The odyssey of a writer wannabe!
The mental hardships of learning to write and narrate. Confessions, comedy, and reality.
Before you continue:
This piece was originally written in Spanish and in a way that reflects my issues with writing in such language. I also use many examples of a life in which everything was mostly in Spanish (for me). In this translation I will do my best to reflect the same issues when it comes to me writing and speaking in English, as well as integrate examples of my life in the US, where everything is mostly in English. I am also adding things that I didn’t write in the Spanish version, that I would’ve liked to have written in - but that I won't. If you know both languages, and you read both versions, I hope you can notice these differences.
Here is a link for the Spanish version.
All spelling and grammatical errors in this writing are put (or left) on purpose. In my other writings, not necessarily; but in this one, yes. I swear to you. I can’t believe that it has taken me to write this badly! But I try to present in a visual way (both in the text and in the photos) the feeling that I want to convey, and the reality that I live as a writer/podcaster wannabe. For either version (Spanish or English), this is not meant to be an easy read.
I want to take you on a journey between my past and my present, in this odyssey of learning to write and narrate. About setbacks, stress, ego, fear, ADD, self-sabotage, etc. - that I have experienced, and that actually happens to professionals in one way or another, when writing (or podcasting for that matter). All this mixed with self-mockery (you have to learn to make fun of yourself).
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Me as a writer? I don't think so. My writing is really bad!
I don't know what's more dificult for me, If organizing my notes like professional writers do, or if I can describe them like a good storyteller would in a book. One of those from classic literature, or from the New York Times Best Sellers top list. Of those who carry the title of Author before the name of the person who wrote it.
Another thing is that I always miss a comma or other punctuation marks (or a letter somewhere), and in English even more. Surely you, who are reading me right now, have noticed that something is missing somewhere in what I have written so far in this writing. Like, really. Me, as a writer? But in my defense, I never say I am a writer, and I always tell peopl that when they read or listen to me they do so at their own psychological and spiritual risk (I do it as a joke but at the same time with a touch of seriousness); especially to people who suddenly feel that one of their eyes begins to blink rapidly and their breathing shortens when they see one of my speling horrors or when they hear me pronounce something wrong.
I confess that I have always wanted to be a writer. I had never told anyone because I was afraid they would laugh at me. Since I was little I fantasized about it but I never did it because my time was spent playing outside, having experiences and having adventures with my brother and our friends. Playing video games, playing sports, working with my dad, watching my mom cook, watching cartoons, or drawing. I used to watch how my sisters, my brother, and our foster brother behaved as they are older, and I wanted to learn to behave like the older ones but not so old. The cool older people, not the old ones who ruled.
I confess that I have always wanted to be a writer. I had never told anyone because I was afraid they would laugh at me.
While in high school I wrote love poems and romantic lines for the loves in my head - since my shyness always dominated when I was in front of any girl I liked, so what I wanted to say to them I told them in the privacy of my own mind. Up in my head I was the most romantic, courageous, and handsomest of all. I don't remember where in time I lost those notes, but I do remember them. And I remember the feeling of having written what I felt, how I felt it, when I felt it, where I felt it. Ah, how many confessions in those lines from the past that no one ever read!
I remember once, during high school, confessing to a friend that I wanted to write a book about various things. Life, health and other things that I don't remember now. But I do remember his reaction. “But do you know about those things you are going to write about?” he asked me. To which I replied, with a shaky voice… “no”. His question fucked up my head a bit, not because he asked it, but because I was right in the answer I gave him. I didn't know shit. This was just mental masturbation; a wet dream about words I couldn't touch at the time, about a fantasy out of my league.
And to be honest, that's how I still feel. It's never enough. I never write correctly. I annihilate sentences with the most horrifying spelling outrages. If words bled ink, even if it was digital ink, I would be a serial killer. If there was such a thing as the FBWI (Federal Bureau of Writing Investigation), I think I would top the list of most hated. You do not believe me? Just take a little walk through my writings and you'll see; the older ones are scarier - you were warned.
And sometimes I think about revising and fixing my older writings, but then I think that if I fix them I will be creating in my readers, the idea that I have always written in the same way. That I write badly, there is no question about it, but one never writes in the same way!
Something I’ve learnt during this oddisey (or maybe I made it up), is that no one who writes always does it the same way. I believe that when one writes, the emotion of the moment or of that specific piece - which one is creating - is what’s reflected in the writing. I also believe, as someone said once, “it is about the content, not the package”. So in my writings you will be able to find from real motivation to unmotivated motivation, excitement and lust, passion for the things I do (but sometimes poorly communicated), and series of horrifying grammatical crimes, accompanied by recipes, and an abstract podcast, with a sprinkle of things that may make real sense regarding fitness and well-being.
In College
Writing stopped being my focus when I went to college. I mean, apart from the romantic lines that I wrote to my girlfriend at the time - those that are written on Walgreens’ love postcards - I did not practice free and voluntary writing. In fact, at that time I didn't even fantasize about being a writer. I was bad anyway! What's more, I even took a writing and composition class with a playwright professor who sometimes wanted to cry at my horrible essays. “Juan, this one kind of lacks a bit of inspiration,” the professor once told me.
But what I can say is that there at the university, that's where I started reading. Hello, it was an obligation! But I liked what I read. And the discussions between professors and studnts about those readings I liked even more. History, philosophy, psychology, educational models, analysis of articles and books, research, detailed analysis of human movement and exercise... All those points of view, all those slopes and tangents, opened my mind to thoughts that I wasn't going to write until much later.
Psychology, health and fitness, mythology, and martial arts were my favorite subjects to pick up in my spare time. Books on these subjcts made me want to learn more. For a while I had a crush on Egyptian mythology, of which I don't remember much since I kept imagining how I would have lived in those stories and not paying attention to what the writing wanted to say; so, technically I didn't read them, I just imagined them. And from time to time I had an affair with some cookbook from the past, which later turned into an endearing romance.
The university library and I were friends, and several of my classmates called me “The Reader” since I would sit reading in front of the classrooms all the time, before the professor showed up. But here I make another confession, and it is that on many of those occasions in which I was "reading", in reality I was pretending to read so that they would not bother me, since I was traveling in my head, daydreaming, thinking about pregnant birds and colored fish1, about the girl I liked, or lecturing in my head - just as I imagined the authors of the books I read did. I liked to recreate scenarios in my mind in which "I already knew what I would have wanted to write about back when I wanted to be a writer in high school."
The Personal Trainer who reads.
On the way to being a professional physical educator, graduated and wanting to save the world, "one student at a time", I decided to become a certified personal trainer, and that's when I discovered that I liked reading about the human body and movement, on human behavior and health and, still, more than two decades have passed since I keep reading about it. Studies, reports, articles, books, magazines, blogs, media publications, and all of that combined with the new audio visual, and audio-only reading… YouTube, podcasts, and audio books.
From time to time I would enjoy a novel, one of those by well-known Latin writers who write on the 'banks of the River'2 or who announce the chronicles of 'a death' fore told3. But then I discovered Dan Brown's novels with their codes, and their 'angels and demons', their 'lost symbols', and their Dante’s hell - and as lame as many say they were - these helped me practice focusing on the reading. These got me hooked on symbolism and mythology, and I wanted to be the hispanic verizon of Brown’s character (Robert Langdon - played by Tom Hanks in the movies), solving crimes and cryptic riddles in the alleys of Old San Juan. Here I started trying to write about food, and I flirted with an odd short fiction crime fiction that I never got to finish.
I read Anthony Bourdain's books. These gave me a bit more oomph to want to write again, or at least try. His perspectives, his books and his way of writing, along with his shows on TV, have been a great source of inspiration for me. I read Hagakure (The Book of the Samurai), Mi Caja de Herramientas, Donde Reinan Las Arpías, The Art of War, and Musashi's Book of Five Rings, and the Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain. I've been reading Joseph Campbell and his 'Hero with a thousand faces', to see if I understand the archetypes of the things I want to write about. I also read several books on business, sales, reading body language and micro expressions, and those about convincing people to do or buy what I wanted (NLP), - and those about the laws of power, and how to do reframing in the heads of those around me.
I also read books on how to flirt and pick up women. In other words, win, if you know what I mean, with any woman I wanted. Although it was never my style, and I was always quite shy about those things. And on the other hand, it was one thing to read about it and live the story in my head, and another was the reality of managing, even if it was, to say “Hello!”.
What I learned from these books about becoming a pick-up artist was a little more about human behavior, and about myself, about how to face some of my social fears… or in other words, the fear of speaking to women, and to other people in general. I also learned about how to observe and analyze, about how to listen - which not only helped me socially but also personally and professionally. The Game is my favorite book in this area. By Neil Strauss. And of course I did learn a couple of pick-up tricks that I managed to implement during the hunt. Duh!
Between all that reading, I wrote articles for local magazines and newspapers about personal training, and I wrote recipes for an online magazine. I got to write articles on motivation, health, and fitness for a well-known platform, and I even came out once on a radio station talking about exercises for pregnant women. I even got to do talks and speeches in front of many people (children, adults, abused teens, pregnant women, the elderly, and even at the corporate level).
Oh, about the recipes! Well, it turns out that while I was studying, and while working as a trainer and teacher, I became a cook, although I must tell you that when I was 16 I worked in a restaurant washing dishes and making pizza - and before, that my mom and dad had food businesses - so I already came with a bit of experience, and I always liked cooking. I mean, working in restaurants, being a personal chef, caterer, getting to give cooking classes and everything! In one of those classes I met my wife. And of the cookbooks that I have read and I have lost count. And about how many recipes I have written everywhere, I also lost count.
Do you have to read a lot to learn how to write? Yeah right!
I have read with pleasure and desire and also without desire, and I continue reading, and I do not stop reading or writing. I have started about three short novels, just the beginning, the idea, which is almost nothing. And yes, I have written study reports, reviews, and professional articles, because of work, but not as a writer.
It turns out that after so much time in physical education, fitness and health, a few years ago I decided to start writing a book related to these topics, exploring their dark side, politics, and their philosophical side. My masterpiece! I've been writing it for four years and it's already on its fifth title (I keep changing it). I confess that I'm not even halfway through. Four years, doing research and writing about the things I want to talk about in that book. But the issue is that the things I wanted to talk about in that book have changed several times. In other words, the book began with one idea and is now moving on to another, along the same lines but differently.
I am very indecisive when concluding that something is good or not for my book, so that it makes sense. At the end of a paragraph, I suddenly jump ten or twenty pages into the past to make sure that any references I made to what I just wrote fall into place. And I spend more time in the back and forth of uncertainty, that going forward with certainty as professionals do and say is their “5 secrets to being a writer”.
I have learned that it is not easy to want to be a writer. Being one sounds easy, but wanting to be one is a bit complex for me. Wanting it implies total dedication, the kind that only professional writers can deal with. I don't, I lose focus easily, and when I look for references and do research I get lost in other worlds. I'm supposed to be writing my book and I'm writing this, and editing it. Can you Imagine?
And I keep reading writers whose styles I like and listening to their podcasts to see if I can learn to write, read, and talk with them. Not like them, but with them. To tell stories. Just as if they were my mentors, but without them knowing it. I steal my inspiration from them (even from the dead ones). Earnest Hemingway with his stories, Christopher Ryan with his books and tangential podcast, Alexis Sebastian-Mendez with his humor and neutral logic, among many others. Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Levar Burton, Sean Carroll, Danielle Bolelli, El Buen Librero, Nemesio Canales, Cortazar, Neruda, Mayra Santos Febres...
But my mind always wanders off and sails through other oceans; and so I also try to learn by listening, watching, or reading about food & cooking, erotica, romance, psychology, gardening, hiking, fishing, and storytelling, and the history of things. I also try to learn through video games - where I have found that a great stories can either be listened to, watched, read, or played - many with entire books, recipes, drama, comedy, crime, survival, passion, philosophy, and historical accuracy within.
But I have found out through interviews or books that talk about Mark Twain and Earnest Hemingway, two extremely well-known writers whose work is followed and studied so much by real writers - those who demand to be called Author So-and-so, as well as by writers wannabe… like me - suffered from the same WADD (Writers' Attention Deficit Dissorder). They also suffered from skipping semicolons, and from putting a letter where it doesn't belong, and from writing things that didn't make any sense to the universe. I mean, Twain and Hemingway. And I am here burning up my brains to, learn to write perfectly?
And so I made this blog/podcast to write, narrate, and talk about all those mental masturbations that come to my mind. Recipes, essays, short food porn (or gastro-erotica as I like to call it), fitness drama, anecdotes, fantasies and adventures, and health and fitness opinion. But language is another issue for me. Spanish, English, or Spanglish? I mean, being from a non English speaking Caribbean island in the middle of the ocean, living in the United States for almost ten years have gringofied my brains. And I kind of like that, because bilingualism, I believe, is always better than lingualism. See, what I did there? I am learning English baby. Follow me for more!
I’ve spoken Spanish all my life, with very seldom English up until my early 30s when I got a job as a sales manager for an american fitness equipment company. This experience got me a little more familiarized with the language since I had to make sales, and reports, and communicate with corporate, etc. I also got to do some travelling to main US, for conventions and training, where I got to meet people from all over the world, and whose English varied from hard core southern accent, to British English, Caribbean English, Latino English, Dutch English, Japanese English, and Australian English which made things a little difficult. I knew they were all speaking the language, but, most of the time I could’t understand shit. My Puerto Rican Spanish thinking mind couldn’t process all those accents; let alone my problem of listening in English, quickly translating that into Spanish (in my head), and the making sure that whatever I replied came out in an understandable English non insulting way.
Besides, when speaking, my pronunciation ranges from sounding like I am saying ass, when I mean to say abs - and from scaring people when I say ‘It’s raining hell’ when I really men hail. And don’t get me started with the word beach, which often comes out as bitch; and focus comes out as fuck us. Sometimes, ‘the whole thing’, comes out as the ‘whore thing’. And what the fuck is phathom, and yonder?
I learned about yonder after my wife, stepson, daughter, and I pack our stuff and jumped the pond to Austin, Texas. Two adults, one toddler, and one pre-teen - moving to Austin, with a thick accent and coming to the realization - early in our “Keep Austin Weird!” adventure - that the Texan English we hear in the movies is not the same as the one spoken in the real Texas, y’all! And at a farmers market in downtown - a logn-hair, cowboy hat and boots, jeans, and shirtless vendor; after realizing that I didn’t understood shit when he mentionned yonder to me, explained the thing.
I like to write and podcast in the language that my thoughts arrive to my head with. Having written, and spoken in both English, Spanish, or Spanglish (which makes me a trilingual) has made me understand that sometimes translations take away the essence of what one wants to say. So to say vete al carajo doesn't sound the same when one really wants to say go fuck you yourself - or to call someone asshole (at lest for me whose first language is Espanol) is not the same calling them Cabron. And I have this dilemma, because when I think of something in English I prefer to write it in English, and if it is in Spanish then in Spanish, and in Spanglish when these two worlds converge. And there are times in which I try to maintain a conversation in one language while thinking in another.
Sometimes I write more than I podcast, and sometimes it's the other way around, and sometimes I go hand in hand. But, I don't think I'm a writer - or a podcaster, to be honest, at least a “real one”. My format is vague, my consistency varies according to my mood, my work schedule, level of laziness I have, or to whatever life brings.
And so, if being a writer means focusing on one thing, having a fixed format, not stopping at any cost, having goals which require me to stop being me - well, I don't know how to do it. It would be like telling the sea to focus all its currents in one direction and to keep its waves at the same height. Like asking the bees to look for pollen in a single flower, or that at the moment of sexual climax your partner asks you to hold your orgasm. Like not crossing tongues or biting lips in a passionate kiss.
The case of my deep shyness.
Speaking of me being shy, I tell you that I became so shy that It scratched the limits of reality. Expressing my feelings was difficult and still is, so I live in my head. And living in my head - off course with the obvious and due interactions with the external world - means that only me, and my wife (the donkey in front...) are my only critics.
It is said that one of the best ways to know if one writes or narrates well is looking for feedback not only from their readers or listeners, but also from those they admire, but here shyness comes into play. I have several emails already started, addressed to people whom I listen to, observe, and read - which I haven't finished yet; not because I don't know what I want to say, but because of the battle in my head. In other words, the issue is so much that I dare to say it here, but I don't dare to do it.4
You see, in my head I've already sent those emails, and the movie I'm playing in my mind results in a drama that ends in tragedy, where the apprentice is denied by his master - and he goes off to wander the world in search of inspiration. And so I haven't finished them - because in my head they either didn't read them, or they read them and considered it shit. And I close the case and there it stays. The struggle is real!
I can't decide to write about just one thing. I have multiple interests. And my beliefs? Well…
A big part of my issue is that many times I know that I am not taken seriously since I do not always write about the same topic. I jump from writing fitness opinion and advise, to food porn stories; and from essays on walking in nature, to drama short fiction or cooking recipes; or from reading essays or articles on philosophical topics, to ranting about notes I take in my head. But it is difficult for me to follow a single topic at a time! The things that go through my head are not programmed, and the things that happen in my life even less, therefore I have different thoughts and different feelings every day, and in different languages; and so I write, going with the flow instead of seeking to control it.
I also know that sometimes people, who like what I publish (podcast or blog), stop doing so when they find out that I don't follow a religion or a deity, or that I am a personal trainer who doesn’t like the idea of dieting, detoxing, and doing most typical exercises. Or people that, even though I have all this education and experience, they question it when I write or say that I love bread, rice, ice cream, and a good greasy chicken fry.
I have subscribed to websites and magazines for writers and podcasters. Those that almost every day send you an email with prompts, with the 10 tricks for success, with the “perfect technique”, or how to get a larger audience in less than an hour and without doing much... but I always end up unsubscribing because I find them silly, or I get bored, or constantly getting emails about these things annoys me and makes me tired.
The truth is that maybe in another life I would have liked to know how to write and do a podcast, but in this life I don't know if I can. And so I keep learning. What I can tell you is that I like the experience of writing and I like doing a podcast, so I'm going to continue doing it as long as I can, no matter how bad I’m. ;-)
Bye!
Hispanic expressions for when someone is spaced out, or when seems that he or she is thinking about nonsense. Or for when someone is madly in love.
A Orillas del Río Piedra me senté y lloré. (By the river Piedra I sat down and wept). by By Paulo Coelho
Crónica de una muerte anunciada (Chronicle of a Death Foretold) by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Although I must confess that I’ve had the courage to send a few by the time of this translation.