Channeling Inner Desires to Motivate: ESPER, an Introduction

Hi There!

Are we stuffed with turkey? Or in my case, salmon? :-D I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving day and weekend. If your Thanksgiving was awful, I'm sorry about that. Just remember you can always make better days ahead. You can start with now! :-) 

Happy Happy Joy Joy! Wait, Wrong Cartoon.

Today, I want to talk a little about channeling inner desires to motivate. I mentioned several posts earlier about how I’d learn to overcome the serious writer’s block crippling my writing. I can’t believe that it was only a month ago that deep discouragement over my lackluster progress overwhelmed me. I didn’t think I’d ever produce something that would be published. 

Just replace "Bloggers" with "Writers". My parents reaction to my writing!

 At first, I thought the culprits behind my procrastination were laziness, lack of discipline, and boredom, but the truth had been fear of rejection and lack of faith in my writing abilities. Understanding these deeper meanings helped me progress to the next phase of achieving my goals and ultimately, my dreams: channeling my inner desires to motivate me to write productively on a daily basis. We all have our unique motivations for writing, and I’ve tapped into mine. It’s been driving me to action like I’ve never experience before in my life. I realized that my inspiration comes from within not from the outside, and I had to clearly identify my purpose.  I credit the website Personal Excellence by Celestine Chua for helping me unravel all these issues. If you struggle with procrastination, self-doubt, or goal setting, I highly recommend it.  Reading Celestine’s writing transformed my focus on life and my writing.

For the next several days, I’m going to share my experiences using the goal-setting/achieving model ESPER that Celestine explains on her website. ESPER stands for Establish, Strategy, Planning, Execution, and Review. I’ve decided to use ESPER to finish editing COT. As I’ve told you before, I made some big changes to COT (changing one of the female MCs to a male) so it’ll involve some rewriting and reworking. I’m very excited about the edits and rewrites I’ve made so far. My novel is bursting with vitality and new energy because I’m finally writing the book I want to read! Not the book that I think others would want. That’s just stifling. Letting go of all my inhibitions and loving the world I’m creating infuses COT with a freshness I didn’t think it could ever possess.

Attitude is key in all of this. Your writing reflects your attitude. If you’re unhappy, fearful or dissatisfied with yourself, then the prose won’t represent your highest potential as a writer. I’m not saying you have to be super high on life to write a great novel because history shows us a ton of amazing writers who suffered from difficult emotional issues. If you don’t believe in yourself and the words you’re putting down, then you won’t convince your readers that your writing matters. And that’s what I desire. For someone to read my book and think: it matters that I’m reading this or I’m not wasting my time reading this book.

I do the same thing.

If you checked out the link on ESPER, I’d love to hear what you think about it.

Thanks for reading,

CSS

Loving My Side Characters (Don’t Neglect Us!)

Every hero needs an awesome sidekick

The COT universe has many side characters so I have to take special care of this bunch. I have main side characters and minor side characters. The main side characters pack a pretty heavy punch to the flow of events in the story and heavily influence the direction my three lovely MCs take. Sometimes it’s easy to neglect side characters when you’re focused on making the MCs the coolest and realest people on this side of the imaginary world. Therefore, it’s only fair that that I surround my MCs with a fascinating and sometimes twisted bunch of supporting characters.

Zackaria, Ryker, and Meliz share three best friends that make the siblings bizarre, confusing life so much easier. First, there’s Ezekial Rushil Battacharjee, aka Zeke, who is half-Indian (father), half-Jewish (mother). He is also Zackaria’s boyfriend. Tall, athletic, kind, possessing gorgeous green eyes speckled with red, it’s no surprise that the 16-year-old junior at Caber Daley Academy (the private school they all attend) has a strong band of followers and admirers. His parents are big shot Hollywood screenwriters who write for award-winning dramas on prime time television. They travel constantly (alone), leaving Zeke behind with the help and his thirteen-year-old bratty brother. He writes frequently, taking from his parents, and video records his friends whenever they hang out because he dreams of becoming a big time movie director a la vein of David Fincher. Zeke’s main problems are that his parents are getting a divorce, and he later discovers that his girlfriend, Zackaria, possesses some sort of freaky super human abilities. Who has a girlfriend who can possibly kill you before you blink? Zeik does.

Next is Zeke’s good childhood friend Faust Beckett. German born Faust is another wildly handsome junior at Caber Daley high school. Half-Black (father) and Half-Latino (mother), Faust has a reputation for being the class clown who takes no prisoners. His father is a punk rocker and his mother a poet. He has two older sisters in college—one is in Germany and the other England. Faust speaks fluent Spanish and German. He moved to the States at the age of nine and met Zeke shortly after in elementary school. Although he has the face piercings and tattoos of a punk, he doesn't want to go into music, but rather loves making graphic novels and comics. Faust is a talented artist and he and Zeke used to combine their creative energy to make comics that they would sell to their classmates. His main problem concerns his new girlfriend, Cielle Jeong, who happens to be the Kato siblings’ biggest pain in the ass. He loves Cielle, but she seems more preoccupied with his friends.

Their third friend is Fallon Nolan, the short but sweet Irish girl with the big, long curly mane of bright copper hair. Her tresses make her easily identifiable at Caber Daley. The junior is the daughter of a former-model-now-photographer (mother) for the nation’s top fashion magazines and a designer (father) who lives in Italy. Faust’s parents are divorced and she’s an only child. Her parents backgrounds have influenced her interests in fashion and photography. She runs a popular fashion blog whose high status has given her access to fashion shows in New York, Italy, and Paris. Her biggest problem right now is making a decision about whether to accept her father’s offer to study fashion in Italy and leave behind her dear friends. She cares a lot about Meliz and worries that her friend is sinking further into herself.

The Kato siblings' friends are two years older than they are but since the siblings have heightened intelligence, they take a mixture of the most advanced junior and senior classes at the school, sharing a few classes with their friends. The trio knows that they’re adopted and their adoptive parents (a Japanese couple who recently had a son—the trio’s newest sibling) revealed that the papers say the Kato siblings are fourteen-years-old. 

Anyway, Zackaria, Ryker and Meliz love their friends to death because these three are the only true friends they’ve ever had. Past attempts at friendship often failed because of rumors and fears circulating around Zackaria and an incident involving the serious injury of three students. That event belongs to the story only, however. Haha. Hope you enjoyed reading about some of my three main side characters.

Question: How do you take care of your side characters? 

Thanks for reading,

CSS

Good-bye Chrisa; Hello Ryker. Why Change is Good.

HI :)

I mentioned in my previous post that I had made a big change to COT. This single change means I'll have to do more work. Now, why on earth would I do something that would result in more hard work for me? Because it's refreshing, new, and just what COT needs to push it over the edge, and I'll admit, be more marketable. It's one of those executive decisions that I struggled with for a bit but ultimately decided was for the best. Now, I'm really excited about how this change can transform my book.

So what big change did I make? If you're not familiar with COT, it tells the sci-fi story of three adopted sisters who possess a terrifying secret that can not only destroy their world, but their minds as well. The girls live in a universe of intergalactic antagonists, beautiful but conniving dictators, former killers turned scientists, assassins, and more. The MCs' names are Zackaria, Meliz and Chrisa, and they each have their own quirk that makes them unique. Zackaria possesses a deadly temper that matches her bossy character; Meliz is an aloof, cold girl who is also intelligently manipulative; and Chrisa is a borderline suicidal thrill seeker. I love these girls. I've known them for seventeen years'; they're my daughters.

HOWEVER…dum dum dum…I've decided to release Chrisa into oblivion to have her become Ryker, a boy who embraces her thrill seeker personality except his will be two notches above hers. Their problems will be different as well. Chrisa suffered from the lack of normalcy and honesty in her life because of the bizarreness suffocating her. Ryker's problems are that he can't experience happiness despite this thrill seeker ways, along with the bizarreness of his life. They both are super cheerful on the outside, but deeply sad on the inside.

So, COT will no longer be about three sisters, but three siblings, Zackaria, Ryker, and Meliz. I think Ryker's personality will serve as a good counterbalance to Zackaria. As the leader of the group, Zackaria's  character often overshadowed that of her sisters. She will still remain the leader of this new group, but Ryker will add a new dynamic that equals things out. Meliz has always been withdrawn so I feel her character will also benefit from Ryker's appearance. She has two super hot-headed siblings, and is now more than ever their voice of reason and calmness.

It's very hard to say good-bye to Chrisa, but I know she will live on in Ryker. And now you understand what I meant about all the work I'll have to do. I'll need to rework all the scenes involving Chrisa and make sure that the character encompasses Ryker's personality and not just left over bits of Chrisa. It will be a challenge, but one that I embrace and ready for. Change is good.

thanks for reading,
CSS