You might have noticed – or not – that I haven’t been writing here much. But believe you me, I HAVE been writing. A lot. Like 119 pages’ worth of musings, reflections, admissions, encouragements, warnings, lessons, insights, regrets. I’m finally far enough along in my Pandemic Project to proclaim it publicly. With excitement and a huge gulp.
I am writing a book!
It’s a project I have been pondering for about 5-8
years. And then a surgery in the midst
of The Pandemic kicked me from dangling my feet in the authorship pool to finally
jumping in head first. Because, you know, I had time.
Interesting thing about writing a book during a global pandemic: I had a ton of time and very little
motivation. I started then stopped then sputtered along. I spent quite a few
weeks (well, ok, months) feeling guilty for not being more productive with my
copious couch time. Well, other than not getting Covid. Eventually, after about a year of deftly
avoiding both the virus and my book, I finally faced my fears and plunged in.
To the book I mean. When I finally join
the infected ranks and plunge into Covid remains to be seen.
My book is non-fiction and what I wish I had over 20 years
ago when my life took a huge detour after I coughed and messed up my back. My
book is titled I’m FINE. – A Practical Guide to Life with Chronic Pain. It
covers a lot of ground – the emotions, the impacts, the gadgets, surgeries,
disability insurance, alternative therapies, how and where to find hope. All the stuff that defines your life when you
hurt pretty much all the time.
Writing my book has been exciting, agonizing, cathartic, scary,
and exhilarating. I have been mostly having an absolute blast, but about 15-20%
of it has been all kinds of hard and heavy lifting. The toughest part was
knowing I needed to write about things I didn’t want to think about anymore,
stuff I’ve put behind me, stuff I didn’t want to revisit. But it’s all part of
the story – and actually pretty critical stuff – so with the help of a wise and
encouraging mentor, I finally started making real progress about 10 months ago.
I am self-publishing I’m FINE. which turns out is a REALLY
BIG PROCESS. Lordy, there’s a lot to learn. I have been overwhelmed and
panicked and hyperventilatey so very many times while scouring YouTubes and
blog posts and How-To’s about how one can bypass years of rejection by ignoring
fancypants publishers and doing the book thing as a DIY adventure. The deeper I
get into this Let's Make a Book endeavor, the more I realize that writing the 119
pages was the easy part.
So far I have learned about:
- ISBN numbers and why you want to buy 10 of them
- Why having your own publishing company is wise and
incredibly easy
- The importance of fonts and their sizes
- Why and how to find an editor, an alpha reader, and some
beta readers
- Not feeling awkward while posing in a popular park for an
author photo
- Graphic designers and their world of vectors and rasters
- Citations and licensing and documenting written permissions
to reprint stuff created by other people
- Author landing pages, bios, and book descriptions and how to write all salesy and extroverted
- Trim sizes and bleeds and safe zones and gutters – publishing sounds rather dangerous, doesn’t it?
I am currently in the Beta Reader phase of this undertaking –
I have asked a few people to read Draft 6 as average readers to see how it hits
them and alert me to any huge stumbling blocks in my quest to encourage other
folks who do life with chronic pain. Once I get my
betas’ feedback, I then get to take a deep breath, adjust my glasses, ply
myself with chamomile tea, and figure out how to format my manuscript to Amazon’s
screens-upon-screens of exacting standards. I am fantasizing about being ready
to click “PRINT” sometime before July.
Stay tuned!
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| In addition to a cover design, a very talented woman named Lynn created a logo for me. I HAVE A LOGO!! |
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