When The Work Is Done You Need To Go On….… Working!

After all is written, proofread and edited and then edited again the manuscript is uploaded for publishing. We uploaded on Kindle and Createspace. So the book is available on several sites. But that’s not all.

Books, like any other product, need to be promoted. That sounds pretty easy. Place it on Face Book and Twitter and off you go. Bummer! There is a lot more to be done. Fortunately I came upon a ‘7-day visibility challenge’ on Face book. 7 Tasks to grow an audience. For me as a beginner it really is a challenge! But I’m learning and improving my skills. The account on LinkedIn, I hardly used but now I go there every day and am getting more response. The twitter account is growing too. And already it is showing off. My other blog ‘I have a voice’ is getting more viewers and I do believe more people are aware of the book now.

 Best of all of course is when people tip others. So here I have a task for the ones who read my book: please leave a comment on the site where you purchased it and help me to spread the word. Thank you very much!

By now I guess it is about time I go on working on the new novel. Not as serious as Kalapati.

The Difference Between Fiction and Non-Fiction

Writing down your story is not very hard to do. There is absolutely no need to think about a story-line or plot. You lived it yourself so all you have to do is just pen it down. What I did not realize at the time is that once published, people read a lot of ‘secrets’ they never would have known had you not written your story. Things you do and (maybe even worse) things you think all come out in the open.

Of course I changed most of the names but not all. For ‘strangers’ it will be hard to find out who I am writing about. Not for the people I know and who know me. And it is all exactly as it is in real life. You are kind to most people but not to all. The difference is that in real life you might inform others about your thoughts on somebody. Making it known to a bigger audience is something else and I am pretty sure not all people involved are going to be happy about it. This really was a point of extra attention for me. The truth can be painful. On the other hand, if you cannot face the truth you might have a problem. Besides, my truth is mine, your truth is yours and both may be slightly different.

Shame. I felt ashamed. If everything goes perfectly well there is nothing to feel ashamed about. Unfortunately this was not a success story. On the contrary, it describes what I can consider as the darkest period in my life. Not exactly something to brag about. “Look at what I did!”  When I was writing I was dealing with it and thought I had come over it. But it keeps me busy again after publishing. The good thing is that I know all is true and that, in the end I found new strength. That sure helps a lot.

The Process Of Publishing

Writing a book is one thing. To get it published is something completely different. With Kalapati  had the luck that Amsterdam Publishers was doing all the work. All the work? Technically yes. But that didn’t mean I could get my hands off the project. 

First of all, the whole manuscript had to be edited. That means, going through the story again and try to find the errors. This is very tricky because it is very hard to find your own mistakes. The computer I was working on at that time had a spelling checker. For (American) English. My story was in Dutch and no way could I figure out how to change the spelling checker. But then again, this tool is useful for sure but it never tells you that you change have into had. So it does not underline have. After all there is nothing wrong with the spelling. It took quite some time to finish because, truth be known, it was hard to go through the story again. The content brought back memories of events I’d rather leave behind. 

After all was finally done we had to work on a cover. It is easy enough to find free pictures on the internet but I absolutely wanted to create my own. The picture of the old half painted and weathered wall was just too beautiful. Well, that of course is in the eye of the beholder but I was more than happy with it. The publisher sent it back. The color of the title ‘sank’ in the background and the letters were too small. Sure, for a printed copy all looked good but since it was going to be published on the internet the people would only see a small picture. My friend and I made changes over and over again until in the end I told the publisher “Since we ‘know’ each other I know I can rely on your good taste so please do as you see fit. As long as the picture will remain.” 

Here I thought all was settled now. Nope! Final check. So I had to go through the content again. There was some more sending back and forth but finally in October the book saw the day of light. 

With all the checking I noticed that I had written down things that I already had forgotten. This got me thinking. Was it really that bad? Or was I just too negative when I wrote it? Should I write it in a friendlier way? But, the publisher had chosen my manuscript as the winner of the contest. Making changes would possibly do more harm than good. And of course it was all a reflection of how I felt back then, when I wrote it. Circumstances might had changed but not the story. We can’t change history can we?

KALAPATI (part 2)

 Going through all the pages that Google translated my heart sank into my shoes. This was definitely not how it was meant to be. Of course, in our languages we have lots of homonyms and how will the Google machine know how to translate it right? Also the way we build sentences differs. Another problem I faced was the fact that speaking (in whatever language for that matter) is not quite the same as writing.

Reading the book Talent is never enough by John C. Maxwell was motivating enough to finally get started. Like I had read in this book, the beginning was indeed far from easy. But I knew I had to go on and that is what I did. Looking back it is only logic that once I got the hang of it the task became less severe. Also a Dutch friend came over and he helped me by going through my translated pages, explaining me where I had gone wrong and why. A crash course English. 

However, the language turned out not to be the only problem. Going through the story again I was kind of shocked. Had I really written this? “Some people definitely are not going to like what I wrote about them” was something that came to mind several times. And it made me insecure. Should I just forget about the translated version? Change the content of certain events? But then again, the story was written under bad circumstances. The situation I was in at that time was far from comfortable. Also had I described my observations and they were true for me. A lot of thinking brought me to the conclusion it would be unfair to myself to make changes. There (are and) were no bad intentions like I felt I want to hurt people. If people get hurt they might consider the fact that others see them different than they see themselves. Once a psychologist told me “Frans, if people make comments on your attitude or behavior theirs is no need to get angry about it. All you have to do is listen to the message within the message. They are not burning you down as a person. Just ask yourself: ‘Could they possibly be right? Can and will I change?’ Now listen good what I’m telling you. All the comments you get are small presents, given to you by people who care”.

Cover for the English edition

When I finally finished the translation I asked a good  English friend if he would be so kind to read and edit. Luckily he wanted to help. And he did even more. He designed a new cover and converted the book so it could be uploaded as an e-book. That was only the first step. He then offered to convert everything so it would be available as paperback as well! There were tens of emails being sent back and forth but finally it was all fixed. The English version was published in February. All and all it happened just in 6 months all together after I got that email and Face Book announcement that I had become the winner of the writers contest.

The Face Book announcement

KALAPATI (part 1)

A year ago I was writing about what had recently happened with my life. I made notes and wrote everything on paper. Later in April I started working it all out on a computer. Around the same time I started looking for information about publishing and I came on the site of Amsterdam Publishers. It was purely by coincidence that I got there. And what a wonderful feeling when I read there was this writers contest. The circumstances were far from ideal during that period due to several reasons. In fact, that was what the book was all about. Just in time I could send a very rough manuscript. Life went on and I was editing and refining the content. A friend was more than willing to help and we searched for ways to upload the book for Amazon/Kindle. In August I got an email and the sender was pretty unknown to me. But since it was a publisher I did not delete the message immediately. Reading the content my mouth fell open and I could not help it shouting out loudly “I won! I won the writers contest!!” My friend did not even know about it so I had to explain him what had happened.

The price was a nice deal: Amsterdam Publishers was going to publish the book on Amazon and Kindle as e-book and as paperback. Now we did not have to bother about uploading anymore but we did need to design a cover. At the back of the house of my friend is this old wall. Once people started to give the white wall some color but they obviously ran out of paint. Maybe they lost even interest. So there was this half painted wall that through the years had gotten several touches of the elements as well. Frankly I simply love this kind of walls. They are stories without words. We tried hard to resize and crop the picture that I had taken of this wall and put the book title and my name in on it.

The first design of the front cover

 After we finished we both were very satisfied. But the publisher was not. The color we picked would simply vanish and the letters were too small. The explanation was that this cover was going to be seen on screens only. It would have the size of a stamp. That made sense. I told the publisher she could change is as she would see fit. Fortunately the picture was good enough. 

The cover as it is published

In October the Dutch book was published and man, how proud I was. It was just a special sensation to see it on Amazon and Kindle.

Many people in the Philippines were pretty disappointed to find out the book was printed in Dutch. This got me thinking of translating the book into English. Soon I found out that Google translate was not exactly doing the job right and truth must be known; I was not too keen to get started. But of course I knew I had to.

To be continued.