As a start, allow me to share with you three key things you need to know about my upcoming book:
1. What is it about?
This past Ramadan, I have been slowly compiling my writings about my experience as a new father. It is a collection of a handful of my experiences being a parent for the first year of my son's life.
There are two main reasons why I wanted to write this book:
- These are the things I wish I knew when I was single
- I don't want to forget them now that I am a parent
There are many valuable lessons during my experience that are essential to remember. Many of these lessons are ones we can't learn in our single life; we have to experience it first hand to know what it is like. Having said that, it doesn't take away from the importance of writing it down and sharing it with people.
This book isn't a golden standard of parental advice. In fact, I offer no advice in this book. I offer only experiences, so that people can get a glimpse of what parenting is like. I am trying my best to extract universal lessons from my unique experiences in the hopes that the book will be relevant to as many people as possible.
I intend to make the book an easy read while maintaining a level of intellectual respect. Meaning, it won't be an entertainment book. It will be a serious book, with some entertainment here and there.
2. Who am I writing it for?
When writing a book, I am conflicted as to who am I writing it for. Our deep desires is to be able to reach everybody without exception, but being mindful of reality leads us to a bitter realisation that it won't happen.
I can't reach everybody, but I can surely reach somebody. When writing this book, I have one person in mind. One day, I decided to give a book to a fellow father as a gift. I honestly believe that the book will benefit him. He took the book, flipped through the pages, and said, "Wow, too many words!"
Though a bit disappointed, I can empathise with him. I have to admit that not all people are avid readers. Ideally, that should be the case but we all know that we don't live in an ideal world. So I decided to dedicated this book to him and to others like him.
They deserve the message too, packaged in a way that suits their style. So, the book will be a simple one-page-image-one-page-text format so that it will be an easy read. It won't be too heavy on the texts, but hopefully the message will get across just as effective with fewer texts.
My goal is to trigger much needed reflection in the minds of single people, would-be parents, and parents.
3. When will it be out?
If all goes well, I think the book will be out by October of this year. But I don't want to make any hasty promises because I really, really want this book to be properly written. I am being as annoyingly perfectionistic as I can with this book because that is how much I care about it.
But of course, no human writer can write a perfect book. Still, that is not enough of a reason not to try. Sincere effort is success!
As of this writing, I am in the process of polishing my rough draft to make a complete first draft. Then, I will do a sweep of my first draft for clarity, continuity, and connection - that will become my second draft.
I will offer snippets of my second draft to a group of lucky 10 readers, who will get an exclusive sneak preview of the book before anyone else. My goal is to ask these readers to "taste" the book and provide feedback if the book needs more or less "seasoning".
Hopefully after all that, I will have a well groomed manuscript - ready for printing. So yeah, October of this year would be my best guess.
Much to do!