Working on an EBook | Colleen Friesen

“Do one thing every day that scares you.” -Eleanor Roosevelt

I’m going to guess that Eleanor would be a great guest to have at the dinner table. You know that game where you name the ten people (living or dead) you want to come to dinner? I bet she could get a conversation going in short order.

You might be wondering about why this post is called Motivation and Reward. It’s because I have been ‘working’ on my ebook. I am reluctant to use that term because back in my father’s day, working meant physical labour. You hoed, and shovelled and sweated in that Manitoban prairie and in the end there was a result; If you were lucky and the weather cooperated, your family of 17 might not starve.

So when I use the word working, I recognise this isn’t really the right term. Yes, I’m putting quite a bit of time and effort into this, in fact, the learning curve doesn’t feel like a curve at all. It feels more like I’ve leaned a cartoon-sized giant ladder up against a 25-story building – at a very unsafe angle that’s way too close to the building – and am scaling the damned thing with a laptop balanced on my head.

There is just so much to know and so many paths and approaches to take. It sounds simple on all these ridiculous how-to websites that say:

1. Research your topic. 2. Write the book. 3. Format the book. 4. Publish the book. Well thanks, that was so NOT helpful.

My ebook is going to be a collection of some of my travel stories. These are stories in my word files that should be simple enough to copy and paste into a new document. But first they must be properly formatted with proper page breaks and no more than one line break between each paragraph and all of it must be in Times New Roman 12 font…all fairly simple but time consuming exercises.

But it’s the next part that feels rather daunting. Designing and loading up the cover design and researching which company to use and how to promote it and, and, and…That’s the work part.

It’s another one of those situations where I’d love to abdicate all responsibility and have a fairy godmother/secretary/personal assistant appear who could just pick a path through all these choices and tell me when to turn and what to do next.

However, last time I saw Tinkerbell she was looking a little worn and I could see the contraption she was suspended from. Suddenly the Magic Kingdom wasn’t that magical anymore.