Author R.A. Gasparac

Dear me,

I am sitting here ten years on, and there are some things I really think you should know.

You need to remember you are stronger than what is up ahead of you. I know writing a full length novel sounds crazy, but you will surprise yourself when you try and succeed. You will get over your failures in the past, and try to write again through NaNoWriMo.

I know the last time you tried you failed miserably, and you vowed to never set high goals again. Until one day inspiration strikes and all you can think about is this imaginary world, and it’s people. You will want to live in it, stir things up, and generally live vicariously through your favorite imaginary friends.

After fully completing a full length narrative you will take on an even more difficult task. After re reading you will make massive editorial and structure changes which basically creates an all new novel than the one you just labored over. I need you to remember that is perfectly okay. This is a normal step all writers go through. You aren’t failing, you are honing your craft.

The three top things I need you to remember are this:

1. It will be impossible to write everyday. You are just starting out. Just because Stephen King writes 10k a day does not mean you have to write that much in order to validate you have a right to be in your chosen field. Words are useless in that quantity if you can’t use them.

2. Go easier on yourself. You can’t do everything. You have to learn how to plan your workload efficiently, but also maintaining a personal life. There is no point in secluding yourself away to build a better life if you are unable to enjoy said life. There has to be balance in everything we do. You do just as much (if not more) work on your writing away from a keyboard or pen with paper. You need time away from it in order to think about it. You need that distance to look at it objectively.

3. The story chose you. This is because you are the only person that for the time being will care about it. Like a new mother, once the ‘newness’ wears off, people stop calling and visiting. You gave birth to an idea, and you are the only one strong enough to maintain its life. A time will come when others will be as in love with your work as you, but for the time being you are this ideas parent. It is your job to raise it and help it walk on its own two legs. You will make mistakes, and you will learn from it. You are both better and stronger than the sum of your parts.

Above all, I need you to know this action you are going to take will transform your life. As you are going through it, you will insist it isn’t for the better, but I can assure you that it is. Everything that is holding you back will be removed. You will not be weighted down any longer, even though it seems like it is lifting you up right now. You are about to put in a tiny amount of work that will greatly impact and change the complete course of your life positively.

As I am writing this my employer ordered us back to work even with a stay at home order, so I am writing this in haste. (This is being scheduled to appear at a later date.)

DiInferi Reveille Book 1 Synopsis is currently being revised for the first query letter to be sent out sometime this week.

BONUS UPDATE

Di Inferi Book 2 is currently in developmental phases! That’s right- Book two is officially started. I am currently in the outlining phases, however have many plot points that are sure to tantalize, horrify, and above all entertain.

I remember the moment I knew I was meant to be a writer. Before then I knew I WANTED to be a writer, but it wasn’t until that one day I confirmed it. All my life I have been writing, wether it was on something, or inside my head. I would make up stories about people I would see walking on the street, and had no idea as a child that was not normal.

Oddly enough it first occurred when I completed my first screenplay, and received feedback from the actress I wanted to star as the lead. A little bit of info about that project was that it was a zombie film. This actress had seen her fair share of B Horror scripts before her and she would frequently pass. She loved my screenplay and wanted to talk about how I developed it.

She told me I had obscene writing talent, and depth. Here’s why. That script was my process of coping with my fathers death. I chose to write about cancer as the Zombie horde, and chose to stress the interpersonal relationships between characters in an abstract fashion. I also took the time to turn generic tropes of the Genera around.

So I challenge you to look at your writing with new critical eyes. If the underlying conflict isn’t breaking your heart a bit, tweak it until it does.

With the current state of the world and the pandemic, I take my chosen career as a writer very seriously.

First and foremost, people need content right now. They are terrified and they need to have something to immerse themselves into instead of refreshing minute by minute updates on their respective news apps. We are on the frontlines of caring for our community and fellow humans. In the most dire of services. Maintaining someone’s mental health through escapism.

Second, with the devastating death toll in Italy, we learn how important it is to honor our lineage and culture. Italian blood runs through my veins, and with these deaths a part of my bloodlines way of life as well. Even though (for the time being before the virus inevitably mutates) mostly the elderly have died, that was a huge chunk of our culture. The elderly were walking encyclopedias of information we took for granted.

These people were open books to remind us of who we are and how we conduct ourselves, like we have for thousands of years. It is the equivalent of a book burning. When they die, a part of us will loose who we are as a whole. We are what is left of humanities culture.

Something magical occurred to me. As writers, we don’t read in order to be entertained and/or learn. We consume the words of others and use those words to build our stories.

Think about it. You are what you eat. You write what you read.

This thought made me stop and truly think about how many books I had read before I finished my first novel. Ten. I read ten during that time. It is important to note they were all over 50k words. That’s OVER 500 THOUSAND words that went through my brain before I stopped my stories narrative.

After you realize that it is only a numbers game – the more you read, the more you write. The more quickly you are finished.