What's Next?- September 19, 2010

Over the last few weeks, several people have asked me if I'm planning on trying another internet journey this summer.

A few thoughts have crossed my mind, but I never envisioned last summer's trip to Turkey evolving into an annual event. However, I'm always open to new experiences and to new challenges. If anyone has any ideas, I'd love to hear them.

If I do take another journey, I'd like volunteering to be a major component of the trip, and I'd like to raise money for that volunteer organization.

In the mean time, I'm continuing to work on my book. I've already written one draft and am now having someone read it to give me feedback. I'll keep you posted on the progress.

As always, thanks for reading my blog.

Calling All Publishers - September 5, 2010

It's been a week since the article about my trip to Turkey appeared in the nearby paper, The Chattanooga Times Free Press. I was extremely impressed and humbled by the job that the reporter, Barry Courter, did and by the layout of the feature, which even had color photos.

Since then, I've gotten a lot of positive feedback, and I'm scheduled to speak about my experience at a local college. The ripples keep spreading.

Also, I continue to work on my book. The popular perception is that authors sit down once a week and write 40 or 50 pages, but actually, I've read that authors might just write 400-500 words a day, and over time, the pages add up. The secret, though, is to write every day. That's the hard part.

For over a month, my daily routine has been to get to work two hours before school begins to take care of lesson plans for my classes and then spend each evening writing after work. I've gained newfound respect for the work of authors. It isn't easy writing each day, especially when a person is tired or would rather watch mindless television.

I've made a lot of progress and hope to have my first draft done by the end of the month.

One of the things I learned in Turkey is that anything is possible. With that in mind, I am sending out a call into the universe to all publishers – I think I've got the makings of a good book that you'd like to publish.

I'm hoping that six degrees of separation comes through for me. Six degrees of separation is the theory that any person in the world is connected to any other person in the world through at most five acquaintances. If that's true, then someone reading my blog is either a publisher or connected through a friend of a friend of a friend to a publisher.

Let's see what happens. Life's short. Why not be bold.