carladoria.lasultimasfamilias.com

Tag: believer

What good is to travel?
When I first started writing this blog (2 years already! can’t believe it), my main objective was to build a traveling blog. I’d been following a couple of travel blogs (Barcelona Blonde, Nomadic Matt, and others) that had been fueling my desire for traveling the world and writing about it. But Money and other personal issues made me put a halt to these intentions, settle in one place, and start blogging about something else. I regret nothing. Thanks to this change in plans, I started writing fiction and blogging about it. What a memorable experience it has been.

But I still travel. I may not be able to sail the world, visit all its continents, and be “on the move” constantly, but I’ve managed to travel quite a bit (18 countries, 44 cities, until now). My travel bucket list ranks high in my life priorities. And since there are some continents that I’ve never been too yet (Asia, Africa, and Oceania – Australia! why are you so far?), my eagerness remains intact. But I can’t complain. If I die tomorrow, I’ve done my fair share of traveling. I couldn’t be most thankful.

Traveling is a life-enriching experience, unmatchable to any other. And when you write, there’s nothing better to broaden your horizons. And though, I don’t travel as much as I did before, I still try to save as much as possible to do one nice trip per year.

But what exactly have I learned from traveling?
- People are the same everywhere. They all struggle; they all do their best. Nobody anywhere is better than somebody elsewhere.
- There’s nothing better than learning other languages. Even if you don’t master them. It feels nice to say “hello” and “thanks” in many languages. It doesn’t matter if those are the only words you learn. People appreciate when you make an effort to learn at least tiny bits to communicate with them. Keep in mind that they’re in no obligation to know your language.
- Society restrictions are just that “society restrictions.” Those awful closed-minded standards by which your society apparently rules, end there, in that small circle of your town. When you travel, you realized that nothing of that matters, that you’re limited only by your own convictions.
- Globalization is here to stay. You can be whatever you want wherever you are.
What other lessons do you think can be learned from traveling?
October 20, 2015
Writing fan fiction? cheer up!

I have a feeling that fan fiction writing will never be taken seriously. I have a confession to make, I used to write fan fiction some time ago. And even though, I’m not looking forward to pursue that path (that doesn’t mean that I won’t do it again), I will always be very fond of it.

How did I start writing fan fiction?

I’m a big nerd (proud to admit it 🙂 ) and the type of geek girl who is always into movies and series fandom. So many years ago, I discovered the world of fan fiction; where fans could read stories of their favorite movie/TV characters in other environments, situations, episode endings, etc. In few words, what fans didn’t get to see on the screen, or what they thought could had happened, was written into many types of fan fiction stories; some of them really imaginative, twisted, and of course with all types of adult censorships.

Image source: ladygeekgirl.wordpress.com

So when I discovered this world, I got into it very deeply. I would first read dozens of them per day everywhere all the time. I got obsessed with it. But there were few stories that I actually liked. It was as if I was looking for the right story; the one that explained how exactly I thought TV character X did Y in episode Z. Rarely seldom, I found satisfying stories. Let’s accept it, every mind is different. Some fans were too much into certain aspects that I didn’t consider important, and others were just, let’s just say weird…

So how did I got into writing them? Well, since I couldn’t find the stories that actually gave me a feeling of “closure”, (more…)

April 13, 2015
Movie review – The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

I’m one of those persons that always thought “The Lord of the Rings” films were destined to be the best film-series ever. I still remember my attendance to the movie theater would be repeated several times with the objective to absorb as much as possible from this fantastic trilogy. I couldn’t get enough of it, all the Epic Fantasy in the story was so appealing that I guess many people got as obsessed with it as me. Then the Hobbit came.

I was expecting the first movie The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey to be memorable, and the whole J.R.R. Tolkien fan base would resuscitate, Peter Jackson (the director) would be again the ultimate God, and that saving money for visiting New Zealand – the land that had seen the filming – was imperative again. But the first Hobbit move was just meeh… I don´t have other proper word. So much expectation but something was not working well with this first delivery of the Hobbit.

Image source: official propiety of New Line Cinema and Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures

The biggest fan I know of The Lord of the Rings, must be my mother, and she felt asleep during the first Hobbit, she was, of course, disappointed. Then, a year later came The Desolation of Smug. Now we were talking again of something that was worthy of Peter Jackson and the legacy of J.R.R.Tolkien. The movie was indeed much better than the first one (Maybe it was because we got to see Legolas, our favorite Elf, or something else, but it felt better).

Then last week, came The Battle of the Five Armies, and I was blown away. This was certainly a worthy heir of the Lord of the Rings (even though, the story is a predecessor of the others). First of all, my mother didn’t fall asleep (a good parameter of what movies work and which ones don’t). Then, there were those special moments that reminded me a lot of the Lord of the Rings, those where you felt your heart leap, butterflies in your belly, your mouth hanging open, wide smiles, extraordinary connection to the characters (which includes loud screams from my person when they are in danger), suffering, excitement, relief, everything. That’s what the Lord of the Rings was all about and we got to feel it again in this third delivery of the Hobbit. Peter Jackson, you nailed it again.

Image source: official propiety of New Line Cinema and Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures

If you were one of those who got disappointed by the first Hobbit movie, then gave up on the second one, and even didn’t realize about this third one. Go to see it, trust me, you’ll live the magic again.

And you, are you a fan of the Lord of the Rings, did you see any of the Hobbit movies?

December 16, 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
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
FIND THE “RIGHT PEOPLE” TO BE WITH YOU

So this post may be a continuation or probably a contradiction of the one called “You are the result of the 5 people that hang out with you the most: WRONG”, but don’t be disappointed, this won’t be more ramblings about the same topic but rather a different and more interesting point of view.

So in that previous blog, in summary, we said:

– One has to fight to find their uniqueness and not engage in the same behaviour as the people surrounding them.

– One should define its own character so well, that we’re not influenced by those traits we don’t believe in, especially from our friends or family.

Don’t worry, I still agree with this and I’m not going to argue it, BUT – always the big BUT – there is some true in the fact that you must look forward to be surrounded by people like you; and I don’t mean people that think, act or behave exactly like you, but people that intrinsically have the same BELIEFS as you. Yep, that’s the word I was struggling to find when I was thinking, this afternoon, about writing this blog.

If you are a true believer that with perseverance you can make your dreams come true, no matter what dreams are; then it’s actually discouraging to be with people who think that you are such a dreamer, or don’t get your point in focusing in something that you probably won’t achieve according to them.

Well, I know sometimes our closer friends and relatives will be this crashing- dreamer types and that we won’t able to get far away from them. But we must look for and try to find those people (or at least internet contacts) that have our same BELIEFS, so that we feel energized, and motivated. Because sometimes it’s not enough to be our own drivers and motivators, sometimes we need a hand or a little push.

So if you just spotted somebody that is a BELIEVER like you, get the chance to know that person, you may find a good friend in him or her, and who knows, maybe the path to achieving everything you always wanted to will be easier with some support by your side.

You noticed that I mentioned “Internet contacts” before, well actually as a loner, I´m not the “expert” in giving advice of how to make friends, but I found that the least I could do was engage on online communities, or blogs with people that help me feel encouraged to follow my dreams (I may explore this topic deeper in a future post) but If I spot some positive thinker and believer like me in my neighborhood, I may introduce myself…

So what do you think? Do you think it is good to find BELIEVERS like you?

June 28, 2013