Asian Movies and Messaging

I finally saw a movie in the theaters after a long time. It has been a while during the pandemic that I went out to see one. The movie was called, Spiritwalker, and it is from South Korea. I enjoyed it quite a bit as it was an action movie that just tried to be an interesting, action-filled movie. It did not try to put in any type of messaging or try to be something that it wasn’t, and these days, I am fine with that. My friend and I left the theater not feeling that we wasted money or time, and we were entertained. When I originally created The Mustard Prince, I just wanted to write a fun fantasy adventure story. Any messages or themes that anyone takes from the story were not forced in there and were organic.

I feel that at times, we have gotten away from that in more modern-day stories. Messaging and just trying to reinvent the wheel and be different seem to be a mentality towards creating stories. Granted, so many stories from so many different platforms have now been created and distributed. It is difficult to be original, and I can attest to taking an idea from another story and putting my own spin on it. I believe at this point, it is near impossible to be totally original, as most ideas, themes and whatnot have been put out there. For me, it is about characters and how I execute the story.

I really hope that when people read my works that they will remember the characters. I want people to just be entertained and to experience a certain level of escapism. I do not have much desire to reinvent the wheel, as the wheel is functional, efficient and does its job well. Sometimes, stories just need to be as simple as that.

Setbacks and Comfort

At the end of this month, I am going to visit the Philippines with my family. When I bought the plane tickets, inbound travelers from the U.S. had to quarantine for three days. Because of the Omicron variant, this has been extended to five days for vaccinated travelers. I suppose that I can learn from this is that setbacks will happen unexpectedly, and it is easy to get comfortable in certain situations. Bad things can happen at any time, but it does seem as if they happen when one is most comfortable.

With writing, there are these types of setbacks. There is a similarity with writing every day that is like going to the gym. When one builds a routine and gets comfortable with the routine, then things are good. However, miss one day, and it can destroy the whole routine. It is doing something by choice, and we can find any excuse not to do it. Writing is similar. I can choose not to do it for a day or two but that can ruin the routine and discipline that I built up over time. Unless writing were my full-time job, I do not necessarily have to do it every day, but I choose to since I believe it works toward a greater reward.

While I do get comfortable with a general writing routine every day, it is uncomfortable to write every day. I could easily be sitting on the couch watching a screen every day after work. Brazilian Jiu Jitsu works in this same way, as there is a benefit to getting comfortable in an uncomfortable situation. There are eventual rewards to it as well especially from a learning perspective.

Thanksgiving 2021 and Gratitude

Thanksgiving happened, and I have a lot to be thankful and grateful for. I bought a condo in a nice area this year, my job has been steady, I have a significant other that I will see soon, and my family is doing well. I am grateful that I had a good, safe upbringing thanks to my parents, and it has allowed me to be able to pursue writing without much obstacle. I am grateful for the learning process, but I do want to say that I would be thankful when I become a professionally published author.

Having a four-day weekend was nice. I have been watching the show, Dexter, and it is a lot of fun along with watching some anime. There is a level of characterization in Dexter that I would like to emulate. Within a few episodes, I already built an emotional connection and equity to many of the characters. With my writing, I am all about the characters and making them memorable. There are many nuances but also a human element to making these characters that one would care about that I hope to convey with my own characters.

There is only one more month for the year 2021. Despite all that is happening in the world, I am personally grateful for many things that happened to me this year. I got back into sending query letters this year and bringing back this blog regularly. I hope that these are just the building blocks to achieving my ultimate goal of becoming an author. I will be thankful when that happens.

The Bible and Good Versus Evil

I have read the whole Bible from the Old Testament to the New Testament. Reading the King James Edition of The Bible, I made it a point to read just a little a day. It is tougher to read than other versions. I have been told that all stories derive from The Bible, as it is the origin story for Good versus Evil. What I took out of reading it is that it is a story about the human condition. Reading it as an adult really put certain lessons from it in perspective.

When I first started writing stories, I created protagonists who were blank canvases. They had little personality, and my work suffered because of it. They were absent of the human condition and just went with the flow without the audience knowing how they felt or reacted to certain situations. As I got older and started to learn more about writing and stories, I made it a point to let the audience know exactly what they were feeling at any given time. It opened my stories to audiences much more.

The Mustard Prince in the Condiment Kingdom originally did not have a villain. It was just a collection of short adventures featuring The Mustard Prince and his companions. Eventually, I created a villain, Marinara, organically. He just had to be in the story, and I suppose it was to have that opposite component to The Mustard Prince, who is generally a good, earnest individual. It goes without saying, but having that polar opposite from the protagonist adds so much more to the story.

Sports and Slow Weeks

Not much of note happened to me this week. It is in these slow weeks where the mental game really comes into play as far as writing is concerned. The word “grind” really comes to mind in writing, but in just everyday life in general. I still must schedule my time and make sure that I get some amount of writing, editing or both every day.

I am not into many sports except for combat sports, and even then, I really enjoy watching mixed martial arts. There was a UFC Fight Night with the main event of Max Holloway versus Yair Rodriguez. It is amazing how life can imitate art sometimes, and sports can really encapsulate it. The stories just write themselves. Yair Rodriguez was coming off a two-year layoff and fought one of the best fights of his life against a former Champion in Max Holloway, who is still proving that he is one of the best to ever get in the cage. The fight was amazing with different skills, heart, momentum swings, and just a good story encapsulated in twenty-five minutes of fight time.

Sport in general just naturally tell good stories. I am a sucker for most sports movies like McFarland USA to Rudy, and I enjoy sports anime like Eyeshield 21 to Ace of the Diamond. Some of these are sports that I do not normally watch, but I can enjoy the same ideas of pushing past the human limits, achieving high goals, success and failure.

The Power of Stories and Escapism

I own a condo and live with a roommate. The other day, I had to “lay down the law” with my roommate, and it is not something that I am comfortable or accustomed to doing. Afterwards, I did not feel particularly good about it even though it was something that needed to be done. After everything was settled, I sat on the couch and watched some anime.

I put on the newest episode of the anime, “My Senpai is Annoying,” and it is admittedly a cute and funny anime, to me at least. It was also exactly what I needed at that time considering how I was feeling. Stories from all types of platforms can evoke different emotions and act as a form of escapism. After a serious confrontation with someone that I live with, I needed something light-hearted that could make me laugh or smile.

The hope is that my stories can do that for a wide audience. I want someone to read The Mustard Prince and experience a sort of escapism into the Condiment Kingdom. One of my other stories, The Land of the Wooden Statues, is much darker, but I want people to read it intrigued by what is going on and at times, horrified, yet will remain reading. Stories are capable of taking an audience to different places and feel different emotions, and I can only hope that I can be a professional published author with works that will do that for various people.

The Learning Process and Basics

When I first started this writing journey, I really did not know what I was doing. Granted, I am still learning and will be learning for as long as I do this. Editing, for example, seemed too tedious to do (and it is), and even then, I would not have known what to look for. These days, I am looking for things like repetition, words that tell but do now show, and general flow of sentences so that I can do a lot of fixing. From editing, I have removed a lot of necessary sentences, and sometimes, paragraphs.

I think about the learning process quite a bit. It probably started from my younger days break dancing. I have quit break dancing a few years back, and now practice Brazilian Jiu Jitsu as a hobby. The thing that I learned though is just a general learning process and a respect for the basics. One thing about the learning process is that one does not become a master right away, and it takes time, grinding and self-reflection. With Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, the first couple months honestly is learning to leave your pride out the door and getting submitted constantly to let you know that there are those better than you. With writing, I think there is the same idea where some think that they will be the next J.K. Rowling. Then, it becomes abundantly clear that it is hard enough just to write a book, no less write a best seller. Of course, there is some luck involved, but people also make their own luck too.

I really focused on the basics when it came to writing. I wanted to put sentences together in a manner that flowed together to make good paragraphs. Even now, I am not looking for style with badly put together sentences. Maybe in the future, I will try to step outside of the box, but for now, I have been content to just write well.

The Fantasy Genre and Creating

I will be honest, but I do not know why I have such affinity to the fantasy genre, which I primarily write about. I think that my first real exposure to it was playing the Nintendo role-playing game, Dragon Warrior (or Dragon Quest, as it was originally called and is now called in the U.S.). There was just something about the weapons, armor, magic, monsters, quests, castles and the Medieval setting that I still find fun and fascinating. Other games after that like Zelda just made me more into fantasy. Now, with all the different platforms to tell stories such as movies, books, anime, etc., there are just more fantasy stories to tell.

RPG video games really got me started, but anime/manga kept the fantasy genre going for me. Now, I enjoy reading a lot more (yet I still watch a lot of anime and read a lot of manga), so I am very much into Wuxia novels, which have the fantasy elements along with martial arts and Chinese history. Practicing Brazilian Jiu Jitsu currently while having practiced kickboxing before, Wuxia novels are perfect for me as they combine martial arts and fantasy.

I suppose that part of the appeal to me is just the level of escapism that the fantasy genre employs. A lot of times, fantasy does not take place in our world, so there is a level of world-building. It does not feel constrained by the real world and its logic, which I feel is where the science fiction genre differs at times (exceptions would be Star Wars, for example, which feels more like a fantasy with science fiction elements). As a writer, there is something fun and rewarding building my own world and creating an adventure for someone or some people in a world that I created.

The OC Japan Fair 2021 and Looking Ahead

This weekend, I went to the OC Japan Fair with some friends at the OC Fair Grounds. Outside of lines that were an hour wait just to get some chicken on skewers, it was one of the first events that I have been to since the pandemic started. At most, I would eat out with friends. It was busy, which was good, with a mix of those wearing masks and those that were not. As the year ends, my calendar for December shows three different conventions (I will just go to one) and a trip to the Philippines.

Things look to be opening again, and some semblance of normalcy looks to be returning, if the OC Japan Fair was any indication. It is good to be out and about again, seeing people, trying new foods and just doing something different with friends. Hopefully, as things start easing up, this will be commonplace.

If anything, the end of this year looks to be exciting. It does make me think of 2022. Maybe this year or sometime next year I will finally get a literary agent. I will probably have the first Mustard Prince book finally edited entirely, and I can work on The Mustard Prince in the Beverage Kingdom sequel. Maybe I can start writing short stories again, as I have not done that in a while. It will be interesting and exciting for sure.

Substance and Progress

I really think about what kind of writer I am. As far as writing style goes, I like to be more descriptive with my writing and try to abide by the idea of “show not tell.” I hardly use simple sentences and prefer to write compound, complex or compound-complex sentences in my stories. I am very wary of using ‘is,’ ‘are,’ ‘was’ and ‘were’ in my sentences as well as that tends to tell the audience something instead of showing. All this was something that I learned to do over time with hours upon hours of editing.

My issue then is whether I am too rigid with my writing. I cannot say that my writing is highly stylized, preferring to write well-constructed sentences instead of writing with “pizazz.” I think that I limit myself that way but hope to bridge that gap over time. I am not trying to re-invent the wheel with my stories but just want to write the stories that are fun for me. I have always felt that execution is more important than originality, as every idea under the sun has already been done at some point in time. I have no real desire to write for the sake of being “different.”

With that, I think that it is safe to say that I am a substance over style type of writer. I do not think that I have found a good balance yet with having a particular style that works in conjunction with the substance. I think that I will get there though with more practice and just getting out of my comfort zone with how I am writing.

Rejection and Laziness

While I expected it to happen, I sent a query letter and got a rejection. The rejection was a boilerplate response saying how subjective everything is and whatnot. I had gotten plenty of rejections before, so I am pretty used to it and will have to because it will most likely happen again and again. I have gotten rejections with feedback from the literary, with a few of them with mostly positive feedback, and much with negative feedback.

There is admittedly a part of me that does not want to send these query letters. Part of it is just sloth, but the other is deeper than that. Being a professional published author who can make money from my books is the ultimate goal, and I know that there are less of these types than there are professional athletes. I want to believe that if I get published and find some success, maybe after a few books get published, that this will be what I am doing for the rest of my life. In that sense, sending these query letters is the work that I must do to reach this ultimate goal, but that is also getting out of my comfort zone as well. Right now, I have a good job, my own home and am doing well. In essence, I am knowingly giving that up for an unknown future – one that could be great, or one that could result in failure.

Something about this is worth it though. Putting ideas onto paper and allowing others to read it is a risky endeavor. In one sense, it allows for criticism, and this can be quite harsh at times. In another sense, it is introducing new worlds, characters and ideas to audiences that will hopefully enjoy the work. It is giving a form of escapism to those that may need it.

Creativity and The Grind

There are those that say that the hardest part about writing a story is getting started. I strongly disagree and feel that the middle part of the story is the hardest. For me, getting started is relatively easy, as all these ideas pop up in my head and my motivation is at its peak. However, that cannot be sustained forever, and there will come a time in the writing process where one will have to just grind. There are days when I’m not particularly motivated or inspired, but I must sit in front of the screen and write.

I think that people get it wrong with the creative process. It is not a matter of just sitting idly waiting for inspiration to come, and from there, an individual just writes a whole bunch of pages. I treat writing like a job in that some days are good, and some days are not so good. Regardless of the good or bad days, I take time to write, and it is usually something that I schedule. It is actually quite mundane, and many times, boring.

Understandably, there is this romantic viewpoint of creative arts. I am sure that there are some artists, writers and other creative types that do unconventional things to get inspiration, but I am not that type. I make a time, have some sort of alarm clock ready, keep distractions away from me and write. It is certainly much more cerebral and less artsy, but I treat this like a job.

Coming Back and Learning

It has been a while since I wrote one of these blogs. I put all the auxiliary stuff in being an author on hold to focus on just writing and especially editing the books that I had written. It has proven fruitful, as these stories read so differently now. A lot of my time now is just focused on editing, and I know what to look for and how to construct sentences and paragraphs better. While the process can be grueling, the result has made me satisfied.

So, I am back to blogging and sending queries letters for one of my stories, The Land of The Wooden Statues. It is a story that I feel is complete and written well. I still have issues with style, but the substance is there and tells a good story. I learned a lot when it came to characterization, and I understand that depending on the situation, the characters will act a certain way that makes sense. An ignorant character (like one of my characters, The Mustard Prince) is not going to casually approach new places like he had been there before, for example. As an author, I need to express what he feels, sees, hears, etc.

This will be a battle of patience, perseverance and rejection that I must be ready for. When I first sent query letters, I sent them with an incomplete, and quite honestly, not well-written story. This time, I feel that I upped my level as an author with consideration to carefully crafted sentences and stronger characterization. I can only hope and pray that my stories will be accepted by a literary agent this time around.

Rough Starts and Moving Forward

2019 has not started out well for me as a friend/roommate recently passed away. It has affected my motivation to write and edit on a consistent basis along with, honestly, the cold weather here in California. I’ve found myself just falling asleep many times as I want to get under the blankets and just be comfortable. It really goes to show how much outside factors can create mental obstacles to your goals. I’ve been trying to get back on track and make it a habit to write and edit on a daily basis, but I have not been successful so far.

I’ve recently discovered that certain magazines accept submissions for short stories and have submitted two of my works so far. Unfortunately, I got rejections. It’s just the beginning though, and since I have quite a few short stories already written, I intend to continue to submit them. I can only hope that some of them will get accepted and that I’ll be able to strengthen my writing portfolio as well.

I’ve actually managed to re-edit a lot of my previous works, so I have been finally writing new material. Lately, I have worked on writing another fantasy novel called The Land of the Wooden Statues, and it’s been a lot of fun. However, I’ve gotten the proverbial “itch” to write more short stories, especially in the science fiction genre, so I’ll probably work on that soon.

2019 and Goals

The New Year approaches, and I have to say, but 2018 wasn’t exactly a great year for me. In regards to my three goals of getting a girlfriend, getting a literary agent and getting my own place, I have only just this past month gotten a tad bit closer to each goal. Getting 2nd place in the Dream Quest One writing contest showed me that I’m on the right path to becoming a professionally published author, and that I’ve gotten some form of verification that my writing has gotten better.

I decided that I’m going to stop podcasting. The goal of the Chris’s Storytelling Corner podcast was to raise my profile as an author. I started it in earnest in 2016, and I can’t say that the results were fruitful. In that time, I got 15 Subscribers on YouTube and a lot of frustration as I didn’t know how to raise my viewership and Subscriber count. I used to have an MMA show that was close to getting 1,000 Subscribers on YouTube, and with every video I’d put up, I’d pretty much always get new Subscribers. That just wasn’t the case with Chris’s Storytelling Corner. On SoundCloud, I got over 130 Followers, but no one ever commented on my shows.

This will open up things for me to do such as freelance writing to make more money. I can also just get more done in terms of my writing and not having to worry about getting shows out. Podcasting was an experiment for me that just didn’t pan out, but the lesson I got is simply not spreading myself out too thin especially with having a full-time job already on top of trying to become an author.

2019 feels like something of a fresh start to me. I think that there are small changes that I can feasibly make in order to better achieve my goals whether it’s something like cleaning or not podcasting. If I were to be positive about 2018, I would say that 2018 is the year where I put “money in the bank.” I’ve gotten more comfortable talking with women. I understand something like “voice” and put it into my stories, and I even placed in a short story contest. It’s a year where I was continually trying to improve, at the very least.

Contests and Writing

I finally got some good news in regards to writing. I submitted one of my fantasy short stories: The Wizard, The Shadow and The Tree to the Dream Quest One writing contest and got second place and $250.00 (it can be found here: https://www.dreamquestone.com/the-wizard-the-shadow-and-the-tree). I re-edited the story to be even more descriptive, and I really do feel that I’m finding my voice as a writer. Before, I understood of showing, and not telling the audience of what’s going on in the story, but I really do feel that I am understanding that and writing that on a much deeper level.

The other thing that placing in this contest did was validate my progress so far as a writer. It’s one thing to have friends or family read and critique my work, but to have someone in the writing world to read my work and to praise it favorably is a totally different thing. Unless It’s really tough to gage if I’m really moving forward as a writer or not. I’m writing or editing on a daily basis with no real measure of improvement, as it’s not like martial arts where one gets a new belt the higher one goes. It gets very discouraging because there’s no real metric for progress for someone who is unpublished, or in my case, self-published but hasn’t sold many copies and got no feedback.

Writing is like anything else in that it’s something that needs to be constantly worked on and cultivated to get better. I’ve had to re-edit my works on a constant basis as I’ve learned more and got a better idea of the type of writer that I want to be. I’ve found that I like a certain level of description with my writing that involves using all the human senses, and I’ve gone back to my works to implement that idea.

This has definitely given me renewed vigor with trying to become a published author. I have been focusing on my short stories as of late to submit them into contests, and I have found that I have been enjoying re-editing these works, as the finished product feels like a different story than before. While I’m happy to have accomplished something involving writing, the ultimate goal is still to become a professionally published author.

Productivity and Idleness

Thanksgiving ended, and the days off were fun enough. I just relaxed, watched the anime, Fairy Tail, and hung out with friends. I did some writing-related things, but not as much as I planned to do. Now, I can’t say that I feel good about being so idle and not working on writing and editing enough. It really is ingrained in me at this point to always be productive and working on something.

Generally, I spend one hour at least a day with writing, editing or something else writing-related. I have to really think about dedicating a lot more time on being productive on my days off where I pretty much have the whole day free. It’s becoming imperative to speed up the process with things like editing and just getting stuff done, as I haven’t written a new story in a while. I have a couple stories on the docket partly done, but I’d really like to get back to the creative process of writing again.

I admittedly wasted a lot of time in my twenties just being idle and not really having much in terms of goals or aspirations. I am hard on myself for being idle these days because I feel that I’m making up for lost time now, and I spent years just sitting around doing nothing of importance or value, so I can’t be doing that now. I feel compelled to stay productive throughout the day now, as I pretty much spent years more-or-less just relaxing and doing enough to get by, but not doing enough to get ahead.

Relaxing and Regularity

I had a really fun weekend, as my whole Saturday was spent in Los Angeles. I attended WWE NXT Takeover: War Games II at the Staples Center, and it was a lot of fun. I ate at a dumpling place, a Korean boba place, and The Far Bar along with buying some anime and manga at Entertainment Jungle. On top of that, I got some really good deals with what I bought.

It’s good to just get back to where I was. I’ve been exercising regularly and going back regularly to Brazilian Jiu Jitsu class. However, my discipline for writing and editing has waned, and I can’t say that I’ve just sat and edited for a good amount of time in a couple weeks. It’s definitely something that I need to work on again, and I just need not get distracted with other things. I have been more consistent with sending out query letters to literary agents, so that’s good.

I’m looking forward to having a four-day weekend coming up. I’m going to try and catch up on things like the podcast, writing, editing, but what I really want to do is just sit around and marathon an anime series or something like that. I can’t say that I’ve just sat idly as of late, besides when I was sick and injured, as the goal of becoming a published author makes it so that I’m constantly doing something. Maybe I need to relax a bit sometimes, but at the same time, I always end up feeling bad when I don’t get anything done.

Expectations and Improvements

This week has been something of an improvement. I’m not sick anymore, and I feel that my shoulder has recovered enough that I can go back to Brazilian Jiu Jitsu class. As far as my goals go, I think that this setup hurt me mentally quite a bit, so it was a matter of not thinking so negatively about things. While I don’t feel particularly closer to any one goal, I have to try not to stress about it so much either. Things will happen when they happen, and all I can contribute is the amount of effort I put into achieving these goals.

I really have to temper expectations at this point. For example, I can want to be a published author and work towards it, but I cannot expect it. I think that having the expectation and not reaching that expectation is what hurts mentally, not just the failure itself. I think so much of what I can physically do to reach certain goals, but after how terrible these last two weeks have been, I’ve been thinking of how to mentally approach these goals as well.

I saw an anime movie this week, as I haven’t watched any movies in a while. It was Liz and the Blue Bird, and I had no idea coming in that it was related to an anime/light novel, Sound! Euphonium. Had I known that, I may have liked it better. However, the movie was artistically beautiful but very slow-paced. I have written a few short stories that were particularly slow-paced, but I can’t say that I’ve particularly enjoyed them. I’m the type where I just really need things to happen at nearly all times, and I tend to write that way as well.

Bad Weeks and New Approaches

This week has not been good for me at all. On Monday, I injured my right shoulder in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu but also got sick at the same time. Combined with this apparent rut that I’m having, and I am at something of a low right now. My goals do not seem any closer, and getting sick and injured doesn’t help as well. Missing Brazilian Jiu Jitsu class is not something that I like doing, as it is a good way to exercise and get any stress out.

My patience and perseverance are getting tested right now. It’s said that one learns the most through hardship and struggle, and I can attest to that. It’s easy to get lazy about things and just be less motivated. I can also see how it would be easy to quit right now, and for me, that would be stopping in trying to be a published author. I would have more time to just do fun things and relax more. However, I know that I would lose a lot as well. Creating things is fun, even though it takes work, but here I am creating worlds, characters, stories, etc. through books. There’s also something to be said about being productive, as I spent most of my twenties being lazy.

I think that one of the big problems is that there haven’t been any indicators of improvement, so I can’t really tell how far I’ve progressed, especially with writing. I have changed my approach to things though in that I’m not prioritizing editing my novels in favor of getting query letters out regularly or short stories out for competitions. I made the mistake of missing weeks working on other things related to writing. I needed to distinguish things that were priority but didn’t need to be done right away, and things that may not be as high of a priority but does need to get done by a certain time. I can only hope that this approach will have some benefits.