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Tag: life

  • Reviewing, plotting and just writing

    Plotter or pantser

    When I started writing, I found the question about being a “plotter or a pantser”. Plotter would be the person that plans the story before they write and a pantser would be the person that only lets the inspiration guide and build the story as they write. Initially, I was sure I would fit the plotter role, I wanted to set up everything correctly before starting to write. It didn’t work that well. As soon as I started to write, characters acquired life and different scenarios/events invaded my mind. I remember thinking then that I was definitely a pantser and welcomed the idea of getting inspired as I wrote. I ended my first manuscript of my first project, ditching the plotting and welcoming the pantsing.

    The end result was not the best. After some rounds of feedback and self-revision, I found out that the story had many holes in it. The story was weak and it wasn’t working as I wanted. I started to re-shape the story, changing chapters, deleting scenes, adding new plot twists, etc. But after several rounds, I still was unhappy with it. Now that I look back, there wasn’t a time when I totally felt confident with how the plot evolved.

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    Editing while writing

    Then comes editing. When I started to write, without any previous experience, I reviewed/edited my reading after a couple of paragraphs or even after a single paragraph – trying to get the perfect grammar and writing. That didn’t last. This method certainly cut my inspiration and it would take me ages to finish a single chapter. Then my first NaNoWriMo came and I thought that this was the opportunity I needed to be able to end my first manuscript. And I sort of did it. I didn’t finish it, but I learn how to sit and write without giving a look to previous paragraphs. Editing would come later.

    The result wasn’t the best either. There was terrible writing everywhere – not acceptable for requesting feedback. I had to go through a couple of rounds of editing before it was presentable. Those two/three rounds took me a lot of time, probably more than a month. And I really hated them.

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    What I found out this time

    It was trial an error. I still did a couple of mistakes when I started to write my second project. I initially tried to start as a pantser – my objective to write until the manuscript ended and already dreading the rounds of revision in advance. But I already got a feeling that the result would be a plot filled with holes and a writing so embarrassing that would only lead me to endless rounds of revisions. I stopped after a couple of chapters. Why would I need to be either a plotter or a pantser? Why I had to decide between editing while writing or editing everything at the end?

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    Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

    I took a break after a couple of chapters. Then I started reviewing everything I had written. I wrote a little bit more – with a better mindset of the story in mind and continued writing. Then I reviewed my last written words, changed them into a more decent writing and continued. The result:

    I write a couple of chapters. I go back to read them and do a general revision of the writing itself. I analyze the plot a little bit before continuing. I do a little bit of planning for the next chapters and continue. It’s a mix of all methods above. And I found that it works for me. There are no longer surprises, fears, or even apathy to future rounds of editing. There is no structured planned plot that cuts my inspiration but I also don’t write with no horizon in mind.

    I edit my writing as I go. I don’t do it immediately, I let it sit for a couple of chapters so that it doesn’t cut the flow or the feeling of writing freely.  I go back to review the writing of previous chapters to make sure that I have a decent writing over there, knowing that at the end it won’t be a terrible manuscript, that it will be readable and that might only need few editing before requesting feedback. I like my own method. And I’m not suggesting it to other people. I’m only saying that each writer has to find its own way to do things…

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    Photo by Artem Bali on Pexels.com

  • Celebrating Christmas in the middle of the Heat

    When people think of Christmas, they usually imagine a Snowy postcard image, with Reindeers, snowmen, and people wearing winter clothes. Even if you look for Christmas clothes, you’ll find they are always sweaters – like the infamous ugly Christmas sweater -, scarfs, beanies, etc. It is not as you can find tank tops or flip flops with Christmassy designs.

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    As you already know, there is a South hemisphere that will have a very sunny and in-the-middle of summer Christmas. This geolocalization does not ruin Christmas for us. We still pretend to put fake snow around our trees and Christmas decorations. There are still polyethylene foam snowmen decorating the main squares and parks of the city.

    However, this Holiday Season has been different in Cochabamba, Bolivia. The city where I live. We’ve experienced one of the worst droughts ever. And water shortage has been the biggest concern of our lives. I haven’t met a person who doesn’t literally pray and wish for rain. It has indeed rained a couple of times this month, but it has not been enough. Valleys and rivers are drying. Wild animals and crops are dying as a consequence. The local government is trying to pull off a couple of solutions, but nobody knows if these projects (dams and tunnels built to bring water from other places) will be sustainable solutions in the long term. We need the rain. Global warming is a fact, and we’re experimenting the consequences.

    For Cochabambinos – people from my city – appreciating this resource has become part of our lives. We’ve learned the lesson. We try to save as much as we can and spend as less as possible. I take showers as fast as possible. I don’t let water be wasted. I only wash the necessary clothes and only when needed.  Most Cochabambinos cannot bear seeing people wasting water: like car washers that don’t recycle water or other unneeded uses of water.

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    I had relatives visiting a couple of weeks:  my aunt and my uncle, both from Santa Cruz, a city in Bolivia that has no problems with water. Although, they are aware of the shortage of water in this city, their behavior towards water is different from ours. You don’t wash a dish in several minutes, you do it fast. If you buy fruit, you don’t clean them one by one, you save water from the tap by washing them all at once. Of course, it is not their fault, but my aunt and uncle will be far from understanding the meaning of saving water, unless they move over here.

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    Unfortunately, you learn to appreciate a natural resource only when there is a lack or shortage of it. When probably it is too late. And similar to my aunt and uncle who only live a city away from mine, other people in the world won’t be able to understand this problem until they experiment it. Whoever that does not pay attention to Climate change is really lost.

    This is Christmas. It is nice. But if it were raining, it would be the best Christmas ever for me.

     

     

  • Delivering Happiness

    Well, it took me some time to write this post. I was kind of busy preparing my exit at my current job and readying for my new job. I will start in November working as Happiness Engineer for Automattic (the company behind WordPress.com and many other web solutions that seek to make the web a better place). So of course, I’m thrilled. The title of the position is very accurate actually. Happiness engineers deliver customer support but also go beyond that; they make sure WordPress.com users (mostly) go through a smooth and happy experience as they build and manage their blogs or sites.

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    Having the opportunity to help people with their sites’ issues and provide them advice, tips, and tools to make things better are exactly the tasks I enjoy the most. Anticipating their needs and contributing with their blogs’ journeys is fantastic. Of course, we can’t solve everything. And I really wish we could, but being there to support and empathize with them is what makes this a great job. We deliver a little bit of happiness in each of our tasks.

    So, how did I find this position? It was not that easy, and it was a long path. Basically, you need to prove you’re a good match for this company. And how do you do that? Well, Automattic looks for people who’re interested in learning every single day and growing each time more (I love that!). And what better way to know if you’re a good match for them than to “trying yourself”? Yes, you do that. You go through a paid trial so they can assess if you’re a good fit for the company’s culture or not. But this trial doesn’t only work for their assessment, you also get to taste the company’s culture and see if the role is made for you.

    What other characteristics are awesome about Automattic? The company is totally distributed. Meaning that Automatticians (people who work at Automattic) get to work from wherever they are in the world. Living and being from Bolivia, this is certainly a huge plus. (Although, I totally believe the future will be like this). They hire based on what you can bring into the company and not based on where you’re located or if it’s possible to relocate. And let’s be honest, as a passionate traveler, I’m excited about working remotely.

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    However, you can’t only assess a company based on the benefits and your position. You need to hunt for the “totally awesome” career factors. You need to hunt for a company that will push you to grow, learn endlessly, and contribute as much as possible. In the little time as a HE trial, I’ve learned more than what I did in all my career life. Period. I can only imagine how much I will be able to learn once I start working with them. My skills will grow exponentially 🙂 And although many companies push you towards continuous learning, some of them actually limit you without noticing (after all, they want you to make the job for which you were hired and not intervene too much with others’ work). At Automattic, I’m sure I won’t be limited. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have a technical background (like me), your opinion and your work is taken into account. You can even rotate and explore as many areas as you like. 🙂

    So why do I believe this is my dream job? For me working as HE will let me:

    • Help people every single day and at every single second
    • Grow and learn every single second
    • Have infinite possibilities to contribute
    • Have more flexibility to travel and get to know the world
    • Have really awesome perks (Did I mention you get to travel a couple of times a year to meet the team and the company, you get your home office set up – with the best laptop in the market, the chair of my dreams, a huge monitor, a great desk, endless WordPress swag – and so many other perks?)

    I’m super excited. I know the job is going to be challenging (which I look forward to), but at the same time I feel like I’ve received one of the greatest opportunities to have finally the life that I want. I’m also excited to continue writing my books. But the writing journey conditions will be a million times better with a great job supporting me and my family.

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  • TED Talk: Why you will fail to have a career?

    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!

    [ted id=1384]

     

  • The TED talk all women should see

    I try to start my workday with a TED talk. I wish I could say I do this daily, but sometimes I can’t. I usually do it when my work energy level is low or when I feel I need motivation to go with the work routine. Today I came across with “Why do ambitious women have flat heads?” by Dame Stephanie Shirley.  The title was enough to call my attention since sometimes when the talk’s title is too predictable, I might just pass it. But this one wasn’t and I’m glad I clicked it.

    Dame Stephanie Shirley had it rough. She was one of the Jewish kids saved by being sent to families in northern England during the Second World War . She grew up in an era where women’s only objective was to get married and have kids. There were scarce work opportunities for them. I work in the software industry. Women in the 60’s didn’t just pursuit that area at all. But one woman did it. And this terrific woman showed nothing is impossible. Yes, there was a programming market in that era, believe it or not. If you want to know exactly how it worked, then you have to check the video.

    Stephanie Shirley went through all the fights my generation didn’t have too. My generation won’t suffer that gender discrimination again. We have it easy. And what are we doing with our lives? We don’t aim high enough. We don’t dream big enough. We don’t do the fights for the next generations.

    I invite you to watch the following TED talk (only 13 minutes of your time but worth your life change).

    [ted id=2223]

  • BUSY LIVES ARE THE BEST!!!

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    Image source: www.stevewiens.com

    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? 

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    Image source: antdagamertv.blogspot.com 

  • Why daydreaming with open eyes is actually good…

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    I´ve always daydreamed with open ever eyes since I have a recollection of memory. If you don´t know what I´m talking about, maybe you should read this Wikipedia definition first: (just to be sure we´re on the same page)

    “Daydreaming is a short-term detachment from one’s immediate surroundings, during which a person’s contact with reality is blurred and partially substituted by a visionary fantasy, especially one of happy, pleasant thoughts, hopes or ambitions, imagined as coming to pass, and experienced while awake.”

    When I was younger I remember daydreaming while I was trying to “study” for school, maybe it was out of boredom or maybe I was trying to evade the “studying” aspect of that moment.

    I used to dream about what I was going to do when I grew older, how my life was going to be and how would things be that If I were different, if I were richer if I were prettier and others things (the “if I were prettier” dreams were a result of my poor self-esteem at that time but now I have another concept of beauty…). I used to spend a lot of time on this, of 3 hours of study I would spend half of it dreaming about everything and nothing…

    As time passed, I started to get stronger ideas of what I wanted to do with my life… do you think I stopped daydreaming? Not at all!, until now I still continue daydreaming all the time even when I´m at work….is it because I really have nothing better to do other than spending time imagining about the things that I would like to achieve or the type of life that I would like to have? Not really, actually I´m always struggling to find time for everything…

    It’s because of my nature, I´m a daydreamer by default but I´m proud of it because it actually keeps me in focus in the goals and dreams I want to achieve. If I weren’t frequently remembered by these dreams, I would probably let common life pass by me, forgetting my main ideals and where I´m heading for.

    From the perspective of loner, I don’t know if this really applies to “my type”, to my personality that tends to be more distant from people in general and perhaps more focused on my own objectives, but this is just a theory and maybe it would be nice to see your comments about this.. .

    BUT, there is an important BUT for the frequent daydreamers, your dreams have to have a little closure of their own, if you want these dreams to really happen, you have to snap out of them by thinking “now what do I have to do if I want to achieve that…” or “well let´s start doing X so one day I can be like in dream Y”… When you come back to reality, or stop dreaming, don´t let this wonderful time that you´ve just spend by go without rescuing encouraging motivations for you to continue life focusing on the direction of your dreams, always give them this little closures, they make you feel better, trust me and it´s a wonderful way to get you excited of the good things that are still to come in the future…

    Daydreaming lets you know that life should not be boring and that we shouldn’t accept regular routine, that there is so much out there that needs to be discovered.

    If you daydream, find the motivation for following these dreams and planning the actions that are needed to achieve them.

    Finally, a quote to remember:

    “All people dream but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their mind, wake up in the morning to find that it was vanity. But the dreamers of the day are dangerous people, for they dream their dreams with open eyes and make them come true.”

    D. H. Lawrence

     

  • Don’t let criticism of your personal life get you! Remember the good things…

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    Criticism is hard to take sometimes. Sometimes we wish we didn’t hear it and sometimes we want to know it. In our careers, we like to be told what we are doing wrong so we can improve, but do we really want to hear the “we are doing something wrong” part?, I´ll leave this for another future blog.  But there is also another type of criticism, the one related to our personal lives. Loners will hear phrases like these ones:

    Why don’t you meet somebody? Why don’t you marry that somebody, have kids with that somebody and marry and live happily ever after?

    Well, it won’t necessary be in these words or in such a direct way, but some people will find ways to make us the same questions maybe in a more subtle way (But let´s face it, no matter how subtle they want to be, we always get it what they meant!).

    Criticism at our jobs or careers or whatever activity we do to receive criticism is different from the criticism we receive related to our personal lives and sometimes it gets us most because we receive them from close people (family and friends) (Although I met some people for five minutes and believe it or not they just popped out with those sort of questions, excuse me but mind their own business right?…)

    But however we take this personal criticism, remember to take into consideration these points:

    –          Who says that you have to follow a traditional pattern? Is there somewhere written that says that whatever the traditional society says is what you should do? Can anybody assure you that by doing what others do you will have happiness guaranteed?

     

    –          Do you really have to follow society traditions? Do you really want to be like everybody or you´d rather be unique? Maybe your way of living is destined to be different. Whenever someone makes judgments about your personal life, just think to yourself: “well I´m unique and maybe I can make my life more exciting this way” I´m not against of finding a partner or a significant other, but remember, just be with somebody if you feel it and want it not because people pushed you into that or you wanted to “merge” to society in some way. Remember, better alone than in bad company.

     

    –          Don’t ever question your own beliefs, society has formed certain preconceptions about how a person should develop his or her life, and every generation has done that. Many years ago society thought that women should only raise kids and stay at home, that was how society thought about how thinks should work at that time, do we still think the same? For the sake of goodness, I really hope that people out there don´t think like that anymore… But then if you see these changes in what society thought ages ago and nowadays, who guarantees that what our society thinks now is correct and is still going to work in the future? Maybe you are the future or you are ahead of your generation.

    Personal criticism of your life can sometimes really get you, but don´t let it. Try to remember all these things and just push yourself into your own goals and in living your life the best you can. Don´t get stuck in trying to fit a certain “mold”, don´t let this criticism affect who you are or change you. If you are a loner, then be a Happy One!