I'm Alive!

And really alive I should say. Sorry I've been out for so long but I found so many excuses for not blogging "Oh, I need to sleep eight hours!" "I might need that time for something else." "I'm lazy and I don't wanna write right now." Okay, that last one is not an excuse, it's the truth.

Many things happened to me since I came to Germany. Things like getting pale because winter was really cloudy. I mean it. I can't remember a single sunny day.

Things like my hands being so not used to this weather that they started bleeding.

Things like getting lost many times in the U Bahn (That's underground train).

Some other things that aren't bad at all.

I went to Rome.

I got some seriously beautiful views :)

 And I baptized as a Latter Day Saint. Yes, you read it right. I'm a Mormon :)

That's all for today, I do have a lot to do today haha, I'll tell you more about some things in another post. Bye :)

Writing Tip #10 - The Editing Time

So, you have to edit a book. A book you just wrote.

And you have to go to work, school or both. You have to eat and you have to do it slowly because is healthier, do homework, housework, do exercise because It's very important, sleep at least 7 hours, read that lovely book you bought one day, watch you favorite T.V. Show and hang out with friends, family or people. Because you're a writer, not a hermit.

You happen to have to much to do. As a writer I know you do want to edit you book, even If you're too busy. Maybe you could do two things at once.

But.

When you edit while you do something else you don't pay full attention to it. You barely edit anything, then you'll be somehow disappointed because you're doing an awful job. And you don't want that. Don't let yourself feel that way.

So, this is a simple tip. Find the proper time to edit, and make it only for your book. No editing while eating, no social networks, stop going to the kitchen to get something sweet because you eat more than you write (Yes, I'm speaking for myself right now).

Give yourself a deadline. Make a schedule. Don't waste you time. Do something!

You book will thank you. 

Drawing! :)

Hey guys, I know I mostly post about writing, but I started drawing like crazy and thought I could share it with you. No, I'm not an ilustrator/designer and neither I intend to be. I just like creating. I love art generally. I just feel like I'm more like a writer, but yet, who knows? Here It is.

I didn't intended this drawing, It just kind of drew himself. But I liked it, even though I have no idea what It is. Hope you have a good week!

Writing Tip #9 - Brainstorming!

So, I really read a lot about this before I posted it but,

First things first.

What's a brainstorm?

Not that.

That's my today's Brainstorm!

So, I wrote a book (Yes, I do like saying it a lot.) and there was a hard part. My characters needed to find an enormous amount of money but the first idea I used was too obvious. First, I asked my friend for help because he's creative. I wrote down his ideas, my ideas and then I brainstormed it. and it ended up looking like that. Don't try to read it because It's in spanish haha. 

But yet, what is it?

Brainstorming is a creativity technique. It consists on writing several ideas or solutions related to a problem. This is mainly done in groups but you can do it individually and if you're a writer, you're not gonna have a problem with it. Here are some advices for you.

How to Brainstorm?

Well, there is really no tutorial for that, Brainstorms normally use mind maps. But you can gather ideas by Free Writing, Free Speaking, and Word Association.

Free writing: 

Free writing is another technique, it's mainly used by writers to overcome the famous Writer's Block and avoid self criticism But I find it useful.

Let's say you have too much in your mind and don't know how to put that in order. You have some ideas but somehow you can´t manage to list them. You don't need to! Allow yourself a bit of messiness. Just get a piece of paper and write all you can. Write nonstop until you run a out of ideas, and then keep writing. When you finish you will probably have a bunch of paragraphs, hopefully a ton of them. Re read them a couple times and list ideas.

Free Speaking:

If you're the talkative type like I am, you might get a lot of ideas by talking. I think talking is similar to Brainstorms because you improvise all the time. You don't plan when you're going to say.Except when you give speeches, obviously.

The problem is, you forget about them when you talk and don't write. So, get a recorder. If you can't, most phones have one. Set an alarm and don't stop talking until it rings. Then you can write them down.

Word association:

This one is my favorite. It's considered a creative technique, but also a psychiatric evaluation. If what you're looking for is a logo, a title or a name then grab a dictionary and look for synonyms, related words, similar words to what you're looking for. Be extravagant. Be ridiculous. Go for the most bizarre, abnormal words you can because you never know what you can discover.

Mind map

If you ever heard about Brainstorms before (and I know you did) This is the one you know about. A Mind Map is a type of diagram where you put the main word in the middle of a paper sheet and write ideas around it. The secondary ideas can be written around another idea, like a branches. Don't worry about order, don't worry to repeat ideas. Just let it go!

And now, I give you the Brainstorm Rules.

The more, the merrier:

Brainstorm's goal is having lots ideas. Focus on the quantity and not in the quality.

Stop Criticism: 

It's not the time to judge. Write down stupid ideas, strange ideas, useless ideas, and between all that trash you probably wrote down two or one that might be useful.

Improving Ideas:

What is described as a good idea? How do you find it? You might not find the answer to this question until you do a Brainstorm. You might find clichés, very common ideas and even childish ones. Don't be disappointed! You can always combine them or make another brainstorm.

So, here's the thing. (Dairy extract)

So, here is the thing.

Dorothee and Heinz came over because the baby will soon be born, i just hope Yazmin and Jan name him Pablo Arael and not  or San Diego. Dorothee is always nice to me and has made me coffee for three consecutive days.

Yes, three days.

You see, when you're sensitive to caffeine like I am, a cup of coffee at afternoon might be a killer. I haven't slept in three days.Yesterday I went to sleep at three in the morning and got up at six to take a shower because I am nuts.

But, who wouldn't be nuts after a month of sedentary state? Today I finally bought a bathing suit. It's not that pretty but I don't care. All I care is doing some sport. (By the way, Gaby. You just realized the ink is passing through other pages and you don't get up to get a pen. Look! There is even a pen right next to the lamp, that gray one. How lazy. Whatever. 

Maybe it's because these dumb markers costed you only 1 euro at Allerei and you needed a reason to use them, because you're too chicken to draw with markers. You also want to write with other colors but you have always written with a black pen in here. Or a blue one. Or one week you wrote with a brown marker because whenever you went upstairs to write, you forgot to grab a pen, but that was in 2009. So, why not trying something new?

*Grabs a hot pink marker*

There you go. See how can writing help? You're just lucky you want/enjoy/are relatively competent for writing. Because initially you didn't wanted to write today, did you? You wanted to sleep.

So, if you wanted to sleep, Why on earth are you writing?You haven't slept much and today you found and interesting book, a book you think belongs to Yazmin because she like interesting stuff; a book about Brain Rules. You didn't pay much attention to it because you eyes were as heavy as that wool sweater you bought at Zara and got the color mixed because you washed it together with a red sweater.

But back to the book. You do remember something about how the lack of dream affects the brain. You also saw that movie one time. Where the kids didn't slept, they had micro naps and got killed by a man with knives on his hands. So you know your brain is exhausted but you can't sleep. Even when Dorothee volunteered  to clean up the kitchen after dinner so you could go to bed early, because dinner are your turn of cleaning. But yet, you won't sleep.

You even laid down in your bed for a long hour and closed you eyes but all you got was visualizing how you want your room because you haven't had the chance of sitting at that comfy  couch because you don't think it gets enough light to read. You also imagined your next haircut and thought a lot about yours and Josué's favorite Universities. But yet, no sleep. 

You know you are tired and you need to sleep more because today Yazmin gave you some simple instructions but you forgot them a minute later, just like you can't remember what you read in the Second Book Of Nephi today evening before Anjo spotted you and went to "cure" you because you were "ill and had lots of spiders in your head" then you drew spiders and pasted them on the wall.

You know perfectly that you need to sleep because tomorrow you have dance lessons at 19:00 and also because you don't wanna wear a disgusted pillow face. And so, we're back to the fist question. 

Why on earth are you writing?

Rigthhhh. You couldn't read because you need your memory for that and your brain is a bit dry. You couldn't draw because you're somehow frustrated because you keep thinking Anjo draws better than you. Like that Africa drawing he made. You didn't want to use your laptop because it gets you into a little stress. So, you made your way out of bed and grabbed your dairy. You didn't know how to start so you read a few older pages and laughed hard at how you used to say you were in love and at the next page you didn't want to see him again, you also found useful material for the new book you're looking forward to write, because you're always looking for material. Then you turned the last page, took a deeeeeeeep breath, grabbed the black marker, and highly exited, you wrote down. 

"So, here's the thing".

****************************************************

Hey guys. Please excuse the spelling, grammar and typos. I initially wrote it in spanish and I traduced this at two in the morning and my computer failed so I had to to it all over again and it's tree in the morning.

Again. 

This is an extract of my personal dairy, it's the first time I ever publish something. The thing went on but this is the part I found funny and decided it deserved a second part of eyes to read.

Or maybe a bunch of them.

Hopefully a critique, a comment, something.

Is someone out there reading this? I'd like an opinion.

Schloss Oberschleissheim

For those who don't know, I said I was going to Germany,  and I wasn't kidding. I arrived here on 30th December and I've been here for a week. I haven't had time to go on Blogger before, also because I didn't have anything good to post but because I used Internet to write important emails. But today, I have something interesting to post. I live in a small part of Munich called Oberschleissheim. It's 4 grades here and they say that, for winter; that's pretty warm. I couldn't believe it.

One day we passed by this place and I promised myself I was going to visit it.

A Castle.

I quickly went on the internet to know more about this Castle, and It happened to be a Museum. It had many historical paintings and an awesome yard. I decided to go on Sunday, It was only two blocks away so I went on feet.

It was absolutely beautiful, the ceeling, the floors, the walls were extremely decorated. This Castle is called Schloss Oberschleissheim and It was built by this architect called Joseph Efner by 1,600. The architecture was decorated mainly Rococo, going foward to neoclasical. Perhaps not the decoration because It was Rococo; but the rooms were so simetric. The castle had a main room in the middle and the same amount of rooms in both sides of the main room, every room had a story, you could tell by the Rococo decoration and the Frescos in the ceeling.

A dinning table for victories had armery and battles all over the decoration, a room for praying had angels, Jesus and other religious figures. Even the paintings had a story, each room had like a tale if you looked at the paintings closely. The castle had very catholic tendencies, but also many mythological creatures such as dragons, gods. Let's just resume that I really enjoyed it and spent like four hours staring at paintings.

Later when I went back home I disliked walking, because I couldn't feel my arms, or my knees. But It was worth it.

Coban, Guatemala

Hey Guys! Merry Christmas. I hope you had an awesome time with your loved ones and ate lots of candies. I went on a trip for the holydays. It’s a place called Cobán, here in Guatemala. The reason I went there is because my dad is a military officer and had military service for Christmas. When we found out about this me and my brothers were very upset. I hate when he can’t spend the Holydays with us. I was already picturing my Christmas back home, sitting in front of the T.V. watching extremely tacky Christmas movies and falling asleep before midnight because there is nothing to do.

One day, my mom sits down at the table with us, her smile is so big that It seemed It was too big  for her face. “Your dad has a House for us where he works” She says “We’re going to go spend Christmas with him”.

And we did. I just had a good Christmas, I spent midnight singing Karaoke with the Commandant’s daughters and other officers, we had champagne, we ate a lot and laughed at other people singing, I even got my parents to sing, they were so nervous. I came here con 24^th in the morning, it was a four hour trip in which I couldn’t sleep because I was copilot and I didn’t want my mom to fall asleep too. It was tiring and I caught the flu. But you tell me If this view isn’t awesome.

You know, I live In a very green area but it’s different, this is a town, and there is something about the cold, It’s not a windy cold like the city, It’s more like a dry cold, I love it.

I would definitely come back here.