The success of a failure

Posted on by taniacreations

They say everyone is a winner, I feel like one even though I was very far from 50,000 words. There is this website http://www.nanowrimo.org where people log themselves in to launch full on into a competition, except they are really just competing with themselves. Nanowrimo stands for national novel writing month and it runs every November. the name is actually wrong because what started with a North American website where about 40 registered over 10 years ago, today it is fully international with more than 300,000 registered in 2012.

You sign in and every day register your word count, attempting to reach 50,000 words by the 30th of November. I’ve made it to about 7,000 words. I won’t stop writing and participating in the event gave me inspiration and ideas. I’ll just need more time than a month.

The best I took from it was that, for the first draft, it is smart to turn the internal editor and critic off.

I also feel good I actually intend to do something about my writing and not just put it into a drawer once it is done. I’ve met a few winners who have been doing this for a few years, and every year, after writing 50,000 words, they put it somewhere and forget about it.

That is why I think, in my failure, I feel successful, because my writing will see the light of day.

(Orble Votes: 16)

Twelve Million Steps

Posted on by taniacreations
Since the 8th of November 2010 I have walked 12,161,788 steps. Twelve million steps! It is a great example of what you can build one step at a time. In Portuguese there is a saying which would translate: “grain by grain the chicken fills its belly”. It is very hard to translate idiomatic expressions, but this one is a good one, meaning by eating one little grain at a time the chicken feeds itself to satisfaction.

 

If I had said to myself today I would have to walk that much in less than two years by the sheer sound of the numbers I wouldn’t have believed I would do it.

The reason I found this number is my iPod. It has this fitness function that I keep always online. I certainly have walked more than that because sometimes the gadget is turned off, runs out of battery or is not in the bag, but that doesn’t happen very frequently.

I have a high average of daily steps, I walk a lot by choice and love and I would say I reach the ideal of around 10,000 steps per day. I do have low days, when I spend all day at home writing, but I also do some longer walks, like the Seven Bridges, sometimes the MS walk, and City2Surf.

I’m thoroughly impressed with myself just because it sounds so cool to have walked that much, even if it is a normal amount per day, almost anyone could do it, I’m happy I did it.

(Orble Votes: 29)

Let it Rain

Posted on by taniacreations

Photo by Chris Newland “Rain at the Wharf”

Somehow I found myself drowning in gratefulness amid the rain drops this morning.
I was thankful for the people, as there is a sense of camaraderie around, we are all fish… as they say. I met a woman while waiting to cross the main road, we simply started laughing.
At the bus stop we turned into a battalion, five people holding our umbrellas as if they were machine guns. ‘Let them come!’ I screamed.
The bus passed. We cowered behind the huge monsters of umbrellas.
Mine is a beautiful rainbow one. I bought it because I liked the colours. The next day I thought: ‘What was I thinking? I’ll never carry this again!’ At the time, my angel must have whispered in my ear: ‘buy it, you will need on ‘The Flood’ of the eight of March’.
So The Rainbow Tent, as I named it, saved me today again I gave thanks.
We had to cower around it, sideways, including our heads in its protection not to get drenched by the bus splashes. Feet, parts of trousers, a part of my arm and the top of my head didn’t escape.
I jumped into the first bus that finally stopped, one to North Sydney.
It was raining, in and outside.
I was happy I got to sit, even looking back which always make me a bit sick.
The water was coming down the side of the window and splashing in a puddle by the wind sill.
Little droplets of water landed on my phone, my kindle, continuous dripping water damping my sides, I was still thanking the world for being seated and able to read in a trip that took almost two hours to cover a half an hour strip.
I looked outside and remembered my mother land, where it rains like this frequently. I was appreciative that I wasn’t worried my home would flood this time, having my first floor rented flat, the absence of rivers nearby. Not even remembering, until now, that once I stood in the middle of a river which used to be a street, watching my car, my house and everything I owed being washed by an angry flow of mud.
I’m grateful to be in a country where you call an emergency service and someone will, at the very least, answer you. Where there are flood warnings, barricades, enough help for the unfortunate.
I’m happy I had a great life and a family who could drive me when it was raining as much as today when I was a child. I thought of all the little South Americans who are used to face this type of rain frequently without the systems we have here in Aussie land to keep us safe.
I came out at North Sydney and blessed my hot coffee, the gods were happy when they invented such a thing and I was happy seeping its warmth.
Then I was grateful for China, where people can fabricate very cheap stuff, I bought new, clean and dry leggings which I’m wearing now and I am so glad for.
I am now emotional and happy, compassionate in a level I haven’t felt before for my fellow human beings who are not as privileged as I am or the ones that simply cannot see the blessings we do have (I think I feel even more for the ones).
And let it rain!

Written the other day, the 9th of March when we had an amazing rain in Sydney, Australia.

(Orble Votes: 25)

Tumbling Down, Thinking Up

Posted on by taniacreations
I’m in a self-destruction process. No, nothing to do with drugs, or sex, or alcohol, maybe that would be exciting.
I simply tumbled down some stairs.
Such a common occurrence that broke my youth’s belief of invulnerability! I love the drama of the phrase, being unreal as it is. I don’t think I’m still carrying around that belief even if I am stretching youth to the rest of my life.
Ironically enough my heels got caught-up in the “safety” strip. Unsafely momentum carried me forward and down I went.
Broke a glass vase, got a few superficial cuts.
The lessons I’ve learnt with it are of patience, thankfulness, love and strength.
There is nothing I cannot do if not being patient. Patient (literally) at the hospital, while they check that no broken bones were found.
Patient to put the yucky natural medicine twice a day into the purple, red, magenta, slightly green and black mottles I’m sporting throughout my hips and legs and some in the arms. I feel as a colourful farm animal, proud of my interesting stains.
Patient to wait for the pain to go away. Patient during the days nothing got done, no work, no reading, just feeling the kick of the pain relievers and surfing the wild sensations. Sleeping. A lot of patient sleep.
What is really a challenge to be patient with are the daily new ailments that are still appearing as a consequence of juggling your whole body and the joints it comprises. On top of the ones acquired straight after the fall. One day is the left wrist, the other is a back pain, a neck pain, a heck of a pain, hell! Ha ha ha, the laugh just bubbles up.
A permanent happy tiredness keeps me in its grip. Today I woke up with a cold sore, the body is using all its defence mechanisms to heal the things and forgot to protect my upper lip. Patience, my friend told me. Stop fighting with your body!
Thankfulness and strength come together. I feel as if made of steel, because nothing worse happened. Lucky that the vase fell away from my face, my jugular too. I am thankful I only missed a few days of work, I’m in reasonable working order. Like a radio clock that doesn’t play the radio but still shows the time. Good enough.
I can say with extreme knowledge: I’m very hard to break.
The knowledge spreads to my writing: I can now write how a character would have felt after being beaten up, run over, had a ski accident and any other horrible thing I feel like inflicting them. A writer characterises all happenings in her life as useful information. Patience. Love. Love, love, love, as I was supported in any way I could have wished for. People all around were nice and efficient. I can never complain about the public hospital system in Sydney. I’ve never had a bad experience with them. They treat me well.I’m not sure what tomorrow will bring, but the day after tomorrow, or the day after that one, will bring me perfect health again. And that is good enough for me. I’ll keep the lessons, or “the positive learnings” as the NLP practitioners say!

(Orble Votes: 36)

Becoming a Master

Posted on by taniacreations
Although I’ve been writing less here, I’m writing more in general. I’m on a new path now: I’m doing a Master of Arts in Creative Writing at UTS. I’m loving it. When you are “on purpose” and doing your passion it always goes well.
Funny thing is that I didn’t even know such thing existed! I’ve always wanted to do a masters degree but not of something that wasn’t a priority. As soon as a friend from a writer’s group told me about it, I went for it!
This blog and my website, I’m sure, helped me to get accepted for the program. The Advanced Narrative Writing classes taught by Rosie Scott are not only a high level technically, they are also great fun. I’m also on a Theory and Creative Writing class, where we talk about very strange notions, ininteligible texts, obscure writings and intelectual conundrums. All worth it.
The end result of the course is the writing of a novel. I was going to write a novel anyway, to have such a structure to guide me through it will be great. Being a migrant with English as a second language, I can grow much more for having this contact.
Again I feel privileged to be in Australia where there is a government program to support students. Had I not been here, I wouldn’t be able to be doing this right now with the easy I’m doing it.
I know this all looks too positive, suspiciously so, I could imagine, but it is how I really feel.
(Orble Votes: 44)

Edgecliff

Posted on by taniacreations
I’m seated at the train station. I feel like a statue. Reading. My head is leaning down, I’m looking at the book in my lap. When the train is about to arrive the wind comes. The chilled air starts to move and ruffles my hair. I can feel the softness caressing my neck. I’m no longer a statue, the wind has brought me alive.
(Orble Votes: 49)

Solution to uploading a book with pictures at Amazon

Posted on by taniacreations
Book by Tania Crivellenti at Amazon.com

Publishing an e-book has been an adventure. My first stop and what seemed the easiest was Amazon.com
When I thought I was on the last leg of my publishing trip I was, in reality, starting a new journey.

After writing, correcting, revising, re-reading, changing, re-correcting, re-revising, then creating a layout, checking styles, etc. etc. etc., a book, you would think it was done.

So I sent the book to be published at Kindle Direct Platform thinking it was a piece of cake. When I followed the instructions from Amazon they indicated that the best idea was to upload an html file. The problem is that they also instructed people to put all files for the book (html file pictures) in one folder and zip this folder.
When you save a document from Word to an html format it automatically creates a subfolder with all your pictures in it.
I thought if I moved the file into the folder with the picture all would be fine. Ok, what no-one tells you is that the path to the pictures inside the html file will be wrong if you do that. If you move the html file to be in the same folder as the pictures it cannot find them.
And because the only sample that you have of your final book is a horrible thingy that appears on a pop-up window, you have no idea how it is going to look! I just assumed that having followed all instructions it would be enough.
It wasn’t. It was horrible to see “my baby” published as it was: badly formatted with missing images.
I immediately took it off and started the adventure of finding a solution.
I am a writer, not an I.T. person, I have a good BASIC knowledge of softwares and stuff, therefore I had no idea what was wrong.
Amazon doesn’t help, they only sent me one of those “pre-prepared” e-mails. You don’t receive a sample of what your book is going to look like or anything.

First I found a way to see my book exactly how it was going to be published; a comment by a man named John:
http://forums.kindledirectpublishing.com/kdpforums/thread.jspa?messageID=47403&#47403

It is a funny zip & zipping process. It worked.
Then I saw that the formatting was all wrong and the pictures not there yet. I even bought a Kindle to get myself into the e-book world.
Following I tried other formats to upload the book: pdf, doc, docx, mhtml, mobi, prc. I downloaded several e-book converters and readers.
The result was only one: disaster! Either the pictures were missing or the format was messy.
I wanted to cry.
When I was at the end of my limits I did what was left to do: I cried for help. And here comes a very handy facebook profile. I sent messages to friends and e-mails and asked for help on facebook.
My friend gave me the idea to Google the problem. Up to now I had been looking into Amazon forum for the answer.
At Google I found a website that was part of the solution:
http://www.cjs-easy-as-pie.com/p/about-kindle.html
But when I saw this tutorial I wanted to cry, at that moment I needed a solution to the pictures issue and that was all. I couldn’t even thinking of doing all that with the big issue fresh in my mind.
I tried the mobi converter to produce the document but the pictures still didn’t upload.

It was in a conversation with a very smart friend of mine that the solution was made obvious to me. He is what I called an assessor for all matters, he is one of those people that seems to know all about everything. He pointed out that if I moved the html pictures the path would be made invalid.
Then another friend helped me to transform a theoretical solution into a practical one. With a few minutes, some quick searches and the right computer knowledge this other friend sorted out how to correct the problem.
All you have to do is:
– Save your file as HTML, authomatically Word will create a subfolder with all your pictures in it.
– Move your file to the same folder where your pictures are.
– Then open the doc file with WordPad or any software that will read it as text, and search for the pictures’ names as they were put by Word in the folder.
– Re-write the path, the instruction to where your pictures are so the file can find them in the same folder as the text is.
For example, my pictures were named as image001, image002, etc.
My file was named “test file”
In my file the path to the pictures were:
src=”test_file/image001.jpg”
Meaning that the pictures were into a sub-folder called test_file.
All I did was take off that part of the instruction, leaving only the name of the picture instead:
src=” image001.jpg”
And it worked.

And suddenly, life was, once more, perfect. Knowing how to solve the pictures problem gave me the energy to go through C.J.’s tutorial, create a table of contents that would work, mark the start of the book, and prepare the file for Kindle.
John’s comment made possible for me to check if things were going the way they were suppose and at the end the book was sent!

“Fio da Meada” is a fictional novel based in real life. It is the story of a ghost that talks to a woman who lives in a faraway land. Itamar wakes up from his death to find himself following a ferry and having flashbacks of his life. He has humorous stories to tell and so does she.
The story follows his train of thought telling a story of family roots, the past and present, life in Brazil and in Australia.
This book is in Portuguese (Brazilian) and the first of many. I will shortly release it at Apple Store and possibly for Kobo. Then, the second novel, also in Portuguese, called “Simplesmente Gerva”. After that I will publish a book born Aussie: written in English.
If you have friends that read Portuguese, be kind by forwarding this information.
A few years from now you will be reading a best seller, or watching a movie or even a TV series and you will be saying you are friends with the writer of that story!
I will be able to say I have special regard for the people that were there at the beginning of this wonderful adventure…

Find the book here: www.amazon.com.au/dp/B007XAJOFM

(Orble Votes: 32)

You Can Always Ask it out Loud

Posted on by taniacreations
I have a new temp job, just while the wind is floating my writing sails.
People keep asking me if I am enjoying it, and it is such a hard question!
It is an Ok job, at an Ok company. This is not exactly what inspires me, so I try to do the best that I can and enjoy the most possible. I certainly enjoy the feeling that I will never starve and feeling appreciated.
It is interesting interacting with new people and getting the feel of them and the funny things they say.

Today one of them said:
– Ok, our washing machine is running away.
– What do you mean?
– It is shaking and moving out of the door.
Next time I looked there were 6 scientists discussing the issue.

The other day it was a group of them looking at a construction site picture. I was working at the other side of the devider. I couldn’t see the picture but could hear the talk. I am still curious to know what made them talk in one conversation about:
– blue smurfs, corrosion, sexy movements, a dwarf tree, protected shoes and sports cars.

Today this work got me thinking about electronic conversations. I asked one of the people who a document that had arrived was for. He answered me:
– send an e-mail to everyone asking who is waiting for this.
I thought for a second. Stood in the middle of the office and asked out loud, no need for screaming it is not such a big place:
– Who is the document regarding such and such for?
A woman next to me claimed it!
So simple!

I miss my window, though…

(Orble Votes: 44)

taniacreations dot com

Posted on by taniacreations
I have created a website from my writing. It may seem a bit crazy but the idea was “spoken” in a dream by my own voice inside my mind: “create a writer’s website”. www.taniacreations.com
Writing this website is like going on a road that you don’t know where it ends. It is unpredictable, with unfathomable results. Here I am investing in something I have no financial reasons to do but I am intuitively sure it had to be done.
It has been an interesting journey, becoming a full time writer… At the beginning I was terrified when people asked me:
– What do you do for a living?
Shaking I would answer in a very low voice “well… I’m a writer, trying to publish some books in Brazil”. And felt I could possibly die if anyone asked me:
– And is it possible to make a living out of it?
Now I am confident, smiley even. I’ve settle for the truth as I see it, not what my physical senses are telling me right now. I go for the reality I am creating:
– Of course it is!
Now I can scream out loud: I AM A WRITER, FULL TIME WRITER!!! You will be able to buy my books online (if you read Portuguese) very soon. But the next book will be written in English!
And you know what? The feedback I’m getting is wonderful. Every single person I talk to motivates me to go on.
This is the reality I am creating: walking in the sun recording my thoughts for future writing, spending the days (sometimes nights, sometimes weekends) writing.
I hope you enjoy the website, it is, literally, a dream come true!
(Orble Votes: 33)

Be Brave and Publish Your Books

Posted on by taniacreations

I used to be afraid of publishing my books. I am not anymore.

It is such a simple reasoning and yet, it evaded me like the vampire avoids the cross. I was so scared of criticism, of not being approved for publishing, of not being sold or not being liked that I stood frozen.

Suddenly (with a lot of internal mental work) I realised that nothing matters except putting the books out there.

If I don’t get a publisher I will pay for the publishing myself; if it sells, awesome, if it doesn’t, I’m a published author. At the very least I shall sell a few books to friends and family If people like it, great! If not, at least I have written and published a book, not everyone can say that.

Thinking of the books as stepping stones, as possibilities, as one of the ways that my writer career could climb, I can be happy with any results that come from them. Treating the books as my sole chance of success was absolutely killing my will to get published.
So you see, it is easy, forget all the reasons you have for not offering your book for publishing and send it out today.
A few months back I had two books that were written but needed revision to be ready for publishing. I then decided to take time and do just that. I have accomplished my tasks and completed them, they are fictional novels, written in Portuguese; one is about a colourful Brazilian guy who dates an Australian girl and the other has true tales from my grandfather’s life as a fictional ghost.
I have sent them to copyright; then distributed them to some chosen editors and finally promoted them at a specific website which distributes the books to potential publishing houses according to the book style and the editorial line of the publishers.
Now I am waiting for answers, let’s see how it goes. Wish me luck!

(Orble Votes: 82)