Keep on truckin'

     Sometimes the hard part about this is not feeling like you've made any progress.  Kind of a 'can't see the forest for the trees' situation.
     Times like that can be the hardest to make yourself keep writing.  You really have to learn how to motivate yourself, to become your own cheerleader.  Or in my case let loose my inner motivator who sounds like R. Lee Ermey (Amazing the things you pick up when your friends a jarhead.) to kick my creative ass.  Which I especially find myself needing when I ask questions like "Would anyone actually read this crap?"
     That's when you need to stay strong.  You gotta believe in what your doing.  I think a good sign of that is when you find yourself reacting to what you just wrote.  A chuckle at a stupid joke, or empathy for what you just inflicted on your characters in the name of entertainment.  If I ever put myself into one of these books I'm having the main character punch my lights out.  Oh, the crap I'm going to hit them with.
     I wonder just how deep into the shadow to dip my stories.  Don't want the light to ever go completely out, but sometimes make it damn hard to see.  I very much want the characters to feel real.  To give even villains heart.  Heart as in presence of life not goodness of spirit.
     Here's hoping I can pull this off

My brain lives in Fantasia

     I'm sitting here watching Hayao Miyazaki's 'Howl's Moving Castle' and getting ready to write when something occurred to me.
     My books are going to be weird.
     My biggest influences from way back when are Jim Henson, movies like Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal.  As well as Monty Python and Mystery Science Theater 3000.  Getting movie sign and being taunted by Dr. Forrester and T.V.'s Frank are among some of my favorite memories.
     My imagination has been fed by master directors, authors, filmmakers, actors and actresses, writers, and artists of all flavors.  Edgar Allen Poe, H.R. Giger, and H.P. Lovecraft are my imaginations creepy uncles that you like anyway.
     The books I am going to write will be a vibrant mixture of all those influences.  A world where Anime mixes with Shakesspeare.  So many things are influenced by the things we watch, read, and listen to.
"Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the       imagination and life to everything."
      --Plato
   I've been watching MST3K since I was nine and there are still layers of jokes that I am only now getting after watching every movie innumerable times.  Pop culture jokes, music jokes, history jokes.  So many references from so many sources.  I want to weave that into the tales I tell.  Real life can never equal anything like that.  I see the world as  very dark place and I think more and more people are coming to see it that way too.  That's why I want to write.  I want to create worlds that have some light in it.  A world where love does exist, side by side with magic.
     I love the idea of magic.
     There's just something about the idea of magic.  Wizards, warriors, demons, and dragons.  I want to live in a world like that so I will create it.  And hopefully share it with a few people.  If even one person (Non-friend or relative.) reads my book and likes it, then I would be happy.
     If your that person and your reading this, then thank you.

The battle with Chapter 6 continues...

     Haven't been able to get much writing done this last week due to work.  But was able to put in nearly a page one morning before work and was able to finish patching up chapter 5 with Tim my editor.  As usual drove him crazy with my unconscious vendetta against possessive apostrophes and commas.
     Stoopid   grahmur;
     At least on my last two days I was able to squeeze a couple more pages out.  So far C6 is ten pages long which is better than I was expecting.  Hoping to add at least another five.  Chapter length has been a concern since I first started.  When researching about publishing I couldn't find out what most publishers look for in length or word count, so I'm just trying to add as much as possible.  Figured it would be easier to cut stuff later than have to add twenty-thousand words.
     Don't know whether I was just out of practice from not having written anything for seven years or the unfamiliarity of following an actual writing plan combined with not writing a story that was as far from reality as possible (My earlier stories were swords and sorcery type, a world completely of my own.) but I got off to a very shaky start.  The prologue and the first few chapters were short and just didn't feel quite right.  Didn't start to find my stride until C3 (According to my editor anyway.) and it has gone better since then.
The secret really is to write.
     Write, write, write, write, write, write, write.
     Write if you feel like it, write if you don't, write if it's brilliant, write if it sucks.  Not only is it easier to go back and fix stuff, but you will be amazed what you come up with at those times.
     In my case it's dropping a helicopter on my characters.
     Hopefully will be able to add at least another two pages tonight and tomorrow.  If I can keep this up and average at least ten pages a chapter I should be able to hit my minimum goal of three-hundred pages.
     I'll keep AURYN on hand for inspiration.

One down, 999 steps to go...

I am starting the blog as part of my journey to be a published author.
Many moons ago (More than I care to think.) I started writing.  I believe I was still in high school when I started.  I did it off and on for about ten years, not accomplishing much.  A few short stories and a couple novel ideas that I just never finished.  When I was around twenty-five I gave up.  I could sit here and list the stupid reasons I told myself for murdering my own dream, but since they were stupid I won't.  Truth is not one was a valid reason for giving up.
Since then I never stopped thinking about ideas for potential books.  I'm a constant day dreamer and the amount of music, books, movies, T.V., and other sources of creativity that I exposed myself to were always inspiring me with one flight of fantasy or another.  But instead of doing anything about it I continued to sit, feel sorry for myself and do nothing.  Sadly I have issues with depression and a lack of self-confidence (Strange how those two seem to go together.).
Then one fateful day I was introduced to the books that would perform a bit of necromancy on my creative spirit.
Jim Butcher's 'The Dresden Files'
I devoured them like Jabba The Hutt at an all you can eat frog leg buffet.  With every laugh, thrill, and tear I kept saying to myself, "This is what I wanted to do!", "These are the kinds of stories I wanted to tell."
And thus did the ashes of my dream reveal sparks of long buried embers.
Also stoking the fires of my dream were the words of director/writer Kevin Smith.  I had been following his work for years and had started to watch his Q&A DVD's.  One night I was watching 'Kevin Smith: Burn In Hell' and his words toward the end moved me.  Here was an every-man, a regular dude just like me, someone I could really relate to.  He achieved his dream, was it possible that I could to?
What finally clinched it was an entry on Jim Butcher's blog:

"There probably aren't going to be very many people who are actively supporting your efforts. You'll probably have more than one person say or do something that crushes your heart like an empty Coke can. You'll probably, at some point, want to quit rather than keep facing that uncertainty
In fact, the vast majority of aspiring authors (somewhere over 99 percent) self-terminate their dream. They quit. Think about this for a minute, because it's important:  THEY KILL THEIR OWN DREAM. 
And a lot of you who read this are going to do it too. Doesn't mean you're a bad person. It's just human nature. It takes a lot of motivation to make yourself keep going when it feels like no one wants to read your stuff, no one will ever want to read your stuff, and you've wasted your time creating all this stuff. That feeling of hopelessness is part of the process. Practically everyone gets it at one time or another. Most can't handle it.
But here's the secret:
YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE IN THE WORLD WHO CAN KILL YOUR DREAM. *NO ONE* can make you quit. *NO ONE* can take your dream away. 
No one but you.
If you want it, you have to get it. You. An author can't help you. An editor can't help you. An agent can't help you. If you want to climb that hill, the only way to do it is to make yourself do it, one foot in front of another, one word after another. It will probably be the greatest challenge most of you have ever faced.
And here's the kicker: THAT IS A VERY GOOD THING."

Reading those words, it was like he was talking to me.  I had been feeling guilt for years for being a failure and a quitter.  But Mr. Butcher made realize that just because I had quit, didn't mean I couldn't start again.  I read the rest of the entries in his blog ( http://jimbutcher.livejournal.com/ ) and it turned out that it's mainly a guide for newbie authors to get started on writing a book.  Jim Butcher became my Jedi Master and I his padawan learner.
I had an idea that had been brewing and bubbling in my head for years so combined with the inspiration of Kevin Smith and the path laid out for me by my favorite author I began for the first time in seven years to write.  It was a rocky beginning but I am starting to hit my stride.  The most difficult part is fighting against myself and my own stupid self-doubts.
But I'm not stopping this time.  I am aiming to publish on the Kindle market.  Regardless whether it is a hit or not, I am going to continue writing and have tentative plans for at least four more books in the series and a few other unrelated to my current project.  I will be updating this hopefully at least once a week (And in between if anything cool comes up.).  You can follow me on my Facebook page:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Daniel-Cortes/154187034733082

Or on my Twitter account:

https://twitter.com/DCortes5150

I hope to hear from anyone interested enough to do so.