Hashtagging for a cause

If you have been following me on Twitter, chances are, you’d see me tweeting and re-tweeting things with the #SparkNA hashtag. I know I probably kind of spam my t-list with it but whatever, I love that hashtag so much I already have a separate column for it on my Tweetdeck. Har-de-har.

The hashtag is an amazing thing, actually. As someone who frequents social media sites on the regular (Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, most especially) for work and personal use, it has proven to be a handy tool for research, basically. You can find a topic of interest quickly and see what people are saying about it, and you can also get in touch with groups of people who share the same interest.

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“Let’s be brave.”

It’s barely been a week since #SparkNA began (in case you missed it, here’s a post a made about this free writing class I joined), but I’ve already learned a lot–from our facilitator, Mina Esguerra, to my very passionate support group and fellow classmates. But it all starts with bravery, it seems, and I think it very appropriate that this is our runningĀ theme for the whole writing journey we will be taking from now until early June.

The first rule: “Your Main Character must be brave.”

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A Journey On Paper Planes

It’s an awesome thing when dreams come true, isn’t it? If you had told me a few years back that I’d be able to publish a certain piece of fiction as an ebook with very minimal fuss, I’d have told you to “get out of here.” Anyone who’s lived as long as (or longer than) I have would know that getting something published is no joke. You’d have to go through certain processes and channels to even get your work considered, and that required a lot of time, money and effort. Of course, not a lot of young people could afford to expend that much, so we make do with the next best thing and publish our work on free space online such as forums and blogs.

These days, however, it has become very easy for aspiring writers to publish their work and get it recognized by reputable platforms such. For rather inexperienced writers like myself, this is a really amazing development, and I have personally embarked on this journey only a week ago when I published my first ebook, Paper Planes Back Home, on Amazon and Smashwords.

Honestly speaking, I am a newbie about all this, and everything’s still so overwhelming to me. Time and again I have experienced seeing my pseudonyms on forums, blogs, and content-sharing sites like Wattpad, but there is nothing quite like seeing your name displayed beside your book on Amazon, or Barnes & Noble, or the Apple Store. It’s pretty surreal. I admit I have spent a considerable amount of time just staring at my book’s pages and feeling so thrilled. I finally did it. Sure, I might not sell a lot of books, but goddamn, I finally have something up there with my name on it, and that’s just completely awesome.

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