OCTOBER 28 — Sometimes you have to embrace cliches.

A columnist getting cancer writing a book about it? Ah, how predictable, how mundane.

That didn’t stop me from writing one though.

I’ll let you know the writing part was easy.

What I did was dictate my book to my phone and thanks to the free Voice Memos on iOS it was not only recorded but with a click of a button, auto-transcribed.

Thus it took me just a week to “write” the book but the effort still took a toll on me physically; I was sick for two weeks after I was done.

The main reason I decided to talk my book into existing was to avoid straining my hands. I still need to work, after all.

What dictating a book, much like authors of yore used to do, adds to the writing process is a kind of rawness that bypasses any internal gatekeeper.

It was easier for me to just talk about the pain and have my phone capture my feelings than to sit at the keyboard, trying to squeeze them through my fingers.

While it does offer a rawer, more honest voice to the words it is hellish to edit.

I was dismayed to find that I had repeated anecdotes over different chapters (which had to be cut out) and too much segueing into unrelated topics.

Due to the messy lump of copy I had, it just felt like it was best for me to self-edit the manuscript instead of engaging editorial services.

It’s not something I would recommend to anyone; if you have the money and the contacts, get someone to look over your text, figure out what you might have missed or might need to omit.

As this is a book that does revolve around health matters I sent off a proof copy to three different healthcare professionals, two women with breast cancer experience and an old friend.

I hope the three healthcare people will not want to murder me after they are done.

At first I had intended it to be a very small endeavour. Finish the book, format the book, upload it to Amazon Kindle/Kobo/my Ko-fi website and if I could afford it, engage the services of a print-on-demand company for physical tomes.

The good news is I found out it will not be ruinous after all to print a small number of books.

The bad news is I have also found out I know nothing about formatting books.

Right now, I’m waiting for my printer to get back to me with a proper quote, the rest of my copy tasters to get back to me on any copy suggestions and my sanity to return from the war as the whole process has driven me quite mad.

But still it’s an exciting project and I’m glad to share it here, even if it’s also keeping me honest by forcing me to put it out instead of filing under “Maybe I’ll do this tomorrow.”

Look forward to it in November. Hopefully.