Touch of Reality

One of the advantages of self-publishing is that you get to call your own production schedule. You decide when and how to market and promote and how often to release titles.

I seem to be stuck on park and this creative car is not going anywhere at the moment.

This doesn’t mean that because I have not been writing that I am been completely idle. I have been gathering research materials for one project and slowly working towards a translation of another.

Of course, it occurred to me as I gently evoked a scene I’d witnessed – that must become a scene of something, a short or a larger work that is as yet undefined – that being stuck in a rut depends on the living situation. I am living in limbo, surrounded by uncertainty, and that is what fuels creativity (the living, I mean).

I walked about a mile last Friday, something I have not done in quite some time. In that stroll I caught smells and sights and three weather changes that made me hyper-vigilant of the details that framed the experience.

When I sat at the crack of dawn, with iPod in hand, and dictated the story, it occurred to me that only in this specific time would it be possible to carry an enormous library in a device that weights less than a pound, including audiobooks, my own works and now files for new works – I can research in this tiny thing and even edit as I wish.

But there was another realization made a week ago as I interviewed for a very interesting job: if I have to rearrange my priorities because my schedule changes, it just means that the next project that gets released may well be the Latin American cookbook! (Especially because the job is physically just blocks from Little Brazil and I’m eagerly awaiting the opportunity to research that cuisine… Oh, the things I am willing to do for my art!)

There is no lose feature to this, it’s all win-win.

Self-publishing makes me a better person because it allows me to look at any situation, reach a compromise or a new commitment that always opens the door to the silver lining in every opportunity that presents itself.

 Life is a tool for creativity. So is the iPod Touch!