So I wrote a book. Now I have to publish it

OCTOBER 28 — Sometimes you have to embrace cliches.

A columnist getting cancer writing a book about it? Ah, how predictable, how mundane.

That didn’t stop me from writing one though.

I’ll let you know the writing part was easy.

What I did was dictate my book to my phone and thanks to the free Voice Memos on iOS it was not only recorded but with a click of a button, auto-transcribed.

Thus it took me just a week to “write” the book but the effort still took a toll on me physically; I was sick for two weeks after I was done.

The main reason I decided to talk my book into existing was to avoid straining my hands. I still need to work, after all.

What dictating a book, much like authors of yore used to do, adds to the writing process is a kind of rawness that bypasses any internal gatekeeper.

It was easier for me to just talk about the pain and have my phone capture my feelings than to sit at the keyboard, trying to squeeze them through my fingers.

While it does offer a rawer, more honest voice to the words it is hellish to edit.

I was dismayed to find that I had repeated anecdotes over different chapters (which had to be cut out) and too much segueing into unrelated topics.

Due to the messy lump of copy I had, it just felt like it was best for me to self-edit the manuscript instead of engaging editorial services.

It’s not something I would recommend to anyone; if you have the money and the contacts, get someone to look over your text, figure out what you might have missed or might need to omit.

As this is a book that does revolve around health matters I sent off a proof copy to three different healthcare professionals, two women with breast cancer experience and an old friend.

I hope the three healthcare people will not want to murder me after they are done.

At first I had intended it to be a very small endeavour. Finish the book, format the book, upload it to Amazon Kindle/Kobo/my Ko-fi website and if I could afford it, engage the services of a print-on-demand company for physical tomes.

The good news is I found out it will not be ruinous after all to print a small number of books.

The bad news is I have also found out I know nothing about formatting books.

Right now, I’m waiting for my printer to get back to me with a proper quote, the rest of my copy tasters to get back to me on any copy suggestions and my sanity to return from the war as the whole process has driven me quite mad.

But still it’s an exciting project and I’m glad to share it here, even if it’s also keeping me honest by forcing me to put it out instead of filing under “Maybe I’ll do this tomorrow.”

Look forward to it in November. Hopefully.

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10月28日——有时候你不得不接受陈词滥调。

专栏作家罹患癌症，然后写一本书来讲述这段经历？啊，多么意料之中，多么平淡无奇。

但这并没有阻止我写一篇。

我可以告诉你，写作部分很简单。

我把书的内容口述给手机听，多亏了 iOS 上的免费语音备忘录功能，不仅可以录音，而且只需点击一个按钮，就能自动转录。

因此，我只用了一周时间就“写”完了这本书，但这项工作仍然让我身心俱疲；写完后我病了两周。

我决定把书写出来的主要原因是为了避免手部劳损。毕竟，我还是得工作。

像古代作家那样口述写作，会给写作过程增添一种原始感，绕过任何内部的把关人。

对我来说，与其坐在键盘前，试图用文字表达痛苦，不如直接倾诉，让手机捕捉我的感受，这样更容易。

虽然它确实为文字提供了一种更原始​​、更真实的表达方式，但编辑起来却非常痛苦。

令我沮丧的是，我发现我在不同的章节中重复使用了相同的轶事（不得不删掉），而且有太多不相关的话题被引申开来。

由于我手头有一堆杂乱无章的文稿，我觉得最好还是自己编辑，而不是聘请编辑服务。

我不建议任何人这样做；如果你有钱也有人脉，可以找人帮你检查一下短信，找出你可能遗漏或需要省略的内容。

由于这是一本围绕健康问题展开的书，我把校样寄给了三位不同的医疗保健专业人士、两位有乳腺癌经历的女性和一位老朋友。

我希望这三位医护人员完事后不会想杀了我。

起初，我只想做个小项目：写完书，排版好，上传到亚马逊 Kindle/Kobo/我的 Ko-fi 网站，如果经济允许，再找一家按需印刷公司印制实体书。

好消息是，我发现少量印刷书籍并不会造成毁灭性的后果。

坏消息是，我还发现自己对书籍排版一窍不通。

现在，我正在等待印刷商给我一个正式的报价，等待其他试稿人给我一些试稿建议，也等待我的理智从这场战争中恢复过来，因为整个过程已经让我非常抓狂了。

但这仍然是一个令人兴奋的项目，我很高兴在这里分享它，即使它也迫使我诚实地把它发布出来，而不是把它归档到“也许我明天再做”的清单里。

期待十一月能看到它。但愿如此。

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