Crash and Burn

   I was working on an epic fight scene when I stopped midway during a dialogue between the good guy and the bad guy. I couldn't think of a word to say to the other character. This has never happened to me before.
  
   In June, I set myself a challenge of writing 30 pages in 20 days. It was the hardest thing I've ever done. For the first few days, it was great. It pushed me to write in a different way and to look at the new characters as if they were part of the story from the beginning. Some days were harder than others. Some days I didn't want to write because my wrist was hurting. Other days I'd stay up till 3am so I could put in those 30 pages. It was the most fun I'd had. Sometimes, I would stop myself from writing a scene because it seemed outrages. I wrote it anyway. It was outrages, mad and sometimes erotic.

   During that time, I just let loose and went wild. At work, my friends would ask me what I wrote the day before. They would be fascinated and wanted to know more. Nothing was going to stop me. Not the lack of sleep, not a sore wrist or shoulder ( I wrote it by hand ) or being lost in the plot. The period after that challenge, things weren't the same. I still wrote a lot, but not as much as I used to write.

   Earlier this year, I went to a book signing. It was for Deborah Harkness's third book The Book Of Life in the All Souls trilogy. She's a professor at the University of South Carolina. She teaches History and the History of Science. Someone from the audience asked her about writer's block and she said that she forces herself to not write for a week. By the end of the week she can't wait to write.

http://deborahharkness.com/about-deborah/
   I tried not to write for a week but it didn't work. So I'm setting myself another challenge to see of it will work. Starting from today, I will be writing 30 pages till the end of the week. For the next five days, forgive me if I'm grumpy or can't stop talking about the story.

Shadows

   When I was growing up, I thought the only way I could express myself was through painting, drawing or poetry. It blinded me from using writing fiction as another way to tell you about my dreams, fears and ambitions.

  

   Nightmares turn into monsters. Sunny days transform into misty grey sunsets. Traumas turn into stories with vampires, werewolves and ghosts. It's therapeutic and inspiring. Ideas run through my head 24/7 100 miles an hour. It keeps me awake, it inspires me and it haunts me. I love every bit of it.

   Authors who made me look at my shadows are Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, Dean Koontz, C. S. Lewis and JK Rowling. There are many authors out there that have written stories that have shaken me to the core. When I look at my shadows, they disappear like smoke in a mirror.

   Some days it's hard to look at my shadows. Some days it's too difficult to look at the smoke in the mirror, to turn the light on or even to open my eyes to the possibility that these shadows might not be real. Some days they are so real that they turn into that monster that hurt me when I was 9, or that bigger monster that hurt even more when I was 14 till I was 16. Sometimes that monster goes back into time becoming something closer and more related to me that it's hard to think that he ever did what he did to me. But when I write, I can do whatever I can do to those monsters, and that's the best feeling in the world.

  

   I have no regrets in becoming a fantasy writer. I know that some people think that fiction does not bring value to the world. They are so mistaken. Fiction has a big role.

Here's a link to what Neil Gaiman says about fiction: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/24/neil-gaiman-face-facts-need-fiction