I really can’t believe it since I felt my will to write waver at the most unexpected times, but I did. I won the National Novel Writing Month 2010.

And I’m happy.

50,230 words and the story is not finished yet.  Who would’ve thought that, huh?

I’ve decided to participate in this year’s Nano (National Novel Writing Month) , which most people I know (at least online) knows about.

What you basically have to do is work on a written project that has to reach 50,000 words by November 30th.

The rules for being a part of the Nano are pretty simple: (copied and pasted from here)

• Write a 50,000-word (or longer!) novel, between November 1 and November 30.
• Start from scratch. None of your own previously written prose can be included in your NaNoWriMo draft (though outlines, character sketches, and research are all fine, as are citations from other people’s works).
• Write a novel. We define a novel as a lengthy work of fiction. If you consider the book you’re writing a novel, we consider it a novel too!
• Be the sole author of your novel. Apart from those citations mentioned two bullet-points up.
• Write more than one word repeated 50,000 times.
• Upload your novel for word-count validation to our site between November 25 and November 30.

For now, I have my updated profile and it can be found here; in case someone is interested in following my word count.

Here’s the synopsis of my story. Well, the translation, since I’ll be working on it in Spanish. Here’s also the banner I made for the forums over at the nanowrimo site

Something about the translation: Medellín is located in the state of Antioquia, so it was very hard to come out with something like this in English since the story is filled with very Colombian and Antioquian things. Also, I’m going to be dealing with the type of witches we believe in here in my country/hometown. This ain’t nothing like “Charmed” or stuff like that. So, I apologise in advance if something is not that clear. But…you can ask if you read this and are interested.

“The Witches”**

In Colombia, we say that we don’t believe in witches. We swear that we don’t mix salt and sugar or braid the hair of horses and dare them to unbraid it in order to catch them anymore. However, we always knock on wood and what’s more, we even say “Today because it’s Saturday, day of the Holy Virgen and she might hesitate”  every time we hear someone talking about them.

One day, after waking up and realising that she can barely move, Andrea calls Gabriela, a recent acquaintance and tells her about her condition. Gabriela gets worried and tells her that she must be like that because someone might have cast a spell upon her. Andrea starts laughing at her and asks her to better come to her to the doctor. Gabriela finally convinces her and takes her to Lucia’s, a lady from the south of the city, who tells Andrea about the woman with long, blonde hairher boyfriend has been seeing behind her back, and who cast a spell upon her in order to break them apart. It is then that Gabriela and Lucia open the world of witchcraft for a surprised Andrea. A world everybody turns to when in need but nobody dares accept.

Andrea, seduced by this world,  starts an iniciatic path in modern witchcraft; among a group of women who meet in a city like Medellin, which is as full of superstitions as it is of witches.”

**For the version of this post in Spanish, and to have a better understanding of the synopsis in Spanish, since I know some things are really hard to translate, go here.

Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.
~Cyril Connolly

I’ve decided to put these here…  ^^U

Broken

Broken in a million pieces
Uncertain of a future I once wanted to hold in my hands
Broken in shards of glass
What I thought was a diamond
It comes and goes, this feeling
It hits me, and breaks me
It destroys me.  It kills me.

It’s my soul what has been hurt
My heart what can’t be put together
It’s my life what is dying
It’s my world what crumbles
It is me who has stopped breathing

Broken…

February 14, 2006

Feel,
Dream,
Desire,
She wants it all.

Forget,
Forgive,
Forsake,
She’s done it all.

Love,
Experience,
Be,
She’s almost there.

Give,
Receive,
Love,
She will.

March 11, 2thousand10

_______

Let me feel you
let me love you
then feel you again.

And then, feel me
and fill me.

Let me dream in your arms
and have you next to me.
Let me love you,
and then, love me.

January 5, 2thousand9

I really don’t know what’s going on with my writing. Don’t get me wrong; I still love it and I think that the more I write, the more I enjoy it. It’s just that I haven’t been able to manage to write much these days and there’s this craving in me for doing it that I just don’t get the duality of the situation.

I want to write, but when I sit in front of the screen, words escape me, but the word page remains blank.

*sigh*

I have already planned a few stories. I believe I’ll be busy ’till the end of the year, but I need the words to take shape.

We’ll see how this situation gets solved.

So, I’m finally updating with Property, the story I mentioned on the previous entry. Again, I don’t curently have a beta reader, but, I’ve tried to upload it as clean of mistakes as possible. If anyone finds any, or finds something that needs to be reviewed or changed, don’t hesitate to let me know.

This story was hard to write, because I find it hard to relate to a passive female role. I understand that cultures vary and with them, so does the approach of things, but this story needed to be written. And so, it’s finally here.

Property.

This is the story of an Indian slave back in the 1400s. This is a story I found myself in trouble to finish. I can’t say I even know why I wrote it.

Anyways, it’s finished and I’m sure when I edit it I’ll add or take some things.  We’ll see…for now, I’m just happy it’s finished.

One more story for the Reveries Anthology.

Run. That was all that was in her mind and well, it wasn’t really working. She was feeling left behind; she couldn’t run as much as she wanted to. She couldn’t do it as fast as she wanted to. She saw herself crawling down the road, cursing and asking for help from whatever god might be listening to her. Yet nobody answered. She kept trying, even though her breathing was uneven and the air was lacking from her lungs, more and more, as time passed by.

“Fuck!” She finally said, trying to catch her breath even if for a second.

She stood up again, thinking it was just a dream; but knowing it wasn’t such thing. It was dark at times, some others it was light, but it was empty. There was nothing around her. Nothing but the stones on the road where she’d fallen yet again. She crawled once more. She tried and tried and tried and nothing. She couldn’t move forward and anger took the best out of her. She cursed, one more times. Many more times.

She looked around her and found that she hadn’t moved one inch. She was still standing on the same place where she’d started running. She stood up, determined to move once and for all. It didn’t matter what she had to do, but she had to run. And so, she started all over again.

She was going slowly once again. She wasn’t advancing. She was crawling again. Now her fingernails would bury themselves on the stony pavement as she forced herself out of that place. She started moving forward, slowly.

Then she wished for wings. And it felt almost as if she could get them, for she saw herself being pushed to the air and she breathed deeply and she moved in the sky. And she thought that it must indeed be a dream since those things couldn’t be true; and yet she was flying.

And she flew across a sky which was as dark as it had been below when she was running; but among the clouds she found her gaze to be more accurate than ever before and she wished one more time. This time she wanted the clouds to carry her to where she was supposed to be. She prayed for another miracle in which she’d find a soul to talk to. A person to show her the way to where she was going.

The clouds turned cold, but didn’t hurt her. They carried her like a mother would with her young child, and she let herself go. However, sooner than expected, she started to feel like she was falling. She was afraid, for she didn’t want her life to end in a nig thud from the fall. Yet, she landed as swiftly as when she’d taken off. And the road was dark again, and the stoney path was there again and she started to run away.

She didn’t hide her surprise when she started to run and it all turned fine for she ran through the streets of the unknown city, heading nowhere and running everywhere.

So, here’s the thing, you write about things that have happened to you, about things you want to happen to you, about the things you desire. When you create a world in your head, even when that world is nothing but ficticious, you start from within you. That’s a true that cannot be changed, no matter what people say about not being there in the stories they write.

Your story begins from inside you and there’s always a piece of you that remains through the whole tale.

And that’s not bad. Not at all.

Personally, when I write about things that have happened to me, I change the way they’re presented. I can change the characters, the me (a woman) present in the story can become a man telling the tale. I can talk about spiritual matters I believe in and present them as everyday things. And so on. I change the reality and turn it into fiction and hide its meaning, so that only the ones who need to know actually know.  If…there’s anything to read in between lines, that is.

Maybe that’s why I try to find those things on what I read. Maybe there’s some secret behind the lines of a story or it’s just plainly the feeling at the moment of writing what lingers there, who knows.

BUt well, that’s one of the things I do when I write