I noticed that a lot of my tweeps either guest blogged or had guest bloggers post interesting (and mostly random) stuff on their respective pages, and I thought, is it a new trend or does it really help to get more readers and followers? Will I have to pimp myself out in order to sell my work to bigger masses? The debate is now open.
The thing is that I don’t even know what I’d write about if I guest blogged for somebody else. Like if they gave me a theme, I’d maybe scratch my head twice and look at them with a puzzled look, wondering whether they were serious. If they were, then I’d really have to get my ideas going in the furnace that is my brain, and then hope for the best that they’ll like my stuff. As much as people tell me they like my stuff, I still feel utterly prudent when writing a piece for them. Friends don’t want to hurt your pride…
But if they told me I had total freedom, I’d go ballistic. I’d write about watching whales in Canada, or eating roasted pig with your fingers in the Philippines… Hold on. This is not a travel blog, so why would I write about that? Scratch head again. Could I write about homeless people using the street as a toilet? No….. Too serious. Could I rant about my commute? No…. nobody cares. Could I vent about my personal life? Really? I mean come on, I’m an artist, and my job is to imagine interesting stuff to write. So get going missy!
My other self just scolded me for not being creative enough. What a world we live in. It still didn’t give me inspiration to write a piece for somebody else. I guess I’m not really good at writing random stuff and fill out blank space just with words, because they look too damn good and I cannot resist them, my fingers running on the keyboard like on my piano playing the Letter to Elise by Beethoven or maybe an uplifting piece by Scott Joplin. I like to look at these letters moving fast before my eyes, my brain rushing to push out a new idea onto my virtual sheet of paper, my fingers hitting the keys harder as I feel the excitement of creativity overwhelming me like a wave of pleasure, endorphins making me high… Oh how I live for that, even if I have nothing interesting to talk about. They’re just words, my friends, my allies, who let me toy with them like play-doh as I invent new worlds, traveling to the farthest boundaries of my imagination, opening doors to realms where I sometimes lose my sanity…. To maybe partially recover it later.
I write because I am. Hey, that would be an interesting theme for a blog post! I’m sure people would love to know why I became a writer. Well…. First things first, I didn’t become a writer. I was born one. Seriously, I’m not bullshitting anyone here. I always wanted to write. It made me feel good, and opened my eyes to exciting realities. I held a pencil and words guided my hand.
The first novel I wrote started out of boredom. I was reading many many crime novels at the time, and wanted to imagine my own. The plot was superb. A private detective becomes a spy, he has tons of adventures in Paris, and falls in love with a very sensual girl…. Oh yeah. I wanted to mix elements from Sherlock Holmes with James Bond. My guy’s name was Fred Mat. He was good looking, smart, a ladies’ man and he solved all mysteries very quickly! This guy was my hero. I even wrote a sex scene in that story, yep, I did. They did it in the shower…. How old was I? 9? Hahahaha.
After that, well the world became mine! All my main characters were male, and instead of Fred Mat, my hero turned out to be Mike Myers (I was 17, just watched a ton of movies, thought it would be funny to give my main character a name that already existed in the hero/anti-hero directory….). Mike Myers was a black FBI agent, who lived in New York but got sent to work down in Texas on an investigation involving a cult. Very cool too. The guy was going through a divorce…. I liked my people to be tormented.
Now who’s my hero? My hero is a woman. Her name is Esperanza and she’s me. I like to switch things up a little. Hehe. I also write more about my life experiences, so it’s easier to see everything through the eyes of a woman since I’m one. Duh.
My life is really about writing. I forgot how it felt when I pushed it away for so many years, but it came right back at me even stronger than before, and it won’t let go. I want to talk about this passion every minute of my day, because I have so many ideas. So guys, yeah, I know now what I’d write about! Takers, anyone? Kidding, kidding. Well somewhat. 😉
The Manicheans 