writing – Page 6 – Anthony Otero

Every Word is a Revolution

Every word is a revolution. When someone asks me what my take away was from watching Junot Díaz talk with Toni Morrison last week, that last line is the best way to summarize it. There are few times in life when you realize you are in the presence of greatness. I have had this privilege a few times by simply being in the room with great literary minds. Yet, nothing really prepared me for this particular discussion at the New York Library.

I’m not going to go into an expansive breakdown of this discussion because I will not do it justice (which is why I just attached the link below), but rather, it is best for me to be reflective on how this event should reshape the life of writers. What is interesting to me is how unapologetic words from these two authors can be. I feel like I’m someone who says sorry too much so when I read their words and hear them speak, it’s like a tiny revolution. The reality is that I want to write my fiction with no apologies. It should be harsh at times and hard hitting. Yet, there is a serious fear factor in all of this. There is a little person on my shoulder telling me that I am not good enough.

As I sat there and watched these two legends speak, I began to wonder if there were feelings of doubt that snuck into their thought process. I do recognize their humanity but the aura around them glowed with divinity at least in the realm of the written word. Toni Morrison was that author that Professor Mays at Syracuse University championed. I took a class solely on her and it took me way too long to realize how great she really she. Song of Solomon is one of those books everyone needs to read. So seeing and hearing her talk about books I’ve read a long time ago along with her thought process was indeed axis shifting. Yet, that confidence she has makes me believe that whatever fear she may have had was put back into her work. I plan on reading her works again. Now that I’m older I think her words will mean even more to me now then they did then.

The same goes for Junot Díaz. He writes like he talks and it’s truly amazing. He has changed the game for me. I became used to reading narratives where the voice is so very formal and even if the protagonist curses… it’s still formal. But when this man stood up in front of a large audience in Syracuse a few years ago and read one of the dirtiest passages in The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, I knew this man gave zero fucks about what people thought about him and his work. That is an inner peace that he has with his work and the central place that I want to get to.

That is why every word is a Revolution. This goes far beyond just writing something that I consider to be special. It is more about reaching a point where I have a connection to a audience that is beyond the norm.

my life, Novel, overthinking, writing

A Novel Idea

The problem with being me is that I think too much. I over think everything in my life and when things are bad, my over rationalization of things just make this worse. When things are going good I have to find a way to use the extra mental energy. Much of that has come in the form of novel writing.

I have always managed to use writing as a form of escape and expression. My mind is always on, which may explain why I don’t sleep as much as I should. In any case, I’m always thinking about the story and the story after that. This causes me the over think the little details of whatever I happened to be working on, but in the long run I know I can do what I could never do in real life, go back and fix mistakes.

I realize that what I’m working on fits into my own personal feelings about life. Everything we do is connected. We are all connected in some way and I think that has been coming out in the way I’m writing this novel. I really think that all the people we meet play a role in our lives no matter how insignificant it may seem. That is why all my stories take place in the same space.

Maybe it is because I’m such a lover comic books but think about the fact that Bruce Wayne takes up the same space as Clark Kent. Think about how the relationships behind the scenes are just as important. Lois Lane has done several interviews with Bruce and Lex Luthor is his business rival. This has very little to do with the fact that Batman and Superman are “friends”. That very geeky example is how the world around us operates. I can’t tell you how many times someone has checked my LinkedIn profile and commented that they didn’t realize how I knew someone they knew (which is why networking is important…but I digress).

All my books and stories are connect to each other and I over think that so much that I had to put down all my ideas of what my novels would look like when I am done. There are five books with the titles and a brief summation. If I can get this done, I will be so very impressed with myself:

Hanging Upside Down – (currently editing)
Louis is facing life after divorce while trying to be with his true love. His life comes crashing down when he has to deal with life altering experiences.

The Book of Isabel
A master student tries to find his way after a horrible break with the woman he thought was the one. Prequel to Hanging Upside Down.

The Angel of Death – (partially written)
When Marie dreams about people who die in her dreams it turns out the die in real life. She must find out the origin of her dreams before someone close to her dies.

The Book of Rachet (partially written)
A group of short stories of people who have a very different set of morals

Parallels
A young author struggles with writing about his life until he thinks about what life would’ve been like with the different ex-loves of his past.

I have no idea how I got here. I will just say that the more I edit my current title, the more ideas continue to flood my mind in regards to the other four. This what I will be working for the foreseeable future and I love it.

my life, writing

A Million Stories in the Parallel

Sometimes I feel like I have a million stories in my head. I think writing this novel has opened a can of worms I will not be able to close. I find it interesting that in my desire to get through the editing of the first draft, I continue to envision what comes next. I keep thinking about the next story and how I intend to frame that.

I guess my point is that I don’t know how to feel about that. On one hand, it feels good to know the creative part of me is still functional. There is this compulsion to constantly create a world in a literary realm that is just mine. I see this whole experience as me delving into a alternate version of me in a parallel universe where anything can and has happened. Yet, in that context I’m not even sure that I can think of that many variables that would be in a parallel timeline where either I (i.e. the character’s I create) are the constant.

On the other hand, thinking about what is next in the literary sense is almost unbearable because of the constant distraction. My attention span has it’s limits while my imagination is infinite. I do wonder how much longer it will take me to finish the first draft before I can start moving toward publishing mode which will ultimately lead to me start another book. It makes me think about how established authors have done this. Do they finish writing one book, give it to an editor and start writing another?

Then there are the unfinished stories that I may never publish. Not sure what do with those short stories that are filled with more erotica than you may ever see in 50 Shades of Gray. Yet, they sit in my laptop and Google Drive because all I can think about is what if my family reads how filthy my mind is? There used to be a part of me that didn’t give a fuck about that but times change and so do people.

I also feel that my short stories are a constant reminder of my inability to finish them unlike my current project. My mind is more focused on writing books rather than writing short stories but again, I’m not sure that is a good thing. I know that many authors have dabbled in the world of the short story and at times I flirt with it myself. But, those files of short stories keep reminding me that I can write better.

These are not complaints, this is just me thinking out loud in the vacuum of cyber space. A place where I can be heard or ignored and the results would come out to the same. Which is exactly how I feel about the possibility of searching for a publisher of the novel. For the most part when people ask me about the book, the next follow up question is about how I intend on getting this published. I have always said that I intend to self publish and even if I went the other route and get rejected, I’m still getting published via myself.

Yet, I have been thinking about why I have never even considered going the other route, which would require me to get an agent to shop the book around. The reason is not fear of rejection because I’m quite used to that. My rationale has do with control. I want to control every aspect of this novel from the cover art to the distribution. Granted, there are book companies that have much wider distribution than I can ever hope to achieve but I think I may have to Wu-Tang this.

I have learned from Wu-Tang Clan that when it comes to business you have to look out for yourself. Even with knowing that, there have been tons of articles all over the place that say self publishing is the way to go. I just need to get there without distracting myself with thoughts of other books that will follow this current one. I guess I will chalk this all up to problems of a writer.

One last thought. I was watching the movie Sideways the other day. I think it’s a very good and underrated movie. The main character cannot get his book published. He’s worked so hard to complete this literary work of art that “people” say they are not ready for. When this came out, self publishing was not available and I kept thinking to myself, at least I know that wont be me.

writing

First Draft Complete!

I was up late last night. Its what I seem to do these days. Last night was a little different. I just kept writing and when I looked at the time, I thought to myself that I just need to go to bed. My sleepy walk to the bathroom lead me to think about what I just wrote and as I began to brush my teeth, I was hit with a revelation: I think I just ended my story!

Immediately my sleepiness turned into a excitement. I’m not sure I have ever brushed my teeth with such excitement before. I got back to my laptop and I read the last paragraph and there it was, the ending. I have a hard time describing what that feeling is like, but the very next thing I did was write some more. I needed to iron out some final details before I could just go to bed.

I know there is a lot of editing in my future and I’m looking forward to it because I get to read pages I have not looked at in months. I also think that this is the time for me to really have fun because now I can go back and add things knowing how the story will turn out. I am a big fan of foreshadowing. At the same time there is a small twinge of fear because I absolutely have no idea what is going to come next. I have no idea how many drafts it’s going to take me and once complete who knows what process I will have to go through to self publish.

What I do know is that I have another story brewing in the back of my head that is connected to this one and I would like to get to that soon. I also know that I have an unfinished novel that I start several years ago that I should get back to. It’s funny how now all of a sudden I have all these things that I need to do after the fact, but I am loving it all the same.

I’m just glad I have people that continue to support me. There are people who have already done what I have done and I will be connecting with them to avoid the pit falls of self publishing. But more importantly, this second draft will be something I will pour my heart into so that in the end, I get to tell the story I want in the way I want to. Right now everything is raw that I can pretty much say that the second draft will take me as long as it has to to complete.

Finally I can say two things about this book:

When people asked me what the story was about, I had a hard time articulating the plot. Now, I can for sure tell everyone what the story is about. The book is about a man who is coming to grips with his divorce while trying to come to terms with the true love of his life. Bang. I am not sure I could have said it any better. I may need to copy and paste this shit and put it on twitter. lol

The second thing I can tell you about this book is that I do have a title. I have had it for weeks now but I didn’t want to release it until after I was done with the first draft. The book with be called, Hanging Upside Down. I have enjoyed writing it and trust me that this story has everything. I look forward to completing this process so that you can all read it!

Novel, writing

The Next Level: Being an Author

It took Juno Diaz 10 years to write a book. I think about that as I pour myself into this text and yet I think I’m on the same wave length. This book is at least 7 years in the making. I think about the experiences I’ve been though, the blogs I’ve written, and the poems I’ve crafted. All that stuff has made me the writer I am today.

As I reached the 75k mark, I wondered to myself, at what point will I be done? I have been physically writing this novel since March. It is still very much in raw form with barely any edits. I have survived working a full time job, being sick, and a mean writer’s block. Asking that proverbial, “are we there yet” question is based on the fact that I’m so ready to edit. The problem (and not in a bad way) is that story has so many components and it cannot just end abruptly and I know that.

I went into this not knowing what to expect because I’m that dude who starts something and never finishes it. I am that dude that will tell you I will do something and either never does it or it gets to you later than you wanted. I have worked harder on being a man of my word more than anything else. That is just in the terms of my personal life, as a professional I am quite different. I suppose that is the dual nature of a Gemini.

So understand that I am currently doing the greatest thing that I have ever done for myself. This is something that has made me become slowly excited. This doesn’t mean that I think this book will be the best shit every written, it’s the fact that I’m creating something. I know that I have other steps to follow in this process and no matter how much sleep I lose writing, what is happening now is the fun part.

I know what the next level has to be past this. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel now. I know how the book ends and I roughly know how I am going to get there. But, finally putting an ending on it does not mean that work of this novel is over. I still have to title the book, I still have to edit the text, I still have design the cover AND I still have to publish this damn thing. So, I am very excited about this whole process and yet I know that I will miss the pure creation of writing when I’m done which will ultimately lead me to write another book.

What makes all of this very weird for me is the ability to talk about this to people beyond this space. Sure, I can write about this in the vacuum that is the internet and get zero responses and be ok with it. But, it is when I talk to people, like family, about this that it becomes surreal. How do you broach that subject that you are writing a book without seeming that you are full of yourself? Sure, that is my problem but I am pretty sure I am the only member of my immediate family that will do this. (Note: I will not be surprised if one of my cousin pulls out some journal showing they published something. lol)

Right now, my goal is about 95k. I think I can wrap up all the loose ends in about 20 thousand words. I think that once I edit and clean up some things, I may be closer to 100k. I makes me smile because there are so many things and people that have gotten me here.

I am ready for the next level. I am not talking about fame or fortune. I am finally ready to proclaim myself as a true publish author.

comic books, Novel, writing

Crisis: Retconning a Novel

Hi. How you? It’s been a long time.

I have been in state a perpetual stillness when it comes to me writing anything. I imagine myself in a floating one dimensional glass sailing through time and space like Zod. It is possible to jump the shark before anything is published?

This started a few days before July 4th when I was feverishly writing a chapter in the novel. I was at point where I had to make a decision about the main character that might change the tone of the book. So I made a decision to go with something that I now regret and while I can simply hit the backspace button and rewrite this, it has made me think about the whole thing.

The story is very character driven. It is a first person perspective about crazy shit that people do and the dumb decisions that they make. However, through all of this, what makes stories like these work is how believable they can be. Much of that has to do with the human experience. What are we capable of? How fucked up can we be to each other? That is the basis of life experiences.

Then there is the ultimate goal which is to further the story along. You know when you are watching a blu-ray or dvd and you’re looking at the deleted scenes? Well those scenes tell a version of a story or they are just details of things that are really not that important. This is something like but the impact would be felt somewhere down the line. The purpose of that whole chapter was to explain a back story of a minor character but then things got out of hand and fiction became a little unreal.

I knew the moment I wrote it that it did not feel right, but I went along with it anyway and thus now I have been stuck for a week at almost 64k words. This is where retconning comes in to play. For those not familiar with the term retcon, it is more of a comic book term that stands for retroactive continuity. This happens in comics when writers hit a reset button in order to make their comic book universe more current or when they simply want to fix a mistake.

An example of this is when DC Comics decided to make this event in 1985 called Crisis on Infinite Earths. This was a massive retconning of an entire universe which effects lasted for a decade or so until the decided to fix other mistakes they made every few years that ultimately let to Final Crisis in 2008. Of course one would think that it would be over until Flashpoint came out in 2011 that leads us to where DC is not with the New 52.

I know this sounds confusing and that is my point. I don’t want to get to a point where I’m retconning this novel every time I make a mistake. That will only make me feel like Peter Parker when he revealed to the world he was Spider-Man only to make a deal with the devil later which made the world forget that fact (Yes, I am beating a dead horse here).

The only thing I can do right now is try to go back to that chapter and deconstruct it. If that doesn’t work then I will ultimately have to rewrite it. The problem with that is that I had an unwritten rule that I adopted from someone which basically states that you never go back to edit your work until it is time to edit. Which means that I just keep writing until I am done then go back and fix typos and expand on storylines I may have missed. All this is apart of writing a first draft.

Sigh. A draft. That is my saving grace. Who knows if what I have in mind now wont change by the time I actually go back to page one and it. I guess that means I may have another Crisis on my hands.

my life, Novel, writing

40K

It is official. I have reached 40k in words. #novel

— OG Tony Snark 🇵🇷🇪🇨 (@Latinegro) May 22, 2013

I reached a pretty significant goal yesterday. I reached the 40 thousand word mark in the novel that I’m writing. This has become something that I am fully committed to and in many cases I cannot believe I didn’t start writing like this sooner. I feel that I am finally doing the one thing that I always wanted to do and that is write a book.

When I look back at certain points of my life, I can see that just about every creative thing I have done has lead me here. In grammar school, I wrote a story that involved my classmates turning into werewolves. I enjoyed that people read it and liked it. That was my first stab at writing anything in the first person. The years leading into high school I created a whole universe filled with superhero characters. They were completely diverse in origin, ethnicity, and gender. I had the comics titled, numbered, and a synopsis written for each one. I wanted to be a comic book writer.

Of course growing up and having people tell me that writing comics was not a good way to earn a living led me to doubt myself, but at the very least I was able to graduate with a bachelors in English. Despite everything, writing was still came very easy to me. When people were stressing finals, I was writing papers and I enjoyed it. But I still remember the voices of people suggesting that writing should not be the way to go, so the only thing I could do was put it in the back burner and make it a hobby.

As most of you know, four years ago I started a blog and the rest is history. What I find interesting is that I have a clear goal to get this book done and I have written way too much to stop now, but I still think about that black and white composition notebook that has all my notes in them. I think about the journals that I kept in High School through all the pains of my parents divorce and all the frustrations of the bullies. I think about how I may have spent most of my life preparing myself for what I am doing right now.

I now laugh at the notion that comic book writers do not get paid much. Maybe they don’t but when you do something that you love, is it really work? I have worked at places that are unsatisfying and it can suck. I now look at the body of my work and I realized that I have done short stories, narratives, essays, poetry, blogs, articles, and screen plays. This need to be creative with words has always been inside of me. I just made the mistake of listening to the naysayers.

I still have those composition notebooks. I still have the those journals that I kept in high school that detailed the issues I went through in my younger days. I am not saying that I have led a tragic life, I just think that I have fuel to create stories in which I can draw from experience.

family, girlfriend, happiness, my life

Stay Happy

Sometimes family can give us advice that we just have to reflect on as well as follow. I had family over on Sunday for a housewarming brunch. It consisted of a lot of food, presents, and salsa music. Not to mention that the woman and I spent much of the past two weeks painting, so it was definitely a day we were looking forward to. It is also a reminder of how a big family can make any apartment seem small.

So after everything was said and done, one of my aunts told me something that I feel I need to reflect on. Most people, when they are saying their parting words to another person, would say something like stay safe or have fun. What my aunt chose to say was “Stay Happy.” I was sort of taken back by this because this is something that has never been said to me. I think she took the hint that I was a little perplexed by this and clarified by telling me that I truly look happy and I need to make sure that I stay that way.

I have to admit that this is not an appalling thing to be told, but I just found it to be oddly enlightening. We live in a world where people tend to blame others for their problems or give credit to God because he/she is the reason why all things are possible. There’s rarely a time when people think about the fact they it takes work and effort to maintain happiness. I think this is the main reason why many of us get into trouble because we are trying to find happiness as if it is a place where we can go to.

Happiness is a state of being. That is why no one person can make us happy if we do not know how to be in that state alone. This is where the list of tragic stories comes into play of people marrying the wrong people or people being stuck in dead-end jobs. There is this notion that we will eventually be happy if we follow this American dream of finding that right person, having that great job, getting a house, having 2.5 kids, and then credits roll. That rah rah shit is for the movies.

I believe that finding true happiness is a rebellious act. Think about that for a moment. How many people hate other people for being happy? This rebellious state of being often acts like a mirror to others. You can see your own unhappiness reflected back to you in someone’s bliss. Can we truly be happy for another person? Of course, but that would have to be based either love for that person or the fact there you have reached that state of being before.

I cannot describe what being happy is like but I can say that I feel free to do the things that I have a passion for and giving less of my attention to things that ultimately do not matter in the grand scheme. I believe that there is power in letting things go. There is no way that anyone of us can be truly happy if we are holding grudges or animosity toward anyone. It is unhealthy to hold that pent up negative energy toward anyone or anything. I choose to have a short memory and it has worked out for me. (Note: I can already see one of my friend’s saying he is happy all the while still holding grudges. Which does work for him but my ultimate point is the the closer to zero of amount of fucks you give will increase the likely hood that you can reach a happy state)

I also believe this state of being gives us an aura that people notice. The term “you are glowing” does mean something. With that aura comes the confidence to do the things we are meant to be doing. I thought about the fact that I simply could not really write the way I wanted to when I was in Syracuse. There were too many things that were distracting me which lead me to do just the bare minimum of what I am passionate about.

Stay Happy is an acknowledgement that I’m doing things right, but it is also a warning. People who are not used to being happy have a way of sabotaging themselves. I can tell you that I have to be careful not to fall into any traps or get too comfortable with my life. There is always work to do to make things better. While it is true that we cannot make every one happy, we can at least make ourselves happy.

Afro Latino, Barnard College, Columbia University, mother, my life, New York City, Novel, Syracuse University, writing

The Next Chapter

As I literally write my the next chapter of my novel, I am thinking about the next chapters in my life. My first school year is coming to a close here at Barnard and I have set certain goals for myself that will be set in motion before school starts back up in the fall.

I have the prefect opportunity to start school again and I would like to take full advantage of taking course at Columbia University. The process may be slow since classes are not free and I do work full time but I owe it to myself to get my Master’s Degree. I frequently tell people that I ultimately didn’t want to get my Master ‘s at Syracuse because I was tired of the SU point of view of the world. The other reason is that I would still be there right now if I went all in on that program.

Now that I have an idea of what my work schedule is like, I can plan to take classes accordingly. This will effectively change my life to be able to attend an Ivy League Institution. I had already investigated the possibility of this happening last summer when I was getting ready to be interviewed for my current position so I know what CU has to offer. I think going down this road will allow me to turn the page to the next level of my career.

Speaking of turning the page, I feel the need to say that I have resigned from the Latinegr@’s Project. I know this will come to shock to some because everyone knows how passionate I am about Afro Latinos. I am not going to get into the how’s and the why’s. They are a great group of people that are doing some amazing things. As proof from when I left SU last year, there are times when you just need to move on. I did wish them luck with pushing their agenda and ideas forward into the future. When I think about it, they really don’t need luck, they will be successful with anything they do, I can feel it.

I have also been thinking about the Syracuse University Commencement that just happened last weekend. I truly had mixed emotions about this day. I felt bad that I could not see the students that I’ve been in the trenches with for years. They made it very hard for me to leave and I wanted to show my appreciation. However, this Mother’s Day was the first time I have been with family in a very long time. Graduation weekend has pretty much always fallen on Mother’s Day so I spent 11 years in Syracuse on that weekend.

So it was VERY hard for me to look at all the ceremonious pictures on Instagram and Twitter because there was a part of me that wanted to be a part of that celebration. It reminds me of the discussion and arguments with the knuckleheads. I do miss them. Of course, since most of them live in NYC, I am sure it is only a matter of time until I see them.

I wont even mention that I am turning 39 in less than a month. The big Four-Oh is right around the corner which means all types of cancer tests that I am so not ready for.

The reality of it all is that writing this novel had been a another journey for me. The funny thing about turning the page on an old chapter is that is hard to go back. The story that I am creating draws from so much experience from me as well as the vivid imagination that I was born with. It has opened up some old wounds but also spawned some great ideas for future text. Writing this has been a mixed bag of feelings that has allowed me to think about everything in my life.

One thing is for certain, all this writing has given be a new appreciation for people who do this for a living. I am not even sure what I am going to do about it when I am done, but I suppose I will figure all that out in the next chapter.

my life, writing

Fiction

As I embark on my literary journey, I find it interesting how real life plays out on in fiction. The one lesson that I truly learned in all my English classes was that all writing is autobiographical. I didn’t really understand it at the time but as I truly begin to redefine what writing means to me, I see the meaning of that statement clearer than ever.

I have always thought about writing a book. Lord knows that I have talked about it for way too long. A few years ago I start writing short stories sporadically. Nothing fancy, straight to the point. Most were sexual in nature and all were based, in part, on the fragility of relationships. To date, I have written 11 stories. One of these stories, however, is missing. I have no idea where it went. It may have died in one of my failed hard drives.

Out of those stories, I converted one into a potential novel that I have not finished yet. Most of that story is in my head and every so often, I will add a chapter to it. However, there is a part of me that feels that I am simply not ready to finish that book yet. The other short stories are something I have been tinkering with. Maybe I will combine them into a larger book and called it a day.

Right now my main focus is to finish a story that I have been working for a little less than a month. It is the most I have ever written in one document. There was a point where I was thinking about a page number that I wanted to reach all the while knowing that a page in MS Word is not the same as a page in a book. For example, I know that roughly 30 pages in Word is close to about 60 pages in a novel. So my goal was about a 110 pages in total. But then I started thinking about it differently. Pages themselves may not matter because it all depends on the content and the words being used.

Sure, I can write “fuck” and copy it over and over for 120 pages on Word, but does that make it a novel? I read somewhere that Stephen King writes 5 thousand words per day. That seems like an insane amount that is necessary for him. That is a full time job to just come up with that number of words everyday. Then it really got me thinking that I need to focus on the amount of words that I feel I need to have. So I looked up the average amount of words that are in a novel and I came up with this:

Romance Novels ranges from 50,000 words to 100,000 words
Science fiction minimum is 80,000 words
Mystery minimum is around 70,000 words
Mainstream averages around 100,000 words.

The number of words don’t scare me. I see this as a goal. As of this blog post, I am at 28,440 words (52 MS Word pages). While this is a fictionalized story, there is a certain cathartic feeling that I get with every page that pours out of me. It gives me hope that I can finish this goal and yet tell a pretty decent story. I suppose that I was always meant to move past a blog to a book since I have written so much over the years. I just didn’t know when I was going to get to that point.

As crazy as it seems, I do have an alternative motive behind this. I feel like I need to leave something behind. I think that this blog and blogs of the past are great but what tangibility does it really leave? Who reads past words if they aren’t relevant anymore? It is not like there is a library that someone one can look up blogs a hundred years from now. I want to leave a piece of myself when I am gone. Something that perhaps my children and thier children can look back at say that they can find a book that I wrote in a Library (whether that be a physical one or a virtual one).

I want to be able to be an old man in either a rest home or a hospital and see actual book with my name on them. True immortality is based on the legacy that is left behind. I can only achieve that if I write.

Ficton or not.