Category: English

2011 is here, and if you are like me, you are ready for a new year. I have spend a lot of time, thinking about this blog, as well as the other places that I write, my goals as a writer and as a person for 2011, and there is going to be a lot of changes here, the first one on the post and the kind of posts.
augustopinaud.com is the place that I am going to be talking about my writing journey, this is my Author page, so again Welcome!
I am a big fan of productivity and personal improvement, and most of the post on those topic are going to be posted on www.mindlikemonkey.com where I share with my great friends Dan and Tara.
I am sure some thing will cross post, but that it is something that will come later on.
The other goal, is to publish at least monday, Wednesday and Friday here about what I am learning as well as some short stories and more stuff, but I will be talking more about my goals for 2011 begining next week.
For now, enjoy 2011, get the best out of it, and I hope this get to be your best year yet!

As I gave expressed before here, my first novel (even if it is the second one I wrote) just shipped to the editor for corrections.
Sadly, I got behind, so I wasn’t unable to write a much as I want for Nanowrimo, and this year I am not going to be able to reach that goal.
The good news is that I am already working on the next novel, and that is the topic of this post.
People wonder why I continue writing if you don’t know if I will be able to sell the first novel, or even if will be a good one, then why invest the time working on the next one.
I guess is the blessing and the curse of the writer, you put all what you have, and hope to produce the best you can, if that doesn’t work, then you work on the next one, and you work hard again putting the best you have to produce the best you can, and simply hope that it will work.
If it doesn’t work, you know that you can always begin again. I wrote ‘The Writer’ three times, because I wasn’t happy in any way with the first two drafts, both were over fifty thousand words, and the third one was over forty thousand only, but was something I was happy with.
Writing seems something fast, simple and easy, but the reality is that even though is fun, it is not fast, simple or easy, you write the line and later discover that what you tough was incredible later on you notice how poor it was, and you need to come back and begin once again.
The next triller/crime novel is in the works, and I hope to have it done soon.

Do you remember the first time you tell yourself ‘I did it!’ I honestly don’t, and I am sure many people can’t, we stop playing too soon.
This weekend, I saw my daughter buckle herself into her car seat for the first time, took us longer to leave the house, but she was so proud of herself, she was so proud that she made it out, she was so proud that she was able to do it for herself, and I was extremely proud.
Kids are capable of anything, they fear nothing, they know no limits. All those limits, fears and things that we are incapable of, came into our head, later on, came into our hearts as we grow up, as we develop ourselves, as we simply grow up.
We limit ourselves, and allow the fear to take over us, to to make us weak, to create a weak link, and in general make us associate with weak links too. It is time we break the weak link chain and begin building a strong chain, without the limitations, and the fears and the doubts.
If you have those, keep them close, but act anyways, the only failure you can commit is not do it, fail doing it is already a success, not try is the only possible failure, the rest are just the effort you need to make to get there.

Finally, yesterday I was able to ship my novella, ‘The Writer’
The original manuscript, was over 50,000 words (the minimum number to qualify as a Novel), but after final revisions, I decide to cut a lot of fat, and end up a little over 41,000 words, that put the book in a Novella level.
The next step is to wait for the comments of the editor, incorporate those, and then design the cover. After that’s done, I am planning to send it to my test readers group for final feedback. I hope the latest happen around december 10th, and the novel back for last revision by Jan 10th or 15th.
Before I submit the Novella, I consider write another 10,000 words and make sure was a full Novel instead, but regardless how much I think about it, my conclusion was always the same, this story is only 41,000 words, also, I need to remember that as a reader there is nothing worst that the writer trying to make more words, instead of saying the tall building, we said, the structure that was reaching the moon, above all the others. There is a place for that description, but many times in a Mystery/Triller there is not, the person is running, scare for his life, or is not, and when you are running for your life, you don’t enter the the structure reaching the moon, you enter in the tall building.
After I made my decision final, and make the book a Novella, someone told me, that it is going to be really hard to sell to a publisher if it is that short, they may be right, they may not, but I had decide to take the risk, if a publisher don’t want it, because if too short to make sense for them, I may not be interested in that publisher, the publishing market should pay attention to content and not always the word count.
So the big milestone is over, now is up to the editor to review, and the readers to enjoy.

I love eBooks and had been a big proponent of them, actually I had basically quit buying paper books, no eBook, sorry no reading of your content and no sale. I read on my iPad, I don’t care if it is a PDF, Kindle Format, ePub, Mobi, or Barnes and Noble Format, but make sure your book get’s to eBook, honestly NO eBook, NO Sale.
I am an avid reader, I read over 50 books per year, (this year I am set as November 1 on I have finish 63 books) if you want to know more check my shelfari profile, and continue getting surprise for those writers that don’t produce eBooks and even more for those Publishing Houses that doesn’t embraced.
I understand that I am an early adopter, I have been reading eBooks since the Palm Pilot days, early 1990’s, but come on, eBooks are hitting the masses, Kindle, iPad, Sony Reader, Nook, and any other phone and table, walk into a Target store, into a Walmart, the ebooks are in the masses.
My prediction is that Paperback books are going to disappear, so people will get Hardback or eBooks, in my opinion the Paperbacks are going to be like the Walkman or the Betamax; something from the Past.
The sad part with this, is the amount of Writers and Publishing Houses that had not embrace the eBooks, this week I was looking to read a book from Enid Blyton, more especifically I was looking to read some on the ‘Secret Seven‘, the first series I remember that I fell in love with.
Well I can find some of the books, in PAPER! no Seven Secrets on eBooks, at least on the US, actually if you search her on the Nook, or Apple Store or the Kindle, you will find 5 or less eBooks. People if you are not familiar with Enid Blyton, let me bring to you this small statistic from Wikipedia.

On november second, Laura Miller, one of the co-founders of Salon.com wrote a post that she called: ‘Better yet, Don’t write that novel‘ where she basically express that in her opinion NanoWrimo (or National Novel Writing Month) is a waste of time and energy.
I need to disagree with Laura Miller. In my modest opinion, there is a difference between a writer and a professional writer, in the same way there are athletes and professional athletes. When my mother was in mid-thirties and until her mid fifties when her back broke, she was an athlete, she was a runner and finish the New York City Marathon 3 times; but my mother was far from being a Professional Athetle, at that time I remember my mother talking about Grete Waitz, according to Wikipedia a professional Athlete that won the mentioned Marathon nine times.
I remember the training that my mother did, she run 10 miles, 13 miles, 15 miles and even more constantly and all those milles where not a waste of time, was training. I am sure Grete Waitz as well as the many other women that had win the marathon, had also train to run 10, 13 and even more miles, and never was consider a waste of time, that was training.
The same principle apply to Nanowrimo, it is practice, it is a place to be free and practice, the mistake is not in the practice, the mistake is in the people that think that they will be professional writers because they won a NanoWrimo. This is my second year in Nanowrimo, I finish my 50,000 words last year, and will finish my 50,000 this year too, but I am not expecting that the job will be on the lines of Joseph Finder or James Patterson, those are professional writers, those are people that practice the art in a total different form, in my case, and in the case of many people NanoWrimo is a place to learn, to practice, it is a place when people can come and practice, learn how hard is to write, but more importantly how hard is to write something good.
I am sure Mrs Miller, that you have also write practice words, I understand you don’t need to write 50,000 words of practice, and I respect that, but I wonder how many words you have waste over the years? I am sure; and I am sure because I have read you before, that you had waste many. All those words were not waste, actually all those were the ones that allow you to write as a professional writer, and finish the Marathon in the first place; because without those wasted words, most likely you will have never wrote what you have.
With all due respect.
Augusto Pinaud
A Fellow Writer.

Yesterday, was one of those days, instead of write, I went the afternoon to the park to play with my daughter, so instead of read and go to bed earlier I went to bed later than I want it because I am trying to catch up with my new writing commitments, I am working on my post for this blog, and my post to Mind Like Monkey for Friday and an extra one for saturday, plus NanoWrimo and the final edits on another novel.
Recently, I am spending more time at home, that in my mind was the perfect image to be able to write many, many words per day, the funny thing is as I had express already, this weeks had been the most inefficient ones ever, so instead of write more, I had wrote less that my busiest times.
I know some people will say that it is common than on a change this kind of things happen, but it is funny to see how I can handle with a lot of efficiency many things and how much this change has make two of my favorite things in the world suffer, read and write.
By the time this is up, I should be in the Ford Dealer, and I hope that with coffee and catching up on all the writing that I have behind, and trust me, it is a lot.
So, if anyone has one of those watch that stop the time, can I please borrow it for a little bit.

Yesterday I had plan a lot of writing, and life got in the middle, so out of the many I was planning, I was only able to accomplish 194.
Life change, and when you are in the middle of it, you can go from be a highly productive person, to the most unproductive person in the world. Two weeks ago I leave my job after four years, many reason, among others we are moving out of state. I am having a Lap Band surgery next monday and I am in the final edits of my First Public novel, tentatively “The Writer” a Mistery-Crime-Triller kind.
I have being public about the fact that I love Carlos Ruiz Zafon book “The Shadow of the Wind”, when I read that book and research him a little, I found him saying in one interview, that he writes the books he loves to read, well I am doing the same, I begin this book on NanoWrimo 2009, and took me the whole year to finish it. Now I am in the final editing part so it can get to the test readers and then I will begin the hard work. Also I need to hurry, since I am participating in NanoWrimo 2010 and I am already behind.
I will be talking soon more about the book, and the new book, and some other projects that are coming on my way, some of them from Califonia, and I hope many more from Fort Wayne, Indiana.