by Jahzeel Dionne V. Ybasco

Good things kept happening to me last month. My family and I had our second family reunion, I successfully finished the marathon, my family also celebrated Fathers’ Day. I was also able to get the highest number of classes in our company for three straight times. But what served as the icing on the cake last month is how I was able to release my book, “To Be Continued”** in Amazon and Kindle. It is an amazing feeling, being able to do what I have always loved, writing. It is even a better feeling that I have been able to publish my work.

When I was a kid it was just a petty dream. I was then playing with characters in my head, adding personalities here and there, coming up with different plots. I had several notebooks full of childish stories, most of them similar to animes I saw. There were times when I ran out of character names so I “borrowed” some from those animations. Side characters from popular ones became my favorites and I even made them a number of fanfictions. Then, three years, when addiction to animation temporarily stopped, I began having crazy ideas that it was about time for me to make my own story.

The process was difficult but interesting. Old ideas got trampled by new ones. I started creating and recycling names. Opportunities to write were difficult to come by. Then I realized that making use of my time when I did not have classes was the best way to face this challenge. Unlike before when I had to check papers after an examination period, which by the way I tend to miss every now and then, I could just maximize my time reading novels, editing my work, imagining new things, and putting them on print.

Seeing my work in Amazon and Kindle is like witnessing the culmination of all my efforts. I still get upset from time to time that my statistics doesn’t move any higher but I still have a long way to go. Allen, one of my students, told me that I shouldn’t lose focus on my real target. My target is to write and not just to get any royalty. Oh boy! How he woke me up! He is right. Publishing my first novel should serve as the gate for me to publish more. I am ecstatic that I have one book up there but I know I’ll be happier in the future once I have completed the series and maybe produce a fantasy novel.

*title inspired by one island in One Piece

**You can see my work here:

http://www.amazon.com/Prex-J.D.-V-Ybasco/e/B010NXS61I/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1435929755&sr=1-1