To Climb Steep Hills Requires A Slow Pace At First.

William Shakespeare

Happy Belated Valentine’s Day.

Love Notes is now live on Smashwords.

From the beginning I knew that it would be difficult, that I would have to face hardships and heartbreaks, constraints and mishaps, doubts and fears, dramas and stress, thus I had to condition and reprogram my brain to be the one in charge when these bad emotions take over.

I’ll cry until I have no more tears to cry, I’ll recede from these shores for some times, I’ll scribble nonsense, dark, and frightening thoughts on papers, but I’ll never give up, at least not until I’ve pushed myself to the limits… I’ll come back, I’ll come back again and again, again and again, until I’ve tried and learned every thing that I need to learn, because the determination that burns within me is too strong, too difficult to muffle.

I need to constantly remind myself that Life is not my enemy, Life isn’t trying to bring me down, it’s just teaching me patience, showing me the mistakes that I need to correct so as to be a better writer, and self-publisher… of that I’m sure. 

But right now I’m tired, my brain isn’t working properly, and I have to milk the words to write this blog-post.

For two weeks I haven’t written or read anything, or even took the time to relax my mind, to contemplate nature and inspire myself… I’m a mess right now, a complete mess — inside out, my hair, my clothes, the laundry, my thoughts, the plants, the house, tea-time, dinner… I haven’t been able to publish Love Notes on Valentine’s Day… I haven’t been able to publish my poems in time, because I didn’t know that formatting a poetry ebook required a different style of formatting — especially on Smashwords, which is a self-publishing platform that distributes ebooks in multi-formats.

And since then I’m running a marathon, re-learning everything about formatting (page breaks and space, indents and outdents, styles, tabs), the importance of the size of files and photos… and because Love Notes was too fancy — overloaded with my Dadaesque collages, inconsistent styles and unsupported fonts, text boxes and indents, while right from the start I had chosen the wrong template… well, I had to re-do everything.

And even though on Friday I’ve finally been able to publish my poems on Smashwords.com, I’m still a little bit sceptical about this whole thing. I’ve not celebrated the publishing of my first book of poems, for it was not at all a jubilant and exalting experience for me, as all of this suddenly brought up to my mind my failure with Darcocyte… and I’m scared that I’m again doing it wrong, or made the wrong choice… and even asking myself why the hell I’m I going through such difficult tasks all alone, or even, why someone like me has chosen to write when I know perfectly that one should choose to devote their entire being and time to writing.

Writing is a profession… why imposing on myself such a great burden? I love writing, and I really want to make a living through this medium… but is it worth it? And will something positive come out of all these hassles… I’m tired, oh so tired while climbing these steep hills.