Some years ago I attended one of NOAH’s biannual conferences (National Organization for Albinism and Hypopigmentation). It was the first that I had ever attended, and it was both enlightening and enjoyable. As I prowled the halls and attended sessions, I heard the same questions that I’m sure that my parents asked when I was growing up a half century earlier. It brought back memories of experiences and struggles during my youth. It gradually occurred to me that I had life experiences that might fill the vacuum for younger people and for parents of children with albinism. Thus, the idea for my book: Breaking the Boundaries of Impairment: A Life Journey with Low Vision was born.
Shortly after the conference, I wrote a draft of the first chapter. Writing this draft helped solidify my thoughts and set the vision for what I wanted to accomplish with the book. In looking back on my path from idea to book, a clear vision or goal made the process of outlining and writing much easier.
A major challenge was how to make a potentially dry subject interesting to readers. I believe that I’ve had a rich set of life experiences, ranging from daily life events to exotic adventures. My more common life events include: fun and learning in Boy Scouts, advancing to the rank of Eagle Scout, obtaining a bachelors degree, a successful career in Corporate America, and a successful marriage of over 30 years. The more exotic include: trapping and radio collaring black bears for science, snorkeling with manta rays, rappelling into caves, and kayaking down rivers. Given all that, it seemed like a good idea to mix stories recounting some of my life experiences along with explanations of my life challenges and how I had dealt with them.
Over the next several years, I put pen to paper as I had time, and produced a rough outline of the chapters and the concepts within each chapter. There was a lot of thinking time spent producing the outline, so I took advantage of time spent waiting for buses and trains to think and add outline points. I only worked on the book occasionally, because the tasks of daily life have a tendency to get in the way of things that are important, but not necessarily urgent. Also, I had done enough writing in the past that I knew that I could write much better if I built an outline and then wrote from that outline.
I briefly discussed the concept of the book with a few people, who provided validation of my idea. They, and I, felt that it would be especially helpful for parents of young children with albinism and low vision. Over the course of my writing, a few of them occasionally asked about my progress on the book. This provided added incentive to reach my goal during a few periods of inactivity.
I’m a bit of a Do-It-Yourselfer, and I tend to use the tools I am already familiar with. This makes projects easier and quicker. Since I use a laptop computer with Microsoft Office software for work, it was natural to use Word to write the book’s prose. Working from my rough outline, it took me about three years to convert the outline into a book first draft. Once again, life was getting in the way. In order to make good progress, I found that I had to be disciplined and spend at least an hour a day writing, no matter what happened. Some days the writing came easy, and some days I had to drag the words out of my mind and onto the keyboard kicking and screaming. For additional help in getting started or staying focused, there are writing classes at community colleges. There are also many resources for writers at the public library as well as on the Internet.
Since the only writing that I do consists of business documents and technical writing in my field, I had no idea if my rough draft was any good, or if it would appeal to my target audience. With some trepidation, I sent my first draft to a good friend who has read a great deal as well as edited documents of many types, and therefore would know a good book from a bad one. His first task was simply to tell me if the book was interesting and had publishing potential. When his positive response came back, it was a huge relief. My many hours of writing had not been in vain.
I then started the next stages of preparing my manuscript. When writers do this, it’s called polishing; when a third-party does it, it’s called content and copy editing. These two steps had many iterations over the process of bringing the manuscript to a publishable state. Copy editing is the process of checking spelling, grammar, sentence structure, and other technical details. Content editing is the process of reading the document and suggesting changes to ensure that the information is organized, factual, and communicated clearly. My good friend agreed to copy edit my document, as well as doing some content editing. This saved me the hundreds of dollars that it would have cost me if I had to pay a publishing house copy editor. Microsoft Word’s track changes feature made it very easy to see his changes, so I could decide which changes I wanted to keep or not keep in that iteration of the manuscript. In the absence of a good friend with copy editing expertise, you could look for a college English student or a high school English teacher who is willing to help.
The next stage consisted of giving copies of the current iteration of my manuscript to a few close friends for their review and comments. The professional expertise of these friends covered several different fields, including optometry and low vision. Their reviews resulted in a number of changes and additions, each of which had to go back through the copy-editing process. Ultimately, this input contributed greatly in making a much better book.
If you like to write, and have information or experiences to share, writing a blog, an article, or a book can be a very rewarding experience. Producing a blog is much simpler than publishing a book, but with the Internet, both forms are very accessible to a wide range of audiences.
Over my life, I could not have accomplished what I have without the many others who have generously shared their knowledge and experience with me. Whether that sharing was verbal or written it was equally valuable. In this twenty-first century, we have very much become a global community whose ability to survive depends on supporting each other. In the spirit of my book, I would encourage everyone to push your boundaries out a little and share your experiences, whether successes that inspire us or failures that we can learn from, so that we all may benefit.