An old friend of mine once said, or possibly paraphrased, that in order to become a writer a person must only do one thing, write.
Well I today found out that assuming that such a person also wants to be paid for his craft, for an unknown writer to burst onto the scene they must either have money to burn, have contacts in high places or be very computer literate.
Following a throw away comment made by my youngest sister saying that 'I had better get a wriggle on' with my travel writing, I realised that I had been back from travelling now for almost two years and as yet there was still no sign of any book for anyone to read.
This comment was posted in reply to a FaceBook status update that I had posted, saying how far I was coming, but pondering it I then made the decision to break up my travelling into two volumes and push the first one out now instead of together later in the year, or even early next year.
About a week ago I finished the actual rewrite, and I thought that it would then be a doddle to get it self published as I had already done all the hard work.
Over the last weekend I laboured long into the night, almost missing my sisters engagement party, and with barely 10 hours sleep over 72 hours I pushed myself the entire time to get the draft, and the front and rear covers complete. Even this was not easy, as I had to root around and find several different art and publishing packages in order to get it all done.
Having to go to work Monday, I worked as usual on the train into and out of work and pausing only for a sandwich I remained up until gone 1am ensuring that I went through every section tweaking and refining it.
Setting my alarm for before 6am this morning I woke early in order to put the finishing touches on my book so that when I arrived at work this morning all I had to do was upload it onto the website and then set things in motion. If only!
First the website wanted a pdf, then it said that I hadn't embedded the fonts on the file - which I had to find out how to do. Once I did that it still do not accept it, so I had to wait to lunchtime to try again.
Over Lunch I edited it, resubmitted it and then had to rework and resubmit my cover designs as they were not in the chosen format either - despite having them saved in three different formats.
With a lot of huffing and puffing I finally got it to work and ordered myself a copy right away, and then as I was also going to try and sell it I had to create an on-line profile. Once that was done I then had to link in all the other profiles, which took up the remainder of my lunchtime - and this from a guy who has spent his entire adult life working with computers in one way or another.
I would hate to think what chance a less pc-savvy would be author would have upon getting their own book out there, as they would probably either give up or else have to pay a fortune for others to do all the fiddly bits.
Having done it once, I now know how and what to do, so the second volume should be that much easier to write, edit and produce, but still I feel that after all this I deserve a break from writing before I attempt the slightly longer return journey volume.
But back to what my friend originally said, I am not in disagreement about having to write in order to be a writer, but I now see that being a writer and being a published author are not necessarily the same thing.
