Ok - I might have written a book but I havn't mastered technology! hit the wrong button and most of my message disappeared. Here's what should have been posted....
I’m writing this message to encourage others who may feel dyslexia, or another issue means writing a book is not possible. I admit, I am not someone who always dreamed of publishing. Nor am I someone who writes diaries or any other form of prose.
One of the difficulties I have resulting from dyslexia, is I don’t have a good memory. It used to disappoint me when I couldn’t remember details of holidays we’d had. I started writing a journal when on holiday or taking video footage and narrating as I recorded. I transcribed this when I got home. As the years went by, I wrote emails which I sent to family and friends describing our personal experiences, ranging from relaxing to exhausting, amusing to thought provoking, straightforward and the very opposite! As a result, I kept being told I should write a book and for once I did what I was told! The book centred around a holiday in Sri Lanka and I drew into this, experiences from holidays in our Scottish homeland as well as countries around the world.
The initial process wasn’t difficult: I had my journals to refer to, and a publisher who liked my idea. I can’t deny though it was time consuming. It took about 2.5 years from starting to write my first draft to publication. There were spells in this time when I did nothing, as the script was with the publisher, being reviewed or edited. Other times I felt I had a full-time job, but I’m the kind of person who having started something needs to get it finished as soon as possible.
Yes, the dyslexia resulted in extra challenges but not insurmountable ones. Spell-checker on the computer was put to good use, though didn’t highlight all mistakes. I lost count of the number of times I re-read what I’d written but the difficulty was I often ‘read’ what I wanted to see rather than spotting mistakes. I therefore was extremely grateful to a sister who went through my work with a fine toothcomb. My husband too read my drafts several times. This was on top of the editing carried out in the normal publishing process.
But now I have a book published and all the hard work has been worthwhile when I hear from readers they feel they have enjoyed travelling on holiday with me: just what I aimed to achieve. This makes me so happy and it’s wonderful to think I’ve helped others experience a bit of escapism during our COVID restricted way of living just now.