Month: March 2012

If you read the definition of Hiatus on Terminology; said the following: an interruption in the intensity or amount of something

I have learn over the years that are times that the best thing you can do is stop. Slow down at least. I have also learn that are in the moments that your instinct tell you that it is the worst time to do it. That i have learn is when you must do it. So I did.
I went and purge projects, delete stuff, clarify other things and got a new perspective of all the things pending and to do in the next months.
Not to make this long, the plans of finish the edit process of my next novel “Quarry” got on hold, until I finish the translation of “The Writer” in Spanish and send it to the editor. After that I will do the translation of “Putsch” and when that get to the editor I will then finish the edits on “Quarry” a soon as that’s done, then I will translate, and release it in Spanish and English at the same time.
For the question in your head, the answer is: Yes! This delay the publication of “Quarry”, but will allow me to release the books in a better way, how they should be released. After that, you will only noticed when they get released, and nothing else.
I am exited about seeing the books in Spanish, and provide to other readers not only the experience of the book in English but also the adventure in another language.
For now, I need to go, I said I need it to slow down, but now, I need to speed up!

A a reader is hard, when a character you have read for hundred of pages is killed. As a writer, is even harder. I have learn writing that they are three kind of character killings. The ones you care, and hurt. The ones that you celebrate and The ones that you simply don’t care. Let me explain.
There are characters that you know, as a reader (and even sometimes as a writer) that need to die, but even knowing that, you care for them, you celebrate and cry with them, and you simple cry and feel hurt when they are killed or died. We have all read them, and cry them.
There are characters, that you celebrate, that you are happy when they got killed, that you shout on happiness when finally the writer kill them, because you the reader will had kill them pages ago.
Finally the ones that you simply don’t care. You don’t remember then, even, most likely you need to think harder to remember one.
When I wrote ‘Putsch’; I found those three present, same when I wrote ‘The Writer’. The ones I care, the ones I celebrate and the ones that didn’t matter at all.
As I am working right now the translation of ‘The Writer’ into Spanish, I got reminded of those different killings, and I found that I continue carrying for some of them, and then got me thinking, even as a reader I care for some, books that I have read years ago, some still hurt. I just wish that when the writer show up, and write those the reader instead of not care, find themselves into the ones that hurt or the ones that celebrate… One can dream too.

I was talking to a fellow writer, and he was asking me how I am finding time to write. My answer was simple: I have a TypeWriter. He looked at me and laugh, knowing that I am a tech geek and lover, he look at me and ask again, but add, please seriously.
I went again and answer, I have a TypeWriter, I actually have two, I add, let me explain to you. My first Typewriter is a MacBook. I create an user, that has no privileges, no access, no nothing, this user is called ‘Typewriter’ works only for the objective of me writing, editing and working on books. My Typewriter user, don’t have access to the web, or twitter, or email, actually allow me to open five applications only, Scrivener, Text Edit, Pages, Word and Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing (sometimes I prefer to practice typing instead of writing, if you are going to procrastinate, use things that will be good, practice typing better than Facebook, any day of the week). So when I open that user, I can only type, work, or do nothing.
The second TypeWriter is my iPad. There I work on text files, mostly on PlainText or WriteRoom both from Hog Bay Software.
Since I made my iPad my main machine and you can’t create (yet, I hope on iOS6) different users, I went and remove all distractions from the iPad. I have no games, no movies, not even music.
My play, let’s get distracted device is my iPhone. (Music, movies, internet, games and more are ready for me all the time)
As I said, I have two typewriters, I have consciously make my devices not a super powerful device to do everything, but one that can be more useful to focus on only one thing.
Even that I use these days the MacBook so little, since I spend most of the time in my iPad, I want to make sure that I can focus on the devices and actually accomplish my goals. That’s the reason I had remove the distractions from the iPad, not because I don’t love playing with it, but because I want to sit and work on it.
If you allow me to choose between Work and Play, sadly I mostly pick Play (something inside me has always wish that I pick work, so I learn to trick myself). I learned that many years ago, and it is for that reason that I make sure I have my devices in a way that allow me to be productive all the time.
So How I find time to write constantly, I have set my devices and my work in a way that when I sit in front of them, the only option I have is to work… I have make my devices look dumb, so my brain think he is brilliant again.

My daughter is learning the sound of the letters at school. Last Sunday, as we where getting ready for the week, we notice that next week was the turn for the letter “e”, it was the “e week” for my daughter school. So I ask what she want to bring, and she said: “e, e, e, egg!” (first imitating the sound of the letter and then the word)
I began continue to get ready and place an egg on the range, with a plastic egg timer and forgot to put the alarm.
The result of the story you can imagine, hours later, the water that boiled, leaving a really hot pan, with a couple of eggs and a plastic egg timer burning.
The good thing, is that nothing, other than a ruined pair of eggs, an egg timer and a pan happened.
It’s always a good habit to put a cooking timer (I didn’t this time, shame on me) when you are not staying in the kitchen, I forgot this time, and I am bless that nothing happened, because the idea frightens me.

As a reader, you dream on that book that will bring you to that mystical place, where time stops. As a writer, you dream on bring the reader to that magic place where everything disappear; that place in witch the world simply stops. That place where you defy gravity. That place where the reader can’t drop the book or stop reading. That place where nothing else matters, where only the word and the page ahead is the thing the reader cares about. As a reader that’s all that we want, as a writer that’s all that we dream.
It’s in that processs of discovery that we wrote a lot of awful scenes, a lot of awful beginnings, a lot of sad stories. It’s trying to discover that place, and bring the reader to it, that we write many things that simply didn’t work and are never going to bring anyone to the magic place.
The problem is, (at least to the knowledge of this writer) that there is only one way to reach that magic place, and it’s bringing the reader to many places that are not. The only way to bring readers even for a second to that place, is to discover all those places that are not magical. It is for that reason that writers write in despite of bad books, rejections letters, bad reviews, and books that don’t sell and never will. We write on the hope that we find that place where everything disappear. We write dreaming that one day, even if it is by mistake, that we will bring one reader to that magical place. It’s that day, when everything we do it’s worth, where all that content that we create and was rejected, all that content that was deleted and forgotten, was worth it.
It is for that second, in witch the reader is lost in our mind, in that fictional word that we create with words. It is for that second (that in most cases we never knew it exist or the reader got there) that we continue coming everyday to write. It is with the hope that one day, you, the reader will discover that secret place that we are trying to create.
In the mean time, we write with the hope that someday someone tell us that they have been there, that the magic place really exist and it’s not that we writers, dream about it, that someday someone tell us that they found that secret and special place that we had been trying to create for many years; that same place that readers and writers dream about.