Hello, WordPress family! So we are back this week with another edition of the Chronicles of Quarantine series. If you haven’t read the others, you can start here and carry on with prior ones from that post.
During this quarantine lock-down, I have taken on new ventures that have challenged my mind to move past what is within my comfort zone closer to who I believe deep within GOD has made me to be.
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Most recent but by no means least, one of the things I have wanted to do for a long time now was write a book related to Education. I had two main ideas for two very different books.
One of them was focused on positioning a child for academic excellence which I have drafted and edited and got feedback on from different people with varying backgrounds.
But if I am being honest and open, I felt an impostor syndrome to publish that book, even though I had written almost 200 pages (no formatting at all, just text) and had many real life examples to back up everything I was saying. Calling it what it is, it was fear! Simply fear.
And GOD, being the Lord of all patience and long-suffering, reminded me about the second book idea, an even earlier one I had since late 2018 (the latest timestamp on my ‘Ideas’ note on my phone). It was on curating some of the funny experiences I have had teaching in a secondary school, some of which I have shared on this blog.
Still unsure if it was something I wanted to do, I gave myself the liberty to at least write up the classroom experiences I remembered. Giving myself a target of 30 short stories, I finally put the book together, adding some imaginative stories to finish it up. But writing was just the first part.
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The next step was to put it in a format I could upload to Amazon and Google Play, plus create a beautiful eBook version. My people, this thing stretched me. With the millions of books out there, I soon realised how very ignorant I was in this area of book design. I spent countless hours going back and forth with my brother who fortunately for me, is a fantastic book designer. I tried different software to arrange the book into what is called an ePub version. I had so many iterations, I had to keep deleting previous versions so as not to confuse myself!
Finally, I thought I had cracked it! I’ll be honest with you. I was so happy for crossing this as I nearly gave up on the matter. And just wanted to settle with writing the book, to get those streaming thoughts out of my system!
Next step was to update my
website. This one created new neural pathways in my brain! I could feel the tension as I held my head in my hands quite a few times. Banged the table a few more times. Walked away in angst. A couple of times, I just went to bed, as I felt like my head could not handle it any more.
And I was using the Wix ADI platform, that was just plug and play and edit, simple! But it was all so new for me.
Thankfully, I finally uploaded to Google Play and Amazon Kindle without issues, and my first book is now available for pre-order. Hurray!! And fully available for download next Sunday 14th June. Don’t worry, I’ll remind you then.
Please join me in celebrating this major milestone. It was a major battle, details of which I would share in the near future.
To your success in new ventures, . . .
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