I was cordially invited by fellow Hybrid Nation member Bernard Jan tp discuss my biggest pet peeves as an author. the First thing I said is, "Oh boy I'm not the one who likes to complain  a lot. In fact, I'm a very humble person and I'm used to having things go rough for me. It's simply a part of life and growing up. However, this article is about my biggest pet peeves, so let's get down to the nitty-gritty shall we?

 

My first pet peeve is distractions and it earns the top spot on my list. It earns that spot for good reasons. Let me explain, you see my time is divided into five aspects of my full-time author career. They are book promotion, networking, blogging, formatting my finished works for publishing and actually writing my books. Dare I say I managed to get four books done in a period of 6 months with these distractions. I'll admit I do have good time management skills, nevertheless though it's annoying when I want to just write my book that I get requests from ppl for links to my books or replying to one of my author friends. While I do manage to get all of these things done, I notice that one of the aspects pf my job begin to take the back burner and I have to take a day just to catch up. At the end of the day though I do take accountability of letting these small distractions get in the way of my main goals and let's face it I have only been at this for only six months so I fo get distracted easily as I continue to find ways to better myself. I'm sure when I get better at writing and become a veteran I'll be distracted less often. I say my biggest distraction is book promotion simply because my name is getting out there and I want to make sure that I keep on sending the message out. I also want to make my first book into an audio book, but I can't seem to find the time for that with all these "SELF" imposed deadlines that I put in myself. I always say for my age and experience I have gotten a lot more done than aspiring authors out there, although it has come with sleepless nights and serious backaches.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My second biggest pet peeve is time itself. 24 hours in a day is simply not enough for my goals and the fact I want to have a life, spending quality time exploring the island of Puerto Rico makes this a serious issue. There isn't much I can really do about it, it will always be 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 365 days a year. Well, except for leap years then it's 366 days, yay!!! So I try the best I can to manage my time better and although I have 4 works and a box set out there along with articles for another website, I feel that I still can do better. Sometimes I feel bad when I can't reply to an email or message on social media right away because I'm trying to catch up with what I'm doing. Everybody I know calls me the busy bee of the Hybrid Nation and I feel like that I have to, after all, I'm the founder of a growing community of aspiring writers. What helps me is that this is my full-time gig and my parents have been very supportive of my dreams, so a big thank you to them and the thank me for helping them as well getting around the island. I vow in 2017 to try to do even better in time management.

 

My third pet peeve is liars in the world of publishing and the author world in general, whether it's getting a dishonest opinion or a dishonest person to touch your work I hate liars! Just like any other trade you need, to be honest, lying will get you a bad reputation in the writing world. I learned that the hard way with my first book when I hired this person that I will not name as I have gotten over that phase of my career. To make the long story short I hired this "person" to "edit" my book and I took it for granted, mistake #1. Mistake #2 giving it to someone else to read it, in this case, my good friend Bernard Jan read the book and noted that the book had numerous mistakes. Don't get me wrong, I was pissed off and I did have a few choice words with this "Editor". He decided to refund my money if I kept quiet, so I took my money and I let bygones be bygones to just forget it. I took it as a lesson learned that you can't trust everybody who has a "title". I hate being lied to, but at the end of the day I picked myself back up and decided to forge ahead to fix the mistakes that were made. As a result, my first book is something I can be proud of and I learned a valuable lesson that I hope all of you will learn as well.

 

Finally, my last pet peeve is Bernard Jan himself, he bugs the heck out of me and always has some wise crack to use against me. He also is one who can't take a joke once in a while. Bernard if you're reading this you know I'm joking, right? Anyway, he isn't annoying, he's a cool dude who's been in the trade much longer than I have been. I just wanted to put this in as a small joke as his dream is to pull my ears! lol

 

I hope you enjoyed this article describing what annoys me and how I manage to remain so positive and focused on my mission. By the way, I invite my fellow members including Benjamin Munday, Josh Davis, Grant Leishman, J.F. Fleming and Alison Clarke to write a blog post or do a video on their pet peeves as an author/writer! Clicking their names will take you to their page on the nation's site!

Also, check out Bernard Jan's page and his website!

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Check out the video podcast below!