There was a time in my life, not long ago, when writing felt like an almost impossible task.
Due to time constrictions, I was never able to give myself the time to sit and write. Or so I thought.
In retrospective, I think the issue was that I was immensely focused on work, and while I did fantasize about writing, and sharing my books and stories with people, I never really made that dream into a concrete plan.
If you ever wrote anything, you're probably familiar with that looming pressure that comes onto you when you sit in front of your computer, or notebook, and ideas just won't come out. When I was younger, I used to write a lot. In fact my production was monstrous (we won't talk about the quality here...); I think it may have been for that reason that when I used to sit to write something and my best work just wouldn't come out, I used to tell myself I had no time.
In reality the time was there, but a lot of it, evidently needed to be used to ponder and organize my thoughts.
I'm the kind of person who "writes" in my head first. By the time I start to put words on paper, my story and synopsis are already outlined in my head.
It took the pandemic for me to finally sit and write like I do now.
See, when I was a kid, my dream, unlike those of my peers, was to become an author. Yeah I was that boring. Like things often go, that dream of mine was put on hold for so long that it became barely a memory.
When the pandemic hit and the world around me changed, I lost a lot of the things I was clinging to. Like, say, my job, or the big investment I had dropped in a property I wanted to make into a large bed and breakfast in the outskirts of Tokyo.
So yeah, now I had a lot of time. More so than I'd ever hoped to have. It was a pretty bad time, but it did give me the opportunity to sit and finally do the thing I had been dodging for a long time: writing (but also all the thinking and planning that came with it).
Boy am I happy I did.
FROM NO WRITING TO MORE WRITING THAN I CAN HANDLE
While writing The Eight Lights, I would have never thought I'd be able to work on multiple projects at the same time.
Well, The Eight Lights is now in its editing process, which requires a lot of focus, and re-writing, but I am also working on the sequel of The Eight Lights. Still, I wanted to present something exclusive to my patrons, so I decided to start writing LIGHTBRINGER, which I post on Patreon, as I write it, for my supporters to share in the process and give me their input.
Yet, what I wanted to do was not just writing, but also sharing, and in order to share you need to have people to share with.
That was and still is, by far, the biggest hurdle for me to surpass. How do you make your writing known to people? How to you go from zero readers, to five, to ten, to one hundred and more?
So I did what any sensible person living in these times would do. I went on the internet and did research. So much research I could honestly give a Ted Talk on how to to become a popular author, yet I am not. At all.
That research process helped a lot, but not in the way I thought it would have. It made me realize that there is no secret sauce, no wax on wax off, not one size fits all.
I realized that my method had to be catered around me and what I do and my contacts. That was easy... I had no contacts. I had to start from literal zero, since no one I knew was even remotely interested in reading or writing. I knew no one in the industry. I joined no FB groups, I had no website, no blog, no channels.
The answer was right there. I had to write more, and put it out there. Slowly advertise, try to reach people, hopefully see how they respond. Grow a community, interact, and so on.
I am currently still at step one, maybe one and a half. I have social media, I created a website (not without help - shoutout to Karl), and I am going out there, on forums, live streams and a lot more.
Yet, that was not enough. I wanted to write more. That's right I wanted to write more, not just needed. When I say that I ended up with more writing than I can handle, I don't mean to say that I am overwhelmed. It means that while I'm writing A LOT, I want to write more, but there aren't enough hours in a day.
In addition to those novels I mentioned up there, I started writing short stories for the internet, Patreon, and contests, as well as this very blog you're reading (hello, mom!), and another one about Japan
because it may have nothing to do with writing but I really like the country and writing about it.
A few years back I could not stand to sit in front of a computer without being able to put word on "paper," so I just gave up trying. Now I can't stand it just the same, but I just write one of the many things I want to write.
I realized that my constriction was that I was so focused on making one project THE project, that I forgot that there is a lot I want to write about. I realized that quality won't necessarily suffer simply because I bounce from one writing project to the other. In fact, it keeps my passion alive, and my brain nice and active.
In a weird way, working on so many different things, is making it so that I can more easily focus on the project at hand at any given time.
Now though, I am doing everything I can (and will continue to do so) and the ball is really in you court! Will you help me going from one reader, to ten, to 100, to infinity?
There is so much you can do to support, I can't even list all the options.
Start by sharing this or other blog entries, if you like them. Take a look at my Patreon, podcast, live streams... You know what? here are ALL my links ---> 
Even just contacting me or writing a comment with your thoughts, ideas, suggestion, words of support or criticism, helps more than you think!
Read you soon!
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