Wonderings on Wanderings: Writing and Editing a Book

this book's emerging dominant theme is patriotism...for both the US and the Philippines 

waiting for the train at grand Central, New York City

Our wanderings have given me a lot of lifestyle adventures to write about! I now have 217 blog posts about the cruising lifestyle, some of which are wonderings about the wanderings. It was mid-January last year when Bill left me for a month to help his son in Boise, Idaho. Sometimes it is the saddest of times when I cope with referred passion. I was then visiting in Seattle and when everyone was at work or school, I put the lonely hours to work. Using our personal story behind the scenes as thread, I put the posts together into the first draft manuscript of my book. Spellcheck helped a lot. When Bill came back a day before Valentines, he had more than two hundred pages to edit! 

By May, I had a second version. A somewhat private person, Bill asked me to eliminate some of the details and a new theme came out, my bitter-sweet swings of patriotism between the Philippines and the US. This part was more difficult to write and it was only around August when Bill could take another look. By October, with just idiomatic phrasing and grammatical errors as feedback from him, the third version came out fast. I was then encouraged to show my work to other people! We sent it to his daughter Suzanne and my daughter Claudine.

Merry Jo's blog home

Linda Herman's Parents to the End

I looked for constructive criticism from both American and Filipino friends. From the Toastmasters Club and Book Club in Kent, Washington were Linda Herman, a psychologist and newly published author of Parents to the End, Liz, a lawyer who recently lost her husband and is currently writing her own memoir, and Merry Jo, who also writes posts at travelblog.org about her own travels with husband Dave. They gave me such critical feedback that I was able to make marked improvements for the fourth version. I am still waiting for feedback from Roberta Dolan, another soon-to-be published author of Say It Out Loud and the blog, http://write-to-survive.blogspot.com, who gave me a push towards writing when I met her at the Orlando Thousand Trails RV Resort! Hopefully, Tel Asiado, a friend from the Institute of Advanced Computer Technology, an established author, freelance writer and owner of Inspired Pen blog network from Sydney, Australia, will too!  I am also waiting for feedback from Chit Ragasa Derkits, a friend from the University of the Philippines, now a retired PhD in Physics living in Pittsburgh.

Tel Asiado's Inspired Pen network of blogs

I was very ready for professional editing! There are two kinds of edit, first is developmental editing and second, line edit. The first checks for a good opening, logical flow, clarity, completeness, superfluity, good conclusion, organization, and achievement of purpose along with some light line edit that includes spelling, punctuation, grammar, usage and obvious errors of fact. This edit will give the best feedback for jazzing up any manuscript. The second or heavy line edit includes checking of facts, word usage, awkward sentences, bad parallelisms, misplaced modifiers, and edit of grammar to the standard of a well-educated reader and, lastly, smooth transitions. This edit will finalize a manuscript for publishing.  We are now on the first round.

growth of the BPO industry in the Philippines

I wanted a Filipino editor. I believe strongly that the facility of Filipinos with American English and familiarity with American culture (the Philippines was a US colony from 1898 to 1946), give my countrymen amazing competitive advantage in backroom business processes with much lower per hour rates compared to American labor force. Editing is one of those processes and I would like to show this to the world (actually, social marketing is another and I will have another Filipino consultant for this).

I sent my latest version last December to Chit Tribiana, copy writer at the Institute of Advanced Computer Technology when I was marketing manager. An English major, Chit built a career as a professional editor in the Philippines after the unfortunate demise of I/ACT. Also a blogger (http://chitsblog.wordpress.com), she expects to finish her first round feedback by end of January, giving us February and March to do the second round. If I have a publishable version by end of March, I will have enough time to release the book by end of June.  I would like to time it to coincide with July 4, Independence Day in the US and Philippine-American Friendship Day, the day the US also granted us our independence, because patriotism has emerged as the dominant theme.

Finally, my wanderings and my wonderings about them will produce something worth keeping for me and Bill and our family. Hopefully, it is also worth sharing with you all.