Author: taniacreations

Tania is a Brazilian born writer living in Sydney, Australia. Writing is one of the most essential parts of her self. It is the passion she pursues and the inspiration that comes knocking in the middle of the night.

Simply Gerva, an Australian-Brazilian Romance

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Simplesmente Gerva is my second self-published book at Amazon in Portuguese from Brasil. It is a fictional romance which was created in a very interesting way. I met another Brazilian writer and we decided, almost as a joke, to write a book in collaboration. The idea was that I would write a part and send to my co-author, then he would continue the story as he saw fit and send it back to me.

Capa Simplesmente Gerva

It took us months, I spent time in Brazil, then he moved to Perth, then he went to Brazil, I came back, and we kept writing.

We never knew what was going to happen, we had no plan for the story, what moved us forward was the character, Gerva. The end result was quite difficult to polish because of this structure but the writing was a great pleasure.

Unfortunately, it is not translatable, there are so many cultural references that it would become very strange if attempted in another Language.

Gerva is a typical Brazilian guy, with his forró dancing, his sensuality and flexibility in life. He meets a Brazilian muse and an Australian girl and with them lives many adventures.

I am in the process of writing the second book of the series, a continuation of this first story. Although my co-author lost interest in the project I am committed to the same process as observed in the first book: writing without knowing where the character will take me.

If you read Portuguese, note that you have to buy the book from the market where your Amazon account is registered:

You can read Kindle books in any device.

The Failed Minute Meditation

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This was a failure. My friend and I created a Minute Meditation app, except it never worked… Recently I started working at an app creating company and one of the super-smart-expert-in-creating-apps-guys told me: it is not possible to make it work. Because I have tried so hard at the time and exchanged a lot of communications with the contracted app developers, I actually understood why. Cannot explain though, it has to do with the way notifications and alarms work on iPhones.

It was the simplest of apps, basically not much fancier than an alarm. We spent months with back and forwards emails, screen-shots, and broken communication with people who clearly, like us, were not first-language English speakers. Except that they had a lot of difficulty in understanding and communicating the issues.

They failed to alert us that technically there was a limitation to the project.

At the time it seemed like the most brilliant idea ever, especially because I have ideas for other exciting apps and this one seemed like a good starting point.

‘I’m going on a meditation retreat’ my friend said to me.

‘Seriously?’

‘Yeah, I’ll send you the details in case I go missing!’

She didn’t go missing. In fact it was great. As I have this habit of learning from other’s experiences, I ended up partnering up with her and attempting to create this app. The idea was to create the chance to stop for a minute per hour to breathe and meditate, something designed for busy people.

Accepting failures is a big challenge for me, and being able to laugh at this maybe means I have learnt and moved on.

This is my record of the attempt, a record of the creation even if it didn’t work. Because risks are taken with the possibility of failure and forgetting the failures might make you forget the teachings from it.

With the experience, I have learnt that hiring cheap, overseas, freelancer developers is not worth it.I understand much better now the need to think deeply about the requirements of projects. Extrapolating to everything: unless you have the resources to create a proper product, paying high quality contractors, you better not do it. It is a waste of effort, energy and money. 

Minute Meditation ScreenMinute Meditation OptionsMinute Meditation Texts

This is what I wrote for the app:

What is One Minute Meditation?

It is the opportunity to stop, for one minute per hour, to meditate. Meditating may seem hard, but doing it for one minute at a time makes it easy. By doing so, you will tap into a new resource to change your quality of life. Get connected with yourself as a soul, as an infinite being of light. 

One Minute Meditation is taking responsibility for your well-being. 

See the settings to choose how many times you would like to do it per day.

How to Meditate?

Make your world hush for a minute. Breathe, just breathe. Inhale the energy, exhale what doesn’t serve you.

Look at the meditation screen and feel all your senses: see, smell, listen, taste and touch.

Be present, in the present, for the present alone. The next minute doesn’t exist yet. The previous minute is an illusion, as it is gone. There is only NOW and YOU. For one minute.

By practicing the Minute Meditation one or more times a day, you will train your brain to feel the present. You will expand your tranquillity and awareness – bringing new magic to your life. Problems and limits may disappear.

You will see new possibilities, feel energised and be opened to new levels of achievement. Our intuition loves meditation. Enjoy!

A Multicultural Ghost, Fio da Meada

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Fio da Meada is the first book I have published. It was the first time I got over the fear of putting my writing out there and self-published at Amazon in Portuguese from Brasil, my mother language.

Fio da Meada, Cover

The stories are about a ghost who finds himself following a woman in the Manly Ferry, in Sydney. This fiction is based on the stories I have collected from my grandfather’s real-life. He was unique, with many funny tales, he was someone who enriched his life — before mobile phones and even telephones — with pranks and imagination.

The strongest image I have of him is this handsome older man, poorly dressed, with shorts my grandmother had been begging to be thrown out for years; with the softest shirt with a couple of wholes. We are seated in the small fishing pier in front of our ranch, for hours in silence. I can smell fish scales and worms. He is like a statue looking at the tip of the fishing rod. When he gets tired he gets up, find a large rock and throw it in the water creating a large splash. He ruins the fishing for me and the others, father, sister, cousins; then he walks away laughing out loud while we scream at him.

vovo01  avos_0002.jpg

If you read Portuguese, note that you have to buy the book from the market where your Amazon account is registered:

You can read Kindle books in any device.

Fio da Meada, um fantasma multicultural

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Fio da Meada é minha primeira publicação, um livro eletrônico disponível na Amazon.

Fio da Meada, Cover

A principal personagem desse livro é um fantasma. Um homem que viveu e morreu e se encontra em uma nova existência pós-morte. Me disseram que ele é muito interessante, com suas lembranças de velhas traquinagens, e que consegui contar sua história num livro gostoso de ler, leve e divertido.
A aventura de escrever se torna mais intensa a cada dia, com meus pequenos passinhos vou galgando essa escadaria de realizar meus sonhos.
A decisão de publicar eletronicamente veio por ser a maneira mais moderna e eficiente que encontrei. Apesar de ser uma auto-publicação me dediquei para produzir um livro de qualidade. A revisão e a capa foram feitas por profissionais e passei um mês pesquisando intensamente para fazer a melhor formatação do arquivo especialmente para Kindle, o software da Amazon.
O Kindle pode ser obtido gratuitamente na Amazon para que se possa ler livros no computador, no telefone, ou no tablet. Há uma opção de baixar uma amostra do livro, as primeiras páginas para o leitor ver se gosta. Existe também o aparelho Kindle que é um leitor de livros eletrônicos muito leve e interessante.
Estive numa série de palestras no festival de escritores de Sydney e me diverti com o comentário de uma editora: “ler não é tão importante quanto comprar os livros, comprem livros! E, melhor ainda, se vocês não gostarem, eu lhes dou minha permissão para parar a leitura no meio!”
Portanto: comprem meu livro! Se gostarem, coloquem um comentário lá na Amazon.

Amazon do Brasil: www.amazon.com.br/dp/B007XAJOFM
Amazon da Australia: www.amazon.com.au/dp/B007XAJOFM

Simplesmente Gerva, livro 1

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Simplesmente Gerva é o primeiro de uma série de livros que pretendo escrever e publicar com o personagem Roberto Gervázio Cidinha de Moraes, o Gerva.

Capa Simplesmente Gerva

Gerva é um personagem com características que eu também possuo, como a escrita, mas em certos aspectos é meu completo oposto. O fato de que foi criado em conjunto com outro escritor não faz Gerva menos meu, e a pergunta permanece: de onde ele, ou a inspiração dele, vem? Independentemente de sua origem ou inspiração, ele me faz rir e traz satisfação. Apesar de ser um tanto safado, um bocado imaturo, boca suja e impulsivo, Gerva tem um bom coração e seu jeito sincero me diverte.

Mesmo as aventuras que eu mesma escrevi, (não meu co-autor) parece que foram criadas pelo próprio Gerva e não por mim.

“Simplesmente Gerva” é o primeiro livro da série, onde o leitor acompanha Gerva em sua pequena cidade Lagoinha, suas viagens, as mulheres que ele conhece e seu gato o Geremias.

O gato é interessante por ser tão tipicamente gato e, da mesma maneira, Gerva é tão tipicamente brasileiro que se torna atraente. Sua interação com outras culturas  começa nesse livro quando ele conhece a australiana Jane, até então ele nem pensava no mundão lá fora.

Para saber quem é o Gerva e a Australiana Jane, leia o livro:

Simplesmente Gerva: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00M5NICLY

Amazon do Brasil: http://www.amazon.com.br/dp/B00M5NICLY

Amazon da Australia: http://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B00M5NICLY

The Structure

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How I structure my ideas is firstly by keeping notes in any way on my reach to put down ideas. In paper, on the phone, in voice notes and written bits and pieces. Early morning, middle of the night, and during the day.

Then I expand these notes to include the details that kept coming to me with or without my authorisation. The filling of these ideas assault me in dreams, in the shower, when I go to the toiled during my working day. But they come more when I am walking.

Next I start writing what needs to be put down, the parts that if I don’t make real will keep annoying me incessantly, these are the texts that won’t go away, that will fill my thoughts and ideas until they are resting in a physical form.

Following I have to organise where it all goes and write the other bits, the ones I had only the sketches for before.

Depending on the project it doesn’t have a pre-created structure. The book I have written in Portuguese, Simplesmente Gerva, has been created in a series of emails between my co-author and myself, and we never knew what the other was going to write.

I am now writing the continuation of this book and, although I am writing on my own, I am being faithful to the proposal. I don’t know much of what is going to happen to the character, I sit down to write and let him take me wherever he wants.

Sometimes a whole idea is born from one thought, one example is the one I mentioned in another post: what would a writer do if they didn’t have the means to write and which situation would that be.

To surmise, I impose no rules to myself. Whatever works, works.

The Technique

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I write using the many parts of myself. I write using both my home language, Portuguese, and my adopted language, the one of my fantasies and dreams, English. One day I may write in French, who knows. I write using the young me that lives inside and the older one. The wise and the silly. I write using my South American style, some fantastic reality, chopping off sentences (see the one just before) while writing really long paragraphs in other times.

I write with my own sense of fun, my original abilities and I have upgraded my technique with a Masters degree in Arts – Creative Writing from UTS. I am far from a literary writer, (as far as I can, actually), I aim to write in a straightforward way in plain English (or plain Portuguese, from Brazil). This was not without challenges during my studies, it was difficult to separate what was valid feedback on my style and what was my own Brazilian flavour, or what was because of the simplicity in the style. I guess I am still searching for this distinction.

I write following mostly the inspiration and the voice I found when I was seventeen, but try to give it a bit more style and maturity. I keep honing the knowledge, keep reading, listening and viewing anything that will enrich and feed my writing.

What do you Write?

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Whenever I tell someone that writing is my passion they come up with the difficult question ‘what do you write?’.

‘I write letters in a blank page’ doesn’t really explain, does it?

What I do is creative writing, short stories, blogs or novels. No poetry, no journalistic pieces. I write fiction and non-fiction, although my non-fiction reads like fiction. I love writing with humour but I also get into deep depressing stories and tales, at times.

My main subjects are day-to-day adventures and relationships. I like romance.

I would probably say that there is an element of sensuality in my writing. I am an kinaesthetic person and movement of bodies attract me even in bi-dimensional black and white letters.

I write anything that inspires me.

The Tools

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At the moment, I have 3 loves-of-my-life (how do you pluralise such a word?):

1) my computer — where all my ideas are stored. A present from my parents, the best ever. My lovely MacBook Air, that is the size and lightness of an ipad, with a phenomenal, smooth keypad, from a company that is aligned to my own values: creativity, design, beauty, sensuality (yes, the mac has a sensual design) and agility. I can carry it everywhere and write anywhere, and it has another love-of-my-life in it: the software for writing…

2) my scrivener — the discovery that changed my writing life. It made it very easy to keep all my ideas organised. It is also perfect for compiling projects. When creating a book you can keep the ideas for the chapters organised and then go into each part and just fill it with the actual writing. Next you are able to move the parts around, keep notes, research items, etc. Finally it exports to many formats including most, if not all, e-book publishing formats. Love, love, love it!

3) my nespresso — the food, albeit a drink, for my thoughts. With which I create magical Moccas with melted chocolate that energise my ideas. Another gift from my parents and my sister.

The WordPress in my Mind

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I write because I do it anyway, even without pen and paper, or without a computer. In my head I write all the time, for everything that happens around me I create an entry in my imaginary post. I even speak as I write sometimes and the thing that would give me the biggest grief would be to be made to stop writing.

I have created stories about what would happen to me if I was made to stop writing or if I didn’t have the means to do it. In which situation would you not have access to writing? And then, what would you do?

I would go insane because when I need writing something, it enters a loop in my head and I repeat the tale over and over in my head — the dialogues or the paragraphs — until I can sit down and ‘download’ them.

If I had no access to a computer, or to pen and paper, I would have to remember everything my experiences are creating… I guess my memory would expand and so would my despair.