Loved this talk! For all of you who still hadn’t found out your passion or know what is your passion but are too afraid to pursuit, then this is the talk for you!
Actually, this is the talk for all the people who want to have a goal in life and achieve it!
Professor Larry Smiths presents, in quite a peculiar way, a talk that changes lives and inspires. He is a professor of economics at University of Waterloo. A well-known storyteller and advocate for youth leadership, he has also mentored many of his students on start-up business management and career development. The most notable start-up he advised in its infancy is Research in Motion (RIM), maker of the BlackBerry.
Invest 15 minutes in this talk and it will be an investment for life!
When I started working on my first book, I had the following plan:
I would finish the draft in four of five months at most
I would make a thorough review of the first manuscript and in one single edition round I would correct everything that is wrong.
My beta readers will read it in a couple of weeks and I would rejoice in his/her wonderful comments
I would find a great Literary agent in a blink of an eye
I would have the book published in that same year
I would live from my writing and would travel the world.
I was naïve. REALLY naive.
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This is the second year I’m investing in my first book. I’m still editing it. So far I’ve come to understand the following:
Doing the first draft is by far the easiest and quickest part of the process
When I finished the first draft, I was so thrilled. I felt I have conquered the world and I could be called a writer. I was so proud of myself. I thought that finally I was making something good with my life, that I was looking towards the future, towards my goals, you get the point…The truth is that writing the first draft is the easiest part. You can even achieve it in one month (If you want to test the efficiency of NaNoWriMo). But rest assured the first draft will not be readable yet. Chances are it will still have lots of plot holes and huge amounts of rewrite to be done.
2. Planning one round of revision is not realistic at all
There will be many rounds of revision. It’s hard to rewrite scenes, plot holes, and work on character development while editing your grammar and punctuation at the same time. You’ll probably need another round, and perhaps a third one, etc. Additionally, after your beta readers come to you with feedback, chances are you’ll probably need to change and rewrite many sections of your book which will lead you to another round of sentence structure/grammar review, etc., again.
3. Leaving your first manuscript to rest for a couple of weeks and even a month is not a bad idea
I knew about this tip way before I finished my first manuscript. Nonetheless, I was in such a hurry of having everything done that as soon as I finished my first manuscript, I started to edit it on the very next day. I didn’t leave it to rest and breath. My head didn’t have time to clear enough to target my manuscript with a fresh point of view. The result was several pointless rounds of revision until I decided to finally give myself a break and leave the manuscript for a month. During this time, I wrote other short stories, I read more, etc. When I finally returned to my old good manuscript, my mind was fresh and I could detect more issues than in all those previous three rounds. I identified huge gaps where I could improve. If only I’ve done that before my first round of revision… I would’ve probably faced my manuscript with much better criteria from the first edition round.
4. Your beta readers won’t give you feedback in a couple of weeks
I had three good beta readers, but it took time to receive their feedback. You have to take into account that not all of them are available to read your manuscript as soon as you deliver it. Unless you’re paying for a beta reading service, most of these people will be doing you a favor. You’ll probably need to wait until they have time. Not all of them can read books in a couple of days; they might need more time. Not all of them have only your book to read; they might need to put it in their queue of “still to read books”.
5. Good Beta Readers will say the truth and cause many changes in your book
Let’s face it. This is your first book ever. You can’t expect to nail a best seller that soon. You’ll need a lot of time,experience, and good listening skills. You need to pay attention to your beta reader’s feedback. And I’m talking about good beta readers, not your mom, your husband, etc., but people who will be able to judge the manuscript and say what is in their minds without any fear of hurting your feelings. You have to acknowledge that as the author of your book, you know how the plot works, you know how characters look in your mind, but sometimes you fail to translate this knowledge into the written world. Chances are you’ll still need to change and rewrite after your beta reader’s feedback.
6. Character development is not achieved at once
If this is your first book, then you’ll probably struggle with nailing “character development”. Even if you outline characters before you start the book, they’ll probably develop and change as your plot changes. Their behaviors will change depending on how the direction of your books goes or how scenes are improved. Providing a three-dimensional character is harder than you think. It wasn’t until many revisions and feedback that I had enough tools to develop my characters as they should.
7. Developing your voice doesn’t come so fast
It doesn’t matter how many books about writing you read and how many writing courses you attend. Developing your voice only comes with practice. Sometimes, you want to obey all writing rules and make your sentences’ structure perfect, but then you find yourself with a boring flat manuscript. This doesn’t mean you don’t need to know the rules. To break the rules, you need to know them first. But you can’t expect to find your writing voice in the first round of writing. Perhaps you won’t even find it in your first book.
8. Don’t hire any editing service until you’ve received plenty feedback
I made the mistake of hiring an editing service (which was very good) before I got all the feedback. My third beta reader was able to send me his feedback after my manuscript was already edited by a professional editor. This feedback was very helpful and had lots of good advice plot-wise, which meant I had to do significant changes and rewrite many scenes and even chapters. The result, the professionally edited text was gone. It would’ve been certainly helpful to hire this service after all revisions and feedback.
9. Consider your first book may not be publishable
In my plans above, I clearly talk about getting a literary agent, publishing it, and having enough earnings to live from my writing. The reality is different. And the truth is your first book could not be published yet or could not be published at all. You need to accept this fact from the beginning. It’s a learning curve. My mind already has tons of topics to write other books; they even sound more interesting than the manuscript I’m working with right now. Perhaps book two or three will be published. Perhaps my first book will be revisited in a couple of years and later published. At this point, I only care about improving my writing.
10. This is only your first experience
Writing a first book is about gaining experience. It doesn’t matter how perfect your book idea is, how charming your characters are, or how beautifully you construct prose, the process is still tricky with the first book. You still need to learn how to handle feedback, how to detect plot holes, how to find your voice, how to make useful rounds of edition, etc. If you take this point of view, I guarantee you’ll find the experience more rewarding than the publishing result. You’ll be more excited about your next projects and you won’t suffer so much if the path of delivering your first book looks too hard. Best of all, you’ll encounter the true meaning of being a writer.
Procrastination has been affecting my life since I can remember. Fortunately, these last couple of years, I’ve been suffering less of it or else I would’ve never achieved a novel’s first draft (it should be treated as an illness!). But I haven’t gone over it yet. I might now put a daily effort on my writer goals, but it’s not enough yet.
The one to blame, the Internet.
I could use the computer and disconnect, but I depend heavily on thesaurus.com I could get a physical copy, but certainly working with the website allows me to easily navigate from word to word’s synonyms and definitions in a matter of seconds, without losing the inspiration or the sentence idea that troubles my mind at that point. I’ve tried using printed copies of dictionaries and thesaurus, but they’re not meant to be used on every single minute. And yes, I still use it a lot. Especially, since English is not my first language, many times I just want to make sure I got the correct definition and that the synonym I’m choosing to use is accurate.
So if thesaurus.com wasn’t such a good tool and as dependent on internet connectivity as it is, I would probably disconnect from Wi-Fi. But if this website helps my writing, what is the real problem?
My mind is used to multi-tasking. As a result, thoughts, ideas, and hyperactivity flood my brain almost 24/7 (If mental hyperactivity could be translated into physical hyperactivity… I would be the best athlete in the world… but that’s another topic). My mind doesn’t really switch off until I go to bed. And sometimes, I find trouble sleeping trying to unplug my mind from its endless ideas, worries, etc. So while writing, it’s normal for me to get distracted by other websites; afraid (maybe an excuse word) that I will forget later what I wanted to buy in Ebay, that I will miss what’s going on Facebook, and that there are still tips, blogs, and websites I should be looking at for my next trip (in 2 weeks – Tripadvisor, I’m looking at you!), I open the browser and proceed to search, look, and verify other issues while in the middle of writing.
The result: guilt invading me at around 10:00 pm when my eyes are starting to feel the burden of the day and I have to choose between:
Giving up and going to bed
Continue the writing until almost midnight or until my eyes are hyper red. The direct consequence: I cannot invest any more reading time in bed if I want to give my eyes a proper resting (after all, I spend the whole day in front of the computer)
Maybe I’m too anxious for vacations these days, and I cannot move forward without taking out of my mind all the issues that should be arranged or known before traveling. Maybe after my holidays, my mind will be clear enough to continue working. But who am I kidding? There will always be a next trip, a next activity, or a next excuse. If I’m going to take the writing career for good, then I’d better eliminate the word Procrastination from my vocabulary. Any advice?
I always describe myself as “weird”. People around me hear “bicho raro” an expression in Spanish that would mean something like “weird bug.” Some friends are fast to point out that I’m not weird but “unique”. I appreciate their good intetions, but I actually don’t feel bad about being weird. I love being weird. I embrace my weirdness.
So what do I mean by being weird? I thought it would be to check up the exact definition of the word:
of, relating to, or caused by witchcraft or the supernatural :magical
2: of strange or extraordinary character:odd, fantastic
And I’m almost sure the latter is the best reputable source as well.
When reading the first two definitions, one would see why people react to the word “weird” as a bad adjective. This word for them describes something not very nice – an “unsettling” word. The expression “weirdo” is a commonly expression used to tag people in a despicable way. However, I insist on relying on the Merriam-Webster definition: “supernatural, extraordinary, fantastic, unusual… etc.” In this interpretation, I love the word; it describes how my usual perspective towards life is.
I always like to believe I don’t fit social standards as normally other people do. I love going against the trends and against the expected behaviors. Even the way I dress, reflects in some way, who I am as a person. And if people expect you to celebrate a holiday, I do exactly the opposite. But for me this weirdness is not about being stubborn or trying to make a point, it’s only about behaving according to my feelings and without regard to social expectations. For me being weird is nice. It’s about expressing myself in the most extraordinary fashion, living my life defying any social foolish conceptions. It would be nice for a change people wouldn’t chastise or try to fix weird people.
It’s as simple as that: good writing matters a big deal. As I dig more into this writing career, I realize how much I still need to learn.
I’ve always been for thrillers and mysteries. I’ve always loved fast-paced books with lots of action: books that I could see in my mind as the next big Hollywood blockbusters. But lately, I’ve realized that there’s also another side of reading. A reading where words enchant you and make you want more of this world of beautifully written words. Now, I believe that good storytelling doesn’t exist without good writing.
I must confess I haven’t read much of Literature Nobel prize winners before. Except from “One Hundred years of Solitude” from Gabriel Garcia Marquez (which I didn’t like), I wasn’t drawn into these awarded authors. It was like Oscar movies: not all Oscar movies winners are good. In fact, some Oscar winners are actually weird and not in my taste of “awesome films.” But this time I bought Alice Munro’s: “Lives of girls and women”, a Nobel prize winner, and I can’t believe I did it by mistake.
The purchase was done when I was coming back from NY’s Writer’s Digest conference. I’ve written down all those titles that during the conference attendees were advised to read. One of the panelists highly recommended to read Alice Hoffman. In the airport, when I came across Alice Munro and read the label “Nobel Prize winner,” I really thought I got the right “Alice.”
I realized of my mistake when I came home. But as a bookworm, I’m never sad for having a new book to read. So I give it a go to this book. And I loved it. Munro’s writing is completely beautiful. The way she starts describing everything and how characters develop in this beautiful written prose was such a relief and rest from the fast paced books I’d been reading before. It made me love writing and reading even more. It made me realize how much, still, I have to learn from writing in English.
This blog post was meant to be a review of Alice Munro’s “Lives of girls and women” but as I came across the blog, I realized I mostly wanted to express the lesson learned while reading this book, and how it has influenced my writing learning process. I’ve also realized how important is for writers to read out of their genre, how it makes you grow professionally. There’s still a wonderful world of written words out there.
And you, have you come across with these beautifully unexpected books that made you want to grow even more as writers?
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!
Third day of 2014 and I already love this year! At first I was thinking, maybe I was just lucky, but then when I look to the day before, I realize that today´s outcomes are only the result of yesterday´s effort.
You see, like almost all other past years I made a list of resolutions. Buy my resolutions were so empty hearted or so superficial, like losing weight, eating healthy which are good actually good resolutions in themselves, but were not really my main ambitions in my life. This year´s resolution list was a little bit different, and I got inspired by a friend in this subject. Instead of writing the resolutions in my notebook or in a piece of paper that I would put in a drawer of my night table or somewhere I would not remember later, I did it “big” this time.
Image source: www.health.com
You see, I was always a little bit embarrassed of having this piece of paper in sight for everybody, and most of this embarrassment was because the resolutions were not that awesome to be widely public. I didn´t want everybody to know that I just wanted to lose weight or go to the gym; it just felt so trivial and superficial in some ways. But 2013 taught me what I really wanted to do with my life.
When my friend told me that she just read the resolutions she made last year and she realized that she almost fulfilled most of them, she felt like 2013 had been a complete success. I immediately thought that my problem was not in assessing 2013, which had been a pretty good year, but it was in comparing my last year resolutions with my status today; merely because of a simple reason: I didn´t know where the piece of paper I wrote last year was anymore and even more lame, I didn´t know what was written there anymore… probably something about diet, gym… in few words BS…
Image source: www.industryleadersmagazine.com
So this year, I sat down the 31st of December, I wouldn´t let the 1st of January come without having this settled down. I clearly wrote down my goals, very specific ones for my dreams and the sort of life I want to have, on a piece of cardboard and glued it to the most visible place in my room. You see I would never do this in my room, you know I´m all about decoration and my room is proudly one of the most beautiful rooms that exist in the world, yes! I feel very proud about that… (I will post some pictures later… I promise). I also assigned every day of the week for a specific purpose, like today for example is “Friday Blog Day”.
I never started a year like this one before, I feel so determined, well driven, and I constantly smile whenever I remember that this is 2014, my year! This is the first year ever that I haven´t made a mistake when writing down my first year date; you know how you tend to make mistakes the first days of the year and you still write last year ‘year? Well not this time! because I´m completely conscious of this year.
On the third year, I´ve already got very good results for one of my goals for this year, So 2014 you are about to witness my success!!!
So this last month has been chaotic for me… Yep, I know, I haven’t written anything here in this period of time… What was I doing? Well just creating an online virtual store, working full time as tech writer, preparing a bachelorette party, translating some documents and the list could go for ages…
But actually, this has been a very, VERY good month; it was all chaos but very fulfilling. I may not have achieved something big and I may be in diapers with the online virtual store, but still, things are getting accomplished little by little.
And I even found that I want to start other projects as well, I can´t help it, I´m a constant project machine… I never get bored; there is no easy weekend or peaceful resting time… Yesterday, for example, I decided to give me a break, I switched off the computer at around 7:00 pm and decided to turn on the TV to catch a movie and just do nothing. I caught a very nice one: “Valentine´s Day” (I´m not that romantic but anyway…), but whenever there were commercial breaks I would find myself without knowing what to do…. How funny is that?… I usually watch TV while the laptop is on, or I have my tablet or cell phone near me to check stuff at the same time… I felt like I was not being productive enough with my time…. Is that lame? I really don´t know, and it wasn´t like I was disconnecting myself from the electronic world, I was in front of a good piece of electronic device: the TV!!!
Anyway, I finally got it, I LOVE multi-tasking, I LOVE being busy; I feel that I have the chance to do so many things in one day. And this is not about dependence on technology, I really enjoy doing other physical activities such as sports, dance and shopping (come on I´m a girl, who cannot love shopping?). So I guess that just watching TV was too “easy and so simple” for me…
So get the chance to BUSY YOURSELF, enjoy every day at the very BEST, do as MANY THINGS as you can, go to bed feeling exhausted but feeling that you made THE MOST OF YOUR DAY… life is so short… do you want to let it go WITHOUT DOING MUCH?
This time I would like to post this “post” from Nomadic Matt blog, one of the coolest guys I´ve ever read on the online travel community. This post “got me” so bad because I know that most of the people who want to have a nomadic life style, like myself, won´t always have the support from their friends or family. So please enjoy, click on the title above and read it!
The last posts I´ve been writing about inspirational and self-improvement topics, or at least that´s what I was trying to do, and I actually have managed to evade the “happy loner” topic for a time…
I´ve always told myself what a happy loner I am , and I am, really, but sometimes I can´t help but to question myself “why I am a loner”. I actually get this question many times from people that surround me. I´m 32 and most people that I know are either married, getting married or in a happy relationship. Don´t take me wrong, I´m not against of relationships, but in some way I feel that I´m not ready yet….as silly as it sounds.
I´m so focused in achieving the life of my dreams, of doing the things that I´ve always wanted to do, that I actually feel that I couldn´t do good in a relationship. I would have to achieve at least a part of the goals that I´m trying to achieve right now. It´s like needing to find myself before sharing my life with another being….
For instance, I´m not ready yet to settle down and form a family. I want to do so many things for myself before I get to this part. I know, you may be saying, but you actually can do many of this stuff while you are in a relationship and you don´t have to sacrifice one thing for the other… well the thing is that I would actually need to find somebody who could fit in my life style…. and that´s a little hard…
And what is my life style? Well, I´m working to get a working -nomad-traveling life style, I haven´t got there yet but I´m on my way to do so, that would mean that, at least, this person would have to have that same kind of free spirit… am I wrong? I haven´t met anybody like that in my social environment yet…
Su just patience, I tell myself, just enjoy the moment that I have, and take advantage of the many things that I can do while I´m in this “loner state”, after all, one has to get the most of every moment in life, right?
What do you think? Maybe some advice would be nice 🙂
