Jan. 08, 2002
It is late and I should be sleeping – especially since I’ve been up all day working harder than Seattle rain. But I’m not; I’m far too busy making it real.
I’ve read from so many artists that if you have an idea the only way you can sell it is to make it real. Maybe you have a vision of the perfect thing, but others won’t be able to see it too unless you can make it real for them.
What I see is a book – My book.
I’ve had the idea floating around in my brain for several months about turning all of this into some kind of book. People have been long advising me that I should but I have been really hesitant about doing it. All I saw was a little website and not a book. However, over the past month, as more people have mentioned the idea to me and as the website has taken on a life of it’s own, I have decided that it might actually be a good idea. The only thing I wasn’t sure of was how to turn a website, an idea, into a book?
I assure you after many days surfing the web and visiting the library, there is no one stop shopping to getting a book published. I’ve learned from studying all the information that it takes more than an idea to get a book published. There is editing your piece and then editing some more. Then you have to write a proposal, type up a bio, and be able to sell yourself and your idea. Then you need to find an agent or a publishing house to send it all into. Then you have to cross your fingers and wait. And wait. And wait.
That information I learned from various websites and books. It is good, practical and useful information. The only part they left out was that you need to make the idea real. That part I learned from various artists who have published or sold works of art.
Making an idea physically real has been the tricky part because I had no idea how to turn this website into a book. What should it look like, what size should the pages be, what kind of font do I use, how do I bind it? What entries should I use, how do I edit them some more, how do I make them into a book? I became frustrated because I knew that if I couldn’t see this website as a book nobody else would be able to either.
“I’m a writer and not a designer!” I yelled, “Putting books together is a publishers job, not mine! Let them figure it out.” I thought about just giving up and just cutting and pasting everything on the website into one big word file, submitting that to a publisher and take my chances.
That train of thought didn’t last very long. I remembered getting boring bits of information or incomplete proposals on my desk when I worked in the corporate world, and if it didn’t look right or seem interesting I’d just toss it into the bin along with all the other rubbish. I didn’t want that to happen to my book and realised that if I want someone to see why this would be a fabulous book, I have to actually show them a fabulous book.
Instead of remaining frustrated I decided to continue to work on making it real. I pulled entries from the site, fixed them up, corrected typos and grammar, added images and more entries. I made it all look professional by choosing fonts and spacing in Microsoft Word. Then on blank pieces of paper I made a mock up of the book design I wanted and then began to incorporate that design into the Word file. About half way into creating this book, something very scary and amazing happened.
I went from thinking that maybe the website could be a book, to knowing it will become a book.
A bold statement that could come back to haunt me, I know, but at the same time I was making it real for them, it was actually becoming more real for myself. I went from being hopeful that maybe this could be a book if someone had the right vision to actually knowing that this is a book because I just made the vision happen.
Of course, I still have to find a publisher or agent, still have to write proposals and all the business bits that go along with it all. But I took the first step; I took charge, and made something. It’s not an idea sitting in my brain anymore. It’s now becoming a real book sitting in my hands.
Elsewhere