem to drop Divergent from my hands….

Yes, when you hear about young-adult fiction novels, images of Twilight and other similar stories come to my mind. I know they are supposed to be directed to an audience of teenagers and young adults in general (say around 20 the most?), I don´t know.

However, I went eagerly to watch all the Twilight series and the same with the Hunger Games. I remembered going to the premier of one of the Twilight movies in my city (I think it was the last part) and being impressed by fifteen year old’s sighing when they either saw R. Pattinson or T. Lautner (well, let´s assume it, it was justified, but me in my early 30s was very far from being in their type of public, yet I was enjoying it very much).

But apart from the movies and all the fuzz that comes with the actors, etc. I really didn´t picture myself buying the books for these movies. I didn´t know very much about Stephanie Meyer and Suzanne Collins, except that they were the authors responsible for these stories (Twilight and The Hunger Games respectively).

But the story with Veronica Roth (author of Divergent) was different. You see I was making a list of the books I may want to shop while I was in the UK for holidays. I knew I had to the take this opportunity to buy me some nice books written in English since they are very difficult to get them in my country. I don´t know how I came across with Divergent and the story of its author, I think she was only 22 or something like that when she first wrote Divergent. I read an interview about her online. It was supposed to be the next big thing, the next Hunger Games, but what came to my attention was that the author was so young to be so extremely accomplished. I decided to put the book in my list, just in case.

Image source: www.business2community.com

Well, due to my endless activities in my trip, I only got the chance to look for books while I was at London Gatwick airport. I didn´t have my list with me in that particular moment, but the moment I stepped in WHSmith, the best sellers and the most popular books came to my encounter, and guess what? the most visible one was Divergent. The edition I ended buying already had the cover with the Hollywood actors on it and already said “now a major motion picture”.

Since I had no idea when the movie was going to be released (I hadn´t been able to watch TV or any internet site while travelling), I thought I was going to have plenty of time to read it before the movie came out. But when I got home, the first thing I saw on TV was the trailer of its release in 5 days.

I read a lot, but I´m not that fast when it comes to finishing books. I usually take between 3 weeks or even a month to finish a book with an average of 500 pages. Of course, I only read one hour per day, approximately and even less, and not every day, usually I forget about the book I´m reading in the weekends.

Image source: en.wikipedia.org

Friends were already telling me about their plans to go to see the movie next week (that is tomorrow). I was thinking that I would have liked to have read it first before going to see the movie. I decided to give it a try and see how much I could move forward with the book before I went to the movies, guess what? I´m about to finish it, surely this night I will finish it. Just on time.

I can´t seem to drop the book, I have been reading past midnight and even more these days. I dream and wake up thinking about the characters and the story. It´s unbelievable. I have read plenty of page-turner books, but this one can´t take my mind of it. The narration in itself is simple, and the plot once you get to understand is very easy to follow, so what is it then? An author so young capable of doing this? It´s actually very motivating for any person who wants to be writer.

The truth is simple, she knows how NOT to get people bored and she knows how to engage people to keep reading. I couldn´t seem to find a part in the book where I could put a halt and say “well that´s it for tonight, let´s continue tomorrow”. You couldn´t, it was like a crime to close the book when it was getting more and more interesting. For such an age, extraordinary, my sincere reverences to her…

May 2, 2014