Here I am at the edge

  More Readers One way of getting more readers for the blog would be to write more posts, but what is the motivation when most posts are not read by more than a dozen people? That is being generous as the average is below 10 these days :(  :(

 I have plenty of ideas for a story Several years ago, I answered a question some of my colleagues in the writing community had asked many times - could I write a novel ? At first, the idea of writing over 40, 000 words for a story appeared impossible for me, but in the end, I only failed to achieve the goal because after two years of writing a story that started out as a short story of around 2,500 words I stopped my story at 38,000 words, but in my mind the story was not over. I stopped because I thought I'd never get the story to sell, so why continue? I am not seeking a publisher , I could take the prospect of writing a novel as a challenge to my ability to write .

  The only reason to finish my short story selections The only motivation I have to finish off some of my short story selection is to say I did my best to end the story well as few, if any, will be sold. Last year, I had a clear out and throw out over a decade's worth of short stories I had started but not go to finish for various reasons, mainly because I rarely sell any so I thought why continue, or as the say in Spain  " donde esta la motivacion " - where is the motivation?

What happened?   It's hard to imagine these days, but several years ago people used to be amazed at how much quality writing I could do, and maintain the quality. So,  que pasó, what happened? Reality is what happened, some time in 2015 I realised that nobody was buying my short stories, even though the e-books on Draft2Digital only cost a few coppers. I kept hoping my luck would change, but the longer it went on, the more I knew my time had run its course.

The culture destroyer. There is no doubt that life in Spain during the Franco years was miserable; one of his greatest crimes was dragging back the culture that the country had to the Middle Ages by banning most of the artists/ writers to exile if you were lucky to escape. Some like Federico Lorca (shown above) were executed like dogs, his body has never been found. The exception to this rule is Salvador Dali who thrived during this period. There are two stories called El Hombre Oculto, one tells of a man who hid in house for the period until Franco died, still believing someone would betray though his family told him that people no longer cared about what he was doing. The other is about a man who hid in a cellar under his house until Franco died. Very few of the ones fortunate to afford the price of an escape returned, if you were in your 20's you would have been at least in your late 50's when Franco died, and what would you come back to; a country you don...

Where is the motivation? Last week, I thought I might have found some motivation as my story L'Enfant Terrible appeared to be coming alive again. I was enjoying writing the story as the character was about to spend some time in Spain  researching some mysteries and exploring some sights of the Civil War.  My new motivation is to copy Telemundo Novellas from Mexico off YouTube, as they are not available to buy.