Author Archives: Joe Hinojosa

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About Joe Hinojosa

Official account of a writer in potentia. Blogger, student, bibliophile and novice book reviewer.

Waiting and working

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I’m still waiting for my friend to get back with me on the book she’s reading, so in the meantime, I’m going crazy. Is it good? She hates it. I knew it. She hated it so much that she doesn’t want to tell me how bad it is. It’s been over two weeks, and she usually reads a book within a couple of days. Ugh! Why do I suck?!!!

While I agonize over how shitty I am as I writer, I’m left without a project to work on. I pulled up two different novels, trying to decided which one I like more, which one would take the least amount of work to get ready. The answer is neither. They both suck, so I’m going with the one that sucks the least.

So that’s what I’m doing, trying to rewrite something, all the while waiting for my friend to get back to me on my original wip. It’s excruciating, by the way, believing the worst about your ability to turn a tale, praying that it isn’t as bad as I fear. I hope it isn’t as bad as I fear. Please be serviceable.

So now I’m on Reborn, the tale of a man at the end of his life, who lived a fairly selfish life, but who was given a second chance to prove that that though a man may have a new opportunity to do things right, they -will always revert to their nature. A cheater will always be a cheater. They will always hurt the ones they love.

That’s what I’m working on now. It struck me one day as i saw my ex-wife’s grandfather on his deathbed. I wondered if given a second chance, what a man in his position, a man who lived a selfish life would do. My belief is that he would be the same man. A person changes only when he’s physically unable to do what his nature urges him to do.

So that’s the premise. The story is okay, but poorly written. I have a lot to do, and short of a complete rewrite, I’ll do what I can. It’s something to occupy my time. I love the story, love the premise, but it needs a lot of work.

Read, delete, rewrite, repeat

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I completely deleted the ending chapters of Jasmine. Gone. I’m left with a blank page on which to work on. I’ve been fighting with the ending for years. I’ve been trying to make it work, trying and failing, then giving up, only to start again and to meet the same frustrations. This time it’s over. The ending cannot be salvaged. It had to go.

I’m now working on the third scene of chapter twenty, and the pieces are starting to fall together. The ending I’ve been working towards is now closing in, but there’s still some drama to create, a climax to achieve, and hopefully resolution to find. I’m still not overly thrilled with the opening chapter, but I’ll let my beta reader tell me more about it, if it works or not. I may be overthinking it. No, I know I am.

I’m a little antsy to get this over with. I want this to be done. I want to move on to the next phase and get this edited. I had someone email me about hiring her, and the rate she quoted me was at once reasonable and expensive, if that makes any sense. In the end, however, I know that I can kill an otherwise good story if I don’t get someone to proofread it. I’ve started reading few book only to set them down due to poor grammar or spelling. Don’t want that for my book. Hell, I need an editor for my blogs!

Another friend gave me a suggestion on getting a book cover, which I need to follow up on. I want to make a good impression with my first book, but I also know that I can’t over do it and get too much into debt. I could consider trying to find an agent and a publisher. That’s something else I could consider. That would alleviate the technical headaches, but it could be years if ever before I find someone willing to give me a chance. Am I willing to wait that long for that chance?

For now, I have a few more days before I can say I’m done. I would like to be done with it before my vacation, hand it over to my friend to read it. I hope she can give me a critique of what I have, what I might need to look at, and what I might need to delete.

Still at it

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I’m nearing the end of Jasmine, and it hasn’t been as bad as I thought it would be. I have had to delete a whole chapter, and a few scenes were eliminated or rewritten entirely, but on the whole, it’s been a fairly quick rewrite.

I have asked a friend of mine to read it for me and give me her input. I have to know if the story works, and if there’s anything that needs to be tweaked, rewritten, or deleted. I want to know if the characters are believable. I need to know if it’s a good book or not. I don’t want to waste time on a dud.

If I hear good news, I’ll move on to looking for someone to proofread the book. My real issue will be cost. I’m just a poor boy, after all, but I don’t want someone cheap who doesn’t do a good job. I need someone with reasonable rates, preferably with some experience and recommendations.

Then I’ll need someone to do the covers for me. I have absolutely no experience in making covers. What’s more, I have no artistic abilities. I’ll have to find someone at some point. I guess I can ask around. I’m sure someone can point me in the right direction.

Until then, however, I’ll tinker with Jasmine, maybe eventually settle on a permanent name for it. It was Unseen Obsession at one point, but I hated that name. Maybe someone can help me with that, too.

Dark thoughts

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It’s dangerous when I’m home alone. I have nothing to occupy my time, and the dark thoughts that usually cloud my mind are free to run wild. My insecurities are ripping at my soul, and I feel lost, afraid, alone. It’s been a while since I’ve felt this way. At least to this degree.

I’m working on my project, reading and rewriting one scene at a time, but there’s something that is driving me crazy, a hope, a desire, a connection that I was praying would come about that I feel is slipping through my fingers, if even it existed in the first place. I’ve been beginning to question if it had.

The uncertainty is weighing me down, making me reevaluate what I want to do. I have nothing to tie me here anymore, and I’m beginning to believe it may be time to walk away and search for whatever it is I’m missing elsewhere. I don’t think I’ll find it here.

When I look at my job, it’s going well, better than I thought it would. I’m now considering my future with the company. Do I want to move up? Would it be possible to move out of working at the store level? What am I capable of doing? Do I possess the skills to be successful in this company?

I have always maintained that money is not what motivates me. It isn’t. Money, for the sake of money, doesn’t sustain my soul. I need something that motivates me, something to sustains me, something that makes me feel proud. I haven’t found that anywhere. I need something that does.

I have my writing, for sure, but even there I’m slacking. I don’t know if I have the skill necessary to write well enough to succeed as a writer. I don’t know if anyone would care to read what I write. Maybe all I lack is confidence, though I haven’t had anything to boost my confidence, either. I’m probably being too hard on myself.

As much as I’m complaining, I’m probably happier than I have ever been in my life. I feel freer than I ever have. I’ve been coming to terms with who I am, which has been a difficult road to travel. I’m not yet at the end of that particular journey, but I’m further along than I ever dreamt possible.

But for all my happiness, I feel as though I’m missing something, and that’s what has my dark thoughts depressing me. I’m looking forward to trip to Georgia later next month, and in a few months, my trip to Florida. I need an adventure, but I need more than that to sustain me. I need to recharge my soul, my sense of purpose. I want someone, too, to connect with. If only I were so bold.

And at that, I’ll get back to my writing.

Dusting off the pages

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d14d88e637f0d811563873bce2a41d1fI pulled out my 2012 NaNoWriMo novel this evening and began to work on it. It’s one of the novels that I’m most passionate about because I think there’s something there, a story I want to tell. It’s probably also one of the most personal for me because it deals with a hard break up of the inability to move on from a betrayal.

I work that way when I write. I write about me, what I feel, my pain and sorrows, my joy and elations. Sure, I tend to stretch and distort what I went through, making the story its own entity, but I ground it with my own emotions, telling a story that I think we all can relate to because we’ve all lived it in a fashion.

What’s kept me from even trying to publish this novel, though I’ve wanted to for years, is the opening scene. I’ve never liked it. It felt jarring and forced, as though I was trying too hard to write something impactful that it became off-putting. It didn’t work, and the more I worked on it, the worse it got. In exasperation, I cast it aside, working on other projects, consigning it to be forgotten.

But it wouldn’t let itself be forgotten. I had to tell the story, and I finally pulled it up out of the depths of oblivion, or rather I opened the file on my computer, if you want to be pedantic, and I stared at the opening scene until it dawned on me that I would have to write a whole new scene. Took me a few years to finally accept it. The first scene had to go.

In actuality, all that scene needed was to be rewritten and used as the first scene of the second chapter. I decided to start the story with the situation that sets the whole narrative into motion, pulling it from the middle of the novel to the beginning. That means I have to do a little more work to erase that scene from a middle chapter, but I think it makes more sense this way.

I have a long way to go, but I like the way it flows now. It feels better, the timing works for me. I may have to tweak it a little, but I could probably do that from now until eternity. I’ll soon let it go. For now, I think I’ll get back to it. I can’t wait to be done with it and have you read it!