Marcus Lopés

LGTBQIA2S+ Author, Blogger, Runner

The Relentless Writer Series

Don’t Be So Hard on Yourself

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hard on yourself

Are you a time-waster? I am. Sometimes. As a writer who’s always had a day job, I have always tried to be intentional about making time to create. And I like to think that, for the most part, I have done that. I write consistently during the early morning hours. When necessary, I take vacation days to finish editing a novel, review galleys, or make sure everything is set for a book’s release. When I consider every minute outside of work to be precious, I try not to waste them. But I’m human. And sometimes distractions pull us away from what you think matters most. When that happens, how do you learn to not be so hard on yourself? [Read more…] about Don’t Be So Hard on Yourself

When Providence Moves

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providence

When I walked out of the office on 28 June 2023, I had no idea what I was going to do in the days that followed. Rest? Absolutely. Write? Of course. Run? You betcha. Immediately look for another job? Meh. I recognized that I needed time to ‘detox’ and to get my bearings. The thing is, we never know when providence will move.

Listen to Your Body

Leaving my job just ahead of the Canada Day long weekend, I had a bit of a plan formulated in my head: take a few days, maybe a week, to rest and then ‘begin’ the job search. (Oh, the lies we tell ourselves!) What I didn’t count on was the level of exhaustion that tackled me and pinned me down. To train for the marathon and write before work, I’d been getting up around 2:30 am for months. That made for longs days. Was it any wonder I felt like someone had parked a GMC Sierra on my chest? [Read more…] about When Providence Moves

How Running Changed My Life

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When I stepped into those jeans—a size 38 waist—I was horrified that they fit. The other times my then partner tried to hand them down to me they were too big. Now I was shocked into action. I had to do something, but there was just one itsy-bitsy problem. Too self-conscious about my own body, the odds of me joining a gym were a million to one. I never had a six-pack or anything close to it. I did everything to avoid changing in public locker rooms. Take my shirt off? Pfft. But I had to lose weight, so I did the only thing that seemed ‘doable’: I started running. [Read more…] about How Running Changed My Life

Reality Check

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reality check

Time for a reality check.

When I was a kid, I really had know idea what I wanted to be when I grew up. At six, I started piano lessons and thought briefly about a music career. But back then I never had the discipline required to become a professional musician. Besides (and if you’ve been following me for a while you’ve heard this before), my mother was against the idea of her son going into an industry filled with “alcoholics and drug addicts” (her words, not mine). And because my parents never had the opportunity, my sister and I were encouraged to go to university, which we did, and obtained our degrees.

Graduating from university didn’t solve my dilemma. I left there even more confused and without a solid plan for the future. What was I going to do with a degree in French Literature when I didn’t want to teach? Studying French literature—and authors like Jean-Paul Sartre, George Sand, André Gide, and others—sparked my interest in writing. If I hadn’t gone that route, I probably wouldn’t be a writer today. [Read more…] about Reality Check

Know When to Walk Away

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walk away

You don’t have to be a country music fan to know some of the lyrics to one of Kenny Rogers’s hit songs, “The Gambler.” And for a while, the chorus to that song has played on repeat in my head: “You got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em, know when to walk away, know when to run.” And walking away isn’t always easy. It can be downright freakin’ hard. But if you can walk away, it can change your life. [Read more…] about Know When to Walk Away