The importance of focus and looking ahead. My first book journey!

Book  

24 March 2018,

After going to the doctors and receiving some news that I might have some mental illness that runs in my family.  I come home, and I thought I was alright, but in those two weeks it was building up and on 23 May 2016,  I couldn’t hold in anymore, and I unleash all my emotions to my carer.

When I was saying all sorts of the subject, it was clear that I still remember A LOT of my personal experience form high school. That’s when my carer told me to write a book about everything that I was saying to her. And that’s how it all started…

I spend the next five days of planning, and on June 1st, 2016, I began writing. Now honestly this was my first ever attempt at any sort of writing.  I’ve never been a fan of the subject in high school, so the fact I am even trying to do this, its crazy!!

When I started nothing seemed to stop me, no kidding every day I spent an hour or two dedicated to writing, even with careers in the house that wasn’t going to stop me! And thank god that my carers didn’t discourage me at all! They all support and leave to write. Thank you!!

I hit a wall!

I reach a point in my book where the subject matter was too painful for me to write. And I stop for two weeks. To halt writing after working every day that so strange I didn’t know what to do with my self. Then I got help with a counsellor I manage to overcome my wall and continued. Two months and two weeks I completed my book! With a grand total of 55K words! (roughly) not bad for someone who never attempted writing before.

I enjoy my experience too much, and a carried on with my life and started to write what happened to me after school, and stopped at 2016-17.  Had to stop somewhere; otherwise, I can go on and on, and it will start to be a drag to write.with one of my carer editing the first half of my book. Roughy eleven months later, 16th, July 2017; I had written 55K words (roughly), and I finished it!

A GRAND TOTAL OF THE FIRST DRAFT IS 110,688 WORDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

:O

I can’t believe I finish the first draft of a book.

That seems unthinkable writing about it now.

I spend the rest of my days, slowly editing my book and MAN! I heard from other authors the editing phase is challenging, and they aren’t kidding. Editing is a massive pain in the backside!!!!!

Reading back my writing back is embarrassing painful, on the positive note, it makes me reflect on how much I have progressed.

I even had a go at poetry! And on the 9 October, I wrote a poem at 01:34 in the morning.

Which is in the book, I’m sorry, but I have to keep some things as a surprise. A few of my friends have read the poem and said they like it, so it can’t be that bad.   🙂

That’s my writing journey so far, from this point onwards I am keeping track of my progress.

31 March 2018,

21:37:

I get a call from one of my beta readers (Gavin), and he said that he read Part 1 of my book (Highschool) and the feedback was:

“Fantastic! A few spelling mistakes but that can be fixed, and emotional and easy read, the publishers should be calling for now for a book deal!…”

Ok, one step at a time!

After that phone call, I was so over the moon I could have stood up and started dancing, which would be petty impressive considering I can’t stay up on my feet for too long. My positively is now over the roof!! 😀

11 May 2018:

The first part of my book (High School) has been ‘finish’ now for ages now, so I decided to order a physical copy! So that’s what I did! So I used blurb, and it took me some attempts to I finally order four copies.  I have no idea why four prints and I am on the last chapter of my first editing phase so you can say that I should have waited a little bit more than order a whole copy.  All I can say is that I not seem to do things the “normal” way.