“You’re off to Great Places!
Today is your day!
Your mountain is waiting,
So… get on your way!”
― Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You’ll Go!
Dr Seuss was my first favourite author. I’ve had many over my almost 60 years, but he was my first love. We had most of his books in the original hardcover versions as I was growing up. I was born the same year as Green Eggs and Ham. I loved his way with words, his crazy rhyming and his imaginary worlds. His books impacted the baby boomers and all the generations afterwards in a way that nobody before had. Or maybe since…
I mention this because I have aspirations to be an author myself, and I hope to create something that will have a positive impact on the lives of many others. It won’t have wonky made-up words or lots of rhyming, and it won’t have cartoon illustrations, but I hope that it will catch the interest of many people and that it will be a blessing to those who read it.
This past week, I finished the first draft of Powerful Beyond Measure: Using Nutrition and Spirit to Journey Through Cancer. I have been writing for months, adding sections to an outline that I first created back last spring. It is part my story, part what I learned, and part how-to manual. When I was first diagnosed, I desperately wanted to hear other women’s stories of their cancer journey – the good, the bad and the ugly. Then, as I lived my own journey, I learned so much about what made me strong, what worked and what didn’t work, as I experienced diagnosis, decision-making, surgery, chemo, work-life and emotional and spiritual changes. And, of course, my learning about the metabolic nature of cancer and how it could be leveraged through dietary manipulations.
After months of stretching that same Word document out to over 58.000 words and about 150 pages, I finally decided that it was time to move to editing. So I researched editing, formatted my huge document into one long uniform mass of a single font and line spacing, then put the whole thing onto a little data stick, ready for the print shop. I was so excited to see my creation on real paper!
All well and good, except that we got hit with a two day blizzard… I was so anxious to get the document onto paper, into a binder and start reading through it with pencil in hand. Darn weather! After a day and a half of crazy blowing snow and drifting, I called Staples to make sure that they were open since every other business in town seemed to be closed that day. They were, but their parking lot was only barely passable. No problem – I have 4 wheel drive! Off I went, determined to have my long-awaited manuscript in print.
It was worth the crazy drive and the deserted store. One hundred and fifty-eight pages later, I had my manuscript printed, 3-hole-punched and into a binder, ready for the first edit. Just to see it in hard copy is so very powerful. It’s getting real, folks!
My goal is to have the Amazon self-publishing thing sorted out in the next 2 months or so. The book will be available in hard copy or as an e-book. Stay tuned to this blog for details.
