October Update

I’ve been here for three months and in that time I’ve received many follows, likes, comments, and a lot of encouragement from all of you. Thank you so much!

In this time, I’ve transcribed some of my notebooks, updated an old fanfic, read a lot about writing, and decided to write a short story.

Of course, in these three months I’ve also created this blog and my new account on Twitter. I even got a new mobile phone with a better camera that will hopefully allow me to take better photos for this blog (you’ve seen some of the old ones, like the photo in this post). I’m now trying to find some books that will allow me to do some research before I write the short story.

For this short story, I had some ideas:

Summer crush that turns into love. Takes place in Northern Spain, one of them is a foreigner and there’s a dog involved.
Rich boy with an old building meets student that not-so-secretly wants to turn it into a museum. There might be ghosts in the building, though.
A young superhero from Spain has a crush on another European superhero and tries to get an Erasmus scholarship so he can meet his hero.
This super popular guy finds himself without home, family or friends just before the holidays, but there’s a serious guy in the office who never talks to anyone but offers his help.

So, which one do you prefer?

And since November is approaching, should I try to do something like NaNoWriMo? If it’s too stressful, I may have to pass this year.

Have you tried it before? Did it work for you?

Logo of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month)

Why do I write in English?

Someone recently asked me if I was going to write in English or Spanish. And the truth is… I don’t know.

Well, I know what I want, but my feelings are complicated. I want to write in English, but English is not my First Language, so I wonder if I should and if my writing would be any good.

Writing in Spanish is weird for me, though. I’ve read and studied Literature in English for decades, so Spanish sounds weird to me sometimes (Especially explicit language, which sounds too technical or too cheesy). Still, I would be able to tell if my writing is crap in Spanish, right? Maybe.

For me, the main reason to write in Spanish is that… I want to write Romance with LGBTQ+ characters, and it’s something one can’t easily find in Spanish. I love helping and I want to help Spanish speakers find stories that will make them happy (which is why I became a translator, but that’s another story).

However, I love writing and reading in English, and if I was confident about both my English and my writing, I wouldn’t hesitate: I’d write in English first, and then see if I want to publish anything in Spanish as well.

Maybe that’s what I should do. Just follow the Fake-it-till-you-make-it philosophy. After all, there are proofreaders, editors and beta-readers out there. I wouldn’t be alone.

Spanish_Armada_fireships — Launch of English fireships against the Spanish Armada. Taken from Wikimedia Commons.

New avatar and domain

I finally decided what pic to use as an avatar! I will use something different in the future, but I hope this one is good enough for now.

Sol_Vera_Avatar — My new profile picture.

Do you like it? I’ve chosen this image (with assistance) because it’s a photo I took of the sky in Madrid. You can see the sun, which is “sol” in Spanish, together with the clouds and sky I like so much.

Dusks with beautiful colors are very common and popular in Madrid, all thanks to pollution (I wish I was joking), so I thought it would be good to have an image people could associate with my name and origins.

I have also updated my twitter account with the same profile picture and then embedded the twitter widget on the sidebar here.

Now I just need a new header, right?

By the way, it’s probably too early, but I just got a domain for this blog. It’s https://solverawriter.com/ and… we’ll see if it’s worth it!

What do I write about?

First of all, thank you for all your likes, comments and questions! It was a surprise to find so much support and encouragement after just a few posts.

Some of you have asked me about the actual contents of my notebooks. In other words, you wanted to know what I write about. I don’t know if you meant everything that makes it into my notebooks or what may become a book one day, but I’m assuming it’s the latter.

I’m still reticent about giving details because I’m not sure about anything I do… and I’ve changed plot and characters too many times to ignore the very real possibility that it may happen again. I’m aware that nothing is set in stone… but I can give you (and myself) some general ideas.

These are the stories I’d like to finish one day:

A fantasy romance with a disabled MC.
A paranormal/historical romance set in Madrid, Spain.
Another fantasy romance with an MC trapped in someone else’s body.
A paranormal/historical romance set in Alcalá de Henares, Spain.

Since I love fantasy, historical and paranormal romance, I want to write those, but I keep having ideas for other contemporary stories with main characters and situations that’d be fun to write. Perhaps even a superhero romance…

Maybe I should start with those, since the research wouldn’t take that long? I could write a short story first….

As you can see, I can’t make up my mind.

Alcala_de_henares_plaza_cervantes — Alcalá de Henares. Photo taken from Wikimedia Commons

How did I start writing?

I got asked this question and the short answer is: I’m not sure. I’ve been thinking about it, and I remembered I used to write diaries and very long letters, but I wasn’t very good at keeping diaries and people tend to stop replying to handwritten letters, so that was it.

But then I started what I didn’t know was a self-insert fanfic when I was 10 or 11 years old. As you might have guessed, I’m very glad I never shared it online (I didn’t have a computer and AO3 didn’t even exist back then!), but it must be hidden somewhere. And it shall remain that way forever. It was an animorphs fanfic, if you have to know, and all my friends were in it, of course. Together we were fighting the Yeerks, saving the Earth, getting Tobias to open up about his feelings…. the usual. There was no romance because I wasn’t the only one who liked Tobias, so I didn’t want to make him choose. Better to keep all options open and all parties interested.

I was 13 when my parents heard about a writing workshop for kids. I went there every Sunday for a while, but they cancelled it. Some years later, they decided to open one for teens with the same teacher, and I joined again. And after a while, I joined the one for adults, even though I wasn’t an adult yet. There was a a very intelligent boy who was even younger than me, a goth girl that fought ignorance and intolerance in every way, a Tunisian girl whose writing flowed as beautifully as her drawings, a journalist that hated journalism, a historian that loved auctions, and lots of mate (the drink). One day I got to touch a piano score handwritten by Chopin. It was amazing.

We even published a few books, but nothing too long or elaborate.

After the workshop ended for good, I tried writing a couple of things. But not having a teacher who would tell me if they were good or not… meant I just decided they weren’t. To be honest, my fantasy story was too childish and still a bit of a self-insert, so I think I was right to abandon it. Still, I didn’t want to let some of the characters die, and I kept thinking about them… until I got that notebook I told you about. That’s when I decided to rewrite the whole story now that I know what I want. More or less.

Years have passed and I’m still not confident enough, but I’ve decided to keep writing. Mainly because I enjoy it. But also because these stories and characters are eating my brain until I let them out.

Books don’t write themselves, yes, but they also take a lot of space until you do.

Power-of-words-by-antonio-litterio-creative-commons-attribution-share-alike-3-0 — Taken from Wikimedia Commons.

Why did I choose that pen name?

Yes, Sol Vera is a pseudonym, and I have to use it for various reason. I have a day job, I use my real name for other kind of publications, I’m terribly shy…

I wanted so use a short name that shared my nationality (Spanish) and sounded familiar. People who know me have said it reminds them of my personality, so maybe I chose well after all.

I chose Sol because it means “sun”, which is something typically Spanish. A vera can be the bank of a river or somebody’s side (as in she stood by my side), but also half of the Spanish name for spring, “primavera”, which is the season in which I was born.

I can still change it if I find something wrong with it, so let me know if you think it’s a bad name for any reason!