The Word Cloud

You've no doubt had someone say to you, 'you should write a book.' Several people said that to me over the last ten years. Flattered, well yes! The only problem was what to write about? I hated English classes at school - hated school generally to be honest. I'd probably forgotten more than I ever knew about grammar, tense and punctuation. I could do verbs, nouns and adjectives I thought, but a participle? That only provided an degree of mirth; my dad's name being Percy Tipple. I rarely read anything other than car maintenance manuals, or electronics magazines or articles connected with work.

So what happened? Why do I want to write now? For starters, I've read lots of books over the last twenty years and enjoyed them. The more I read, the more I wanted to read. I knew which authors left me cold and those who worked for me, eager to read their latest. When I retired three years ago, we spent a lot of time in Thailand, especially over the winters. I began to write short articles about living here mainly for the benefit of those back home: perhaps to reassure them that we were alright living in Asia. Those early scrawlings were loaded with errors; all the things I'd forgotten about. But I enjoyed doing them.

This month I self-published them as a short e-book on Smashwords and Amazon, under the title of My Thai Eye, a wry look at things Thai. And they're selling, not in vast numbers - I didn't expect they would - but selling. I  did this for a number of reasons;

• It would raise some money for Thai flood relief: I have chosen a book library for children's charity. Seemed fitting as many were destroyed,
• It would help to get my name 'out there',
• I would gain experience at placing my own work in e-book stores and to learn how it all worked.

But My Thai Eye is done with now, apart from the marketing - which I think I'll enjoy - and checking from time to time to see how sales are going, which I might not. As part of my marketing, I designed my own website - and the cover for My Thai Eye - so gradually I'm learning quite a lot about more than writing.

I haven't acheived this alone and want to thank all of the Clouders at The Writers' Workshop - the best on-line community for new writers - and their editors who nicely but firmly pointed me in the right direction. Plus David Gaughran - you should visit his site Let's Get Digital if you want to e-pub, he's a real enthusiast.

So, what now? What to write about next? Two years ago I had no idea. Then one balmy evening, I had that eureka moment. I knew what my first novel would be about.

Edwin Tipple edwintipple.com

January 2555 (2012)