Less than six months after I got published, I won the Pulitzer. Actually… I’m just kidding. I sold, well, I really didn’t sell many books.

I know what you’re thinking right now. What a waste of time and energy. But I don’t regret it. The calling is for you to write stories. Good or bad, it doesn’t matter. Success is something that comes as a bonus, if you’re lucky enough.

But still, there were times when I thought that I could have made things differently; I could have tried to write a new book, a better one. But I didn’t. I guess that I had exhausted my patience and courage. Continue reading →

Sometimes I feel that my life is a mixture of clichés and tragedies. I guess that means I should call them tragic clichés.

The truth is, you have to suffer in order to become an artist.

This reminds me of a painter I once knew. He had the custom of writing down hundreds of titles for his paintings. That way he had a base, a starting point for his works. There was something already there, so the canvas never felt empty.

That’s what suffering is for every artist: a starting point. Without tragedy, without pain, art would be something worse than empty.

Beauty inspires, I give you that, but not as much as tragedy and agony. The ones that never got their happily ever after are the ones whose stories we cherish most. Because they resemble us so well. We are flawed and we are, in essence, unhappy.

You might say, and you’d have the right to a condescending tone as well, that I don’t know anything about suffering. And yes, what happened to me to make me consider myself a troubled soul? Only the death of my father and a drug addict shoving a gun down my throat. But is there a precise quantity of suffering required before one considers his life to be terrible? Can pain be measured? Yes, physical pain can, actually, be measured, but… Continue reading →

I once wanted to write a romantic story. Something that would involve sun, kisses, and tender embraces, as all romances seem to contain. After a couple of days I came up with a title. “The Portrait of a Lady.” I thought, why not, let’s search the Internet to see if anyone else came up with the same title as I. And figure what. Someone did.

Of course, it’s a famous novel written by Henry James. He obviously typed faster than I did. Pardon my bad humor. I knew who he was, I just didn’t know about that specific work. “The Turn of The Screw” is my favorite. Apropos, what do you think about it? In my humble opinion, it gives you a freedom of choice unparalleled in the world of literature. But you’re not here to talk about books. Let’s face it, reading is one of your least favorite things to do when you walk out of this room. So, let’s cut to the chase.

That book scared the hell out of me. And, trust me, I’m used to handling strange. But this was just… impossible? Is that the right word to describe this? Continue reading →

Every morning Sebastian would come out of his improvised office, yawn a couple of times, hand me his notebook, and say, “Do your thing.”

That meant I had to check for spelling mistakes. Oh, and place the occasional comma here and there. Other than that, there was nothing more I could do. Everything he wrote was perfect.

While he slept, I would spend my time in the library, reading books. He had been right. I couldn’t find information about any of the writers or books that were there. But that didn’t stop me from reading them. Some were good; really, really well written. Others, not so much.

But what I found odd was the fact that most of them had the same name for the main female character. Selena. Continue reading →