#mwf14 Blog-to-Book Update 3

I’m at the editing stage of transforming my blog to a book. What got me here? 

JOINT WINNER

Melbourne Writers Festival 2014 Blurb Books Blog-to-Book Challenge...

Coming soon - Publication ... OnDusk: Blog-to-Book, with accompanying narrative and archived 2013 and 2014 blog posts.

Will be available for purchase in print and ebook from Amazon.

Two things. One was the urge to write and then draw a line under an account of what seemed to have been pent up for decades.

The other was cue cards. And now I’ve pulled myself together into chunks of neatly formatted text. That is what collating two years of writing about all things that occurred to me feels like -  it's me on the page.

- bring bring –  

Hey, I need an editor for my blog-to-book.  

You absolutely do. Make it the best you can. 

 Exactly! … 

… O….kay, I can give you some names… 

I already know one. 

Oh. 

They need to work for no money. 

*Audible sigh* 

Please…. 

If you promise to give me enough time … 

Yep. 

 It needs to be proof read… then edited. Then proofed again. 

Yep, yep, yep! You’ll be great. 

*sigh*

Last weekend was spent in a whirlwind trip to Melbourne - four flights, eight hours in a hotel room, and eight hours in avid conversation - and after a crash course in all that is involved in preparing to publish in soft cover and ebook form, I was still not prepared for the the surprise of how the finished product will look. Awestruck. 

The sample was of similar proportions to what I expect mine to be in a matter of weeks, but so much better. It looked and felt completely book-like. 

After producing over a hundred thousand words on line, imagining two years of work in another format took a fair amount of preparation. It couldn't be dragged across in one piece. Some of it is not worthy - sorry Blog, but it's true - and in moments of mental slumps I wondered if any of it was.

But back to the cue cards. 

And the enthusiastic feedback of my small but widely read focus group, and the additional 20,000 odd words that will glue it together.  This was followed by the magic of book building, when I printed off a copy, collated it into manageable chunks, and applied a rainbow of coloured tags. 

Looking at the neat stack of bound parts on my desk, I can finally declare real progress.

Life happens when you are doing other things. 

It’s a large house, with high ceilings and wooden floors. Interlocking rooms with wide door ways. There’s freedom to move, and run around in circles, and disappear and then come running back from deep passages. 

It’s a light filled, happy space. There are young children laughing, having fun, as they explore and chase one another. They love the sound of the doors slamming, and how the old door handles jangle. 

I could stay in here forever. When outside leans down and looks in one of the open sash windows, I sense it’s nest of spider eyes and snaggle tooth fangs, looking for fresh, sweet humans to drain dry.

Thanks to the Melbourne Writers Festival Blurb Book Blog-to-Book Challenge, I will be the first Indigenous blogger to have a personal blog published. And I will be making it count.

Stay tuned ... or feel free to come find me on Twitter.

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