Level 30 Achieved

First off, I would just like to apologize for the lack of updates on social media. It’s not for lack of wanting. I’ve just been very busy with personal stuff, as well as being sick for like a month. Always fun. Thankfully things are cooling down and are returning back to normal.

That being said, I’m here to say the day has finally come. The day where I leave my 20s behind and level up to start a new chapter in my life. I’m talking about today, my 30th birthday.

Now, I’m going to admit, I’m a little scared. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because I’m leaving my youth behind (so to speak) and getting older. However, I’m ready for this new journey.

My 20s were the best years of my life. I’ve done so many things in these past ten years (wow, ten already?) and I’m now excited to see what more I can do. I’ve done things I never thought would happen to me. I’ve got to work for an amazing company called Contendo, where I was at one point promoted to their Senior Audio Editor. I’ve gone back to school and done everything I’ve ever wanted in a post-secondary education, and more. (Such things included, getting scholarships and bursaries, being in society, volunteering, getting on the deans' list every year and even graduating first-class standing, and my favourite, getting to be an exchange student to Spain!). Not to mention I FINALLY cracked down and wrote a novel and with the help of my editor, edited it three times and it’s almost ready completion.

In travelling, I’ve achieved my dream of going to Japan not once, but three times! Even got interviewed for a TV show in Tokyo this year. I’ve been to Korea with my friend and later my dad. I went to school in Spain — and met and shook hands with the queen of Spain! Visited Portugal for a weekend while on the exchange. Checked out Germany and Hong Kong Disney land during super long-ass layovers. Taught English in Thailand. Visited the capital of Canada. And my favourite, achieve my lifelong dream of moving to Asia.

Posing with my friend and Olympic athletes in at the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics

EXO Concert

I’ve been in South Korea for over a year now and I’ve even done so much here. I’ve seen the Olympic torch relay pass right in front of me here in Seosan. Saw EXO in concert (and a bunch others, like SHINee, during a k-pop music festival). Went to the Olympics with my best friend from Canada in PyeongChang and saw history live. Had my cousin and friend come to visit me. Met my best friend, Leila, as well as meeting my girlfriend, Leah. Travelled for PRIDE all over Korea, from Seoul to Ulsan, to Busan, tp flying to Jeju. It was a good year for travelling this year.

Speaking of my girlfriend, I honestly thought I’d never find anyone like her. I had accepted I was going to be single forever and accepted that I’d probably never find anyone in Korea because Korea is suuuuuper conservative. But I found her and she’s amazing. To sum it up, here is a short story. Months ago I was in Seoul with my friend Leila and we were on the subway going somewhere and we saw this guy. His phone would buzz and when he’d look at the text on the screen, his face would light up with happiness I’ve never seen before. He’d reply, put his phone away, then when another text came, his happy smile would return. Leila and I watched him every time he’d get a text, and every time his smile would widen. Leila said to me, “I wish I could find someone who makes me smile like that.”

Few months pass and I met Leah, and as time passed we started going out. And I realized something that I had to tell my friend. I told her, “Leila, I found someone that makes me smile like that.” And THAT is what I want for those of you who are reading this. I hope that you find someone that makes you smile, sees you for who you really are and loves you the way you deserve to be loved. I also hope that you realize that your life is amazing and worthwhile, too. You don’t have to travel the world and meet royalty to know you are worth it. It’s how you behave in this life that makes the difference.

Everything happened exactly when I needed it to. If I had gone to university sooner, I wouldn’t have met the friends I made there. If I decided to move to another country but Korea, I wouldn’t have met my girlfriend. Every event, every person, everything I’ve seen has come into my life (or left) exactly when it needed to be there, and I wouldn’t change it for the world.

Now that I’ve hit 30, that is the understanding I’ve come to know.

Mental Health: In Writing and Life

So, if you didn't already know, I've become much more active on my social media lately. I'm also working on this website to bring more awesome content (which will go live soon). And while I've been keeping people in the loop over on FaceBook, Instagram, and Twitter, I realized I haven't yet updated my blog with all the juicy info. 

So as a quick update, my manuscript is with my editor (and I should get to see all those glorious edits sometime this week!) Yet what does one do while their main manuscript is in the hands of their editor? Start writing a novella to SOUTH! It will be called BRIDGE. I plan on writing a sequel to SOUTH, called MIRROR. And while I have the general idea of MIRROR in mind, it still needs a lot to have fleshed out before I can start writing it.

So, for the past few weeks I've been planning out and thought dumping the ideas for BRIDGE. I even started writing BRIDGE, and I gotta say, I'm super stoked about this novella. I also really love this new character I'm introducing, Kaci Miller. This novella will primarily focus on Minami and her new roommate, Kaci, shortly after the events of SOUTH. And yes, AJ will still be there. Although it will be a while before anyone can get to read this novella because SOUTH is still in the works.

As a side note, all names, SOUTH, BRIDGE, and MIRROR, are symbolic as well as literal and they were chosen for a reason.  

Now that we got that quick update out of the way, I want to address something that is important to me, mental health. I cannot stress the importance of mental health enough. If your body is in need of rest, you rest until you feel rested.

I've been feeling very creative for a while now, getting back in the writing grove while juggling a full-time job and a busy social life. But said life had me so busy that I burned out to the point where was staring to feel unwell due to my lack of sleep. And no, nothing is wrong. I’m just literally just living life to the fullest and I keep forgetting my body doesn’t like too much excitement for extended periods of time.

My body was in dire need of a recharge and man I wasn't feeling so good last week. I overworked myself because I didn't want to miss a beat doing ALL the things in Korea. But I drained myself to the point where I was physically not well and mentally drained. I spent a lot of time recovering, mostly chilling and watching YouTube, and while I didn't get anything creative done, my mind rested and in turn, the creative juices came back.

Also important, once you start your road to recovery, take baby steps. Don't jump back in full force or you're going to be right back where you started. I wrote about 500 words Monday and 300 or so yesterday. And today I took the time to jot down plot ideas. Not as much as I usually do, but it felt good all the same and small doses is better than nothing at all and feeling like you got hit by a truck and left with a mentally dazed mind.

I must say, the mental break did me wonders. Now I'm back and feeling much better and my mind is not on auto pilot anymore. I can get back to writing and posting and stuff.

So yeah. Look after yourself. Even if you're living life to the fullest, remember to take a breather so it can all sink in. You'll enjoy life even more that way.

Take care!~

Writer's Block

A friend of mine asked me a question tonight in regard to writing and I thought I'd share my answer. Perhaps it will be useful to future or current authors.

"Hey, if you don't mind me asking, how do you deal with writer's block? Or with difficulty starting or finishing anything creative?"

My response:

I don't mind at all!

Its hard, not gonna lie. Sometimes I'll just re-read everything I wrote in hopes that I'll get inspired to write more. It's especially hard when the page is blank. (Or when the page is blank, and you have so many ideas that you don't know where to start so you just kind of sit there and stare at the screen and get nothing done. Kind of the opposite of writers' block but on the same level).

What helps me, however, is music and planning. Music is my inspiration and I thrive on it to get me in the mood and sometimes it inspires many chapters. But in the end, what got me though writing the first draft (aside from a huge musical influence) was what I called "plotting the plot". I sat down one day and drew out a time line of when things were to happen in SOUTH, from start to finish. I started with when the major stuff should happen, and then added less major scenes (kind of like fillers but they would still be necessary). After I got that written out, it became like a guideline; a map I could follow. When I would write, I could psychically see how far I was getting and in turn that was motivation. I'd be like, "damn, I'm halfway! That's so cool! If I kept going I'd really super far then!" It was an amazing motivator. So that, plus a good song in the background, was how I started, and finished my novel in such a short amount of time while also doing school assignments.

One more thing of advice, just keep writing, or even, just start. You may start with like a random super small sentence. But when you look at the page, you see progress, even if its small. Then the more you write, the more progress you see and the better you'll feel. Sometimes, a small ten-word sentence may end up being a 3000+ word a day writing streak. That's how it was for me, anyway.

Yet my friend still had some concerns:

"I keep starting, looking at what I have so far, hating it, and then restarting. I've written the first part of my novel twice. And it's not very good."

And so, I continued:

But that's the best part! Because it's like a blessing in disguise. I may have written my full novel from August to December, but do you know how long I've technically been working on this story? The idea alone came way back when Minami was first created, which was probably in the early 2000s.

In fact, SOUTH wasn't always called SOUTH. It used to be a super dark story (just about Minami), where everyone got murdered and there was so much death that Minami was even supposed to die in the end. (Could be why it was originally called SILENT TEARS). I've written so many chapters on SILENT TEARS, and even of SOUTH, both with multiple drafts, all which were pretty bad. You can read more about them in an earlier blog post, and click the links to read the stories themselves for a good laugh).

I'm not even saying what I have now is good, though this draft is certainly the best I've written and I haven't even finished editing it. Stories that change is you, the author, finding what truly works and what doesn't. It's probably not going to work the first try, even if you think it's amazing. I sure thought the very first chapter (script form) for SOUTH was the best thing I've ever done. But reading it now? I cringe. And that was only a few years ago. And even though my current round of edits for SOUTH is good now, I'm sure there is always something else that I'll notice later and improve upon.

But the good news is that it does get better and improve and you will produce something great. You have to work for it, but it will happen.

***

To all writers out there, never give up. Finish that story you started, no matter how long or short. Because the sense of accomplishment you'll get just by finishing something you've started writing is the best explainable feeling you can imagine. It doesn't have to be good. As long as you started and saw it through, you'll be heading on the path that will change your life.

The Beginning

Welcome to my musings. The blog where I'll be posting snippets of my mind for all to see.

In this first blog post, I've decided to tell a quick tale on how my novel SOUTH came to be.

As we all know, stories can take years to tell and still never be perfect. But it's the imperfection that, oddly enough, makes it perfect to me.

So, a bit of back story before I go any further. SOUTH was originally going to be a comic (and it might very well be someday). The story started many, many years ago, however, it has changed drastically over time.

The original story was called Silent Tears. Here is what it was originally about:

Minami Kyuki’s hearts a battle ground of despair. Faced with more difficulties in her life than the normal teen, Minami copes by living one day at a time. But how long before the tragic events of her past haunts her to her death?

Pretty dark, right? Then in 2010, I changed the story to Shattered. It was still dark but not nearly as much as Silent Tears was. It focused mainly on Minami’s past and eventually leading up to college. I never wrote anything on Shattered, however. I just couldn't figure out how to start it or where it'd go. All good signs that it wasn't a good story to begin with if you ask me.

Then in 2011 I went to Korea for the first time. On the train I saw this one lonely blonde haired white girl in the crowd of Koreans. This random stranger was my inspiration for AJ. This made me want to skip all that back-story stuff and go straight to college years. Somehow this inspired a complete 180 in my story and SOUTH was born.

SOUTH was still originally going to be a comic, with my friend Ryuu doing the artwork. I had originally written two volumes of comic script, but something didn’t feel right. Then one day, while listening to a song, it hit me. I suddenly knew what was missing. I then changed a few small things, which in turn, changed the story a lot. So, I opened up Word and started writing. The words just seemed to flow. Writing it as a novel felt better for this new format.

I started writing the novel version SOUTH around February of 2015. Then I slowly wrote the second chapter a month later. Then I kind of stopped writing for a while. What got me motivated to write again was actually sitting down and writing down and plotting the whole plot on a timeline on paper. To any aspiring authors or hobbies writers, I highly recommend doing this. It's an amazing motivator, especially when you write you can see your progress and it motivates you to keep going. At least, it did so for me. After writing down the plot and seeing the clear path written down so I could write more clearly, the writing poured out of me. 

I started writing again in August of 2015, around the time I got an editor. Nothing motivates you to write like having an editor. Within months, I wrote the entire novel to SOUTH. I finished the first draft on December 27th, 2016. Considering I wrote it while doing my BA in Spanish at the University of Prince Edward Island, I was pretty proud of myself.

And that is the story on how SOUTH came to be. The short version, anyway. I am currently working on my third round of edits, and let me just say, thanks to my editor this version is going to be even more amazing if I do say so myself. I'm still learning as a writing and will constantly improve. I strive off good critiques and even hope that if I made any grammatical mistakes or spelling errors in this post, would you be so kind as to point them out in a polite manner. After all, how can I improve if no one says anything?

That being said, I just want to give some quick advice. Write. Never stop writing. Even if your story sucks -- 'cause let's face it, we all have a sucky story written at some point -- just write it anyway. The feeling of actually completing a story is like non-other. Doesn't matter what kind of writing it is, be it a poem, short story, or novel, just write.