It's LIVE

Don't Quit Yet

Alright.
I'm blogging about praises I've received for MY LEA. Yup, you're right, this is me showing off, not gonna deny it.

I have every right to, I guess. Who wouldn't be proud of their own children, right? Our creation is our kid.

My Lea is special to me because of many things :

- it was my debut novel.
- it was written in English, and English is not my first language.
-  I've written it with blood, tears, frustration, fear, rejection, insecurities, also love and pride for three long years.
- I taught myself how to write by reading lots and lots of books, articles, reviews, blogs, anything I can get my hands on, and following authors I admire. I never had any formal education in writing. My background is faaaar from writing. Far, far from it.
- My Lea's rating is not so bad for a first-timer. Teehee!

So please excuse me while I dance for me. I kinda need that, because as you know, writing is a lonely business. And it's a tough business. If I don't stop once in a while to smell the roses, it'd be too easy for me to forget why I write in the first place.

Also, this showing-off post is for you - aspiring writers, dreamers, beginners... 

Don't quit just yet. The journey is complex. I remember whenever I was thisclosetogiveup, I would stop, distract myself from my writing and find something else that could inspire me.
So I'm paying this forward. I hope this post inspires you. I hope My Lea inspires you.

Don't quit just yet. Break down the goal and deadlines into smaller portions. It's easier to manage that way.

Don't quit just yet. Don't let others define - or worse, belittle - you, your passion, or your creation. You are not competing against other people. You're competing against yourself.

Don't quit, okay. Because if I can do this, writing a bloody 90K words worth of a novel in foreign language, so can you.

And now... have you read My Lea ?

Amazon  Kobo  B&N  iBook

#amwriting

Just the other day, I’ve overwhelmed myself with the stress of having launched a book.

What kind of promotion I should do next, how to maximize sales, what to do with negative reviews, why my brain seems to stop functioning when it comes to writing, where the hell is my royalty payment, what to do with my backlog titles, whether or not I should keep writing children’s books or branch out to other genres, traditional publishing vs. self pub, why can't I shake off this writers block WTH, it’s so difficult to write a sequel, my daily life is stealing away my writing time, my writing cave looks totally uninspiring, I have no idea what to write for my next books, what should I write for my social media, how to run a successful social media, what the other bestselling authors are doing and whether or not I should copy their moves, where the hell is my writing muse when I need her the most, what if my book sales stops, what if I run out of promotion ideas, why this blogger and that blogger haven’t replied me, how to reach more reviewers, how to edit my work, what to write, what to write, and so on, so on, so on….

I drove myself mental. I burned myself and everything around me. If someone told me that writing was a blissful profession, I would strangle that person with my teeth, claws, sword, and would so expelliarmus that person into the next century.

Writing and its yada-yada business is NOT blissful. Not even close. It’s the total opposite of blissful.

Then my husband, who has gone extremely tired with my rants and enormous self-pity, snapped at me. “My God, you’re unbelievable,” he said in his most charming tone ever. “You know how many people out there wish they could have your talent and the opportunity to share their works with the world?”

I’m glad he thinks—and believes--that my talent is a ‘real talent’. Not gonna argue with him on this. But I’m gonna argue with everything else he said.

“But, but…,” I argued with the intention to burn down the world of writers with me, “You have no idea how exhausting it is to deal with the business plan and the aftermath of creating a book. You wouldn’t know. You work in a financial institution; all you do is buy and sell and calculate a simple math equation with your calculator.”

In which he replied, “Since when your number one hobby, the one that makes you smile and fly over the rainbow, makes you this bitter? Why are you so stress over writing?”

Before I could even order my tongue to shoot acid reply at him, he added, and what he said stopped my fury dead, “Write for fun. Please, I beg you. Don’t worry too much about what to do after you finish writing it, just keep writing, good or bad, funny or suck-ass, just write for yourself.”

And it strikes me. One of the greatest authors in the world once said the same thing, too. “Write for yourself,” said J. K. Rowling.

My husband, a non-artistic person, shares the same thought as J. K. Effing Rowling. Who is the writer in da house, really, me or him?

So I force myself to calm down.

Of course my husband is right.

Write for yourself.

Write for fun. Don’t worry, the rest would follow.

Write for fun, guys, #amwritingforfun!

Are you?

*****

My New Adult Contemporary novel MY LEA is availabe at  

Amazon
Kobo
B&N
iBooks

Scribd

 

Psst. Now, that we establish that ground #amwritingforfun rule, would you add my book to your TBR pile? 

*winks, bats eyelashes, smiles angelically*

I run a goodreads giveaway from now until April 24^th, 2015. You can enter here

 

Creating

Where does inspiration come from?

I got this question a lot. To be honest, I don’t know the answer. Even if I do, my process of getting there may differ from yours.

Nevertheless, I can tell you this. Always start with something that’s important to you. It doesn’t have to be grand or out-of-this-world proportions. You can get inspiration from the tiniest thing around you. And creation can take many forms. Since my medium is words, I’m creating stories through writing. My daughter’s medium is visual art, so she creates her stories through 3D diorama. My friend’s medium is music, so he creates his stories through songs. You get the idea.  

My son and I had this bedtime routine years ago when he was still a toddler, that each night we would create our own story out of nothing. The story must be original, directly from our heads and not from books or movies. We can be as creative as crazy, because well, it is my story and I can do pretty much anything I want to it. The other great thing is that I was able to get my son’s interest to create along, adding this and that to my totally-just-made-up story. Boy, did we have fun.

In order for me to hold my son’s attention long enough, I must talk about something that I know, something that I have passion for. I need to be convincing. I cannot change the world, but I can influence how my son thinks with my story. No, I’m not talking about the writing part yet. I haven’t even written anything at that time. Growing up as a minority and often subjected to race discrimination, this equality issue matters to me a lot. It still does now. I don’t want my next generation to have to go through this again. I want to teach my kid the meaning of equality—and by default, inequality. I wanted him to learn about harmony and balance. As the result, Rainbow, my first children book, was born that night many light-years ago. As with Big Eyes, my other children book, my emphasis is on similar theme. Being different doesn’t always mean bad.

In everything that I create, I always ask myself, what do I want to say? What’s important about it? And because I’m a parent, I can’t escape this “what kind of message I want to convey” habit. “There’s always going to be a message, isn’t it, Mom, a morale we need to figure out?” I’m quoting my kids here. They say it with sarcastic tones directly to my face.

Ha-ha! Adorable. Not.

Notice that when you talk about something that’s important to you, you’ll turn passionate, you’ll be honest, thus making your voice more genuine. Don’t worry about the technicality of your creation at this point. Don’t worry about lots of things at this point. Just look inside of you and get what you want to talk out in the open.

For me, that is inspiration.

 *Follow my blog for a weekly post about writing stuff that may—or may not—be useful to you J. If you think it’s useful, come back next Friday, okay?