Day 874 – NEW ZEALAND: Book update


With baby steps I am getting closer to understanding how the whole ‘let’s publish a book!’ idea works.

As an introduction, I am planning to publish a book about my travels. Much of what the book will be made up of can more or less be found on my blog. But what I am really looking forward to doing, is infusing the tale with some more personal stuff that I didn’t feel like posting at the time, adding some stories that never got onto the website for legal and/or potential risk of deportation reasons, and fleshing out the experience much more (I was often way too tired to fully describe what I was seeing and feeling).

I did a radio interview with Radio New Zealand a few weeks ago, and the hosts asked listeners to email in possible titles for the book. There was one that I liked a lot.

Boarderline.

So thanks to Rebecca Hay from Warkworth for that suggestion. It fits the nature of my journey and emotional/fatigue state during the trip very nicely, so we’ll go with that as a tentative title.
Basically I have a first draft written of the book written. Or at least 90% of a first draft written. That is of course in the form of over 850 blog posts. The challenge now is to extract all the text from the blog and print it out and start sifting through it all.

The plan from there is to possibly enrol in a creative writing course of some description. I have emailed a number of potential institutions about the project, and I’ve received many enthusiastic responses. I would have to pay a course fee, but the plus is that I would actually get to learn some writing skills and knowledge about the process of publication and stuff. And I would be eligible to receive the Student Allowance. The Student Allowance is money that the New Zealand government gives to students with no repayment obligations. There are of course rules governing this Student Allowance, but as far as I can see, I would be elligble for around NZ$200 a week. This would be much preferable to having to work and write at the same time or some such nonsense.

Many of the creative writing courses allow students to work towards second and third drafts of a complete manuscript, and to polish it for submission to a publisher at the end of the course. I have narrowed it down to one particular course…the name of the institution I forget…I emailed so many…but I did speak to the director on the phone, and they are keen to have me on board. I am expecting an email from them in the next few days. I am looking forward to the email. When I get the email, I will then be able to work out who the hang I was talking to.

I blame it on the general chaos of life.

A big thank you by the way to everyone who sent me encouraging comments and emails regarding my last post. All very good stuff.

In other news I have finally got everything together to send to Guinness World Records (GWR) to make my claim. I claim to have extended the world record for the longest journey by skateboard to 12,159km. So that will be sent off to London tomorrow. All I can do now is hope they believe all my evidence!

I have uploaded the GWR Record Report here (http://www.mediafire.com/?yzyvdnetykt). I apologise for all the advertising…I guess that’s what you get for free file uploads.

A big thanks to my Mum and to Heather for proof-reading the report and making suggestions.

Record Report Sent away to GWR


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