CanDo Sandhu Spirit!
>> Posted by Jo on Wednesday 3 November 2010 | Comments: (0)
I have 2 key beliefs:
1. Everything happens for a reason
2. There are opportunities everywhere, you just have to open your eyes to see them
Never were these beliefs more important than when Sat, my husband, and I lost our jobs in March 2009. Losing one earner in a household is bad, both was unthinkable. On the plus side, we'd known a few months in advance that this was going to happen so we'd had time to work through the various emotional states - "why me?", "what are we going to do now?", "how are we going to pay the mortgage?", etc, etc. Lingering in this state wasn't going to help us, we had to figure out Plan B, and get on with it. Time for the CanDo Sandhu spirit to spring into action!
Plan B actually formed in our minds very early on and quickly snowballed. "Let's take a year out and go travelling!". It was an audacious idea since we had no income and a millstone known as a mortgage. The state of the job market was at rock bottom - 12 months would give us time out to discover the world and let the market pick up in the meantime. But what about the mortgage? Selling wasn't an option so we opted to let it out - which we managed to do.
We worked out an itinerary and booked our tickets. By mid-April 2009 we were on a plane to India to stay with Sat's parents for 3 months. Full details of our travels can be found at CanDo Sandhu blog. During the planning stage we knew there were things we wanted to see, experience and achieve. Most important for Sat was to write his first book. A fantasy fiction novel was something he'd been preparing in his mind for over 10 years but had never focused on it enough to make it a reality. A summer in the Punjab gave him that time to focus. Once he'd worked out an overview of the structure and written the prologue, he started to produce several chapters each week, tapping away on his laptop and wouldn't be satisfied until he'd found just the right wording for a particular battle scene or a character's facial expression.
He'd set himself a target of Christmas 2009 to finish the book. This challenging timescale was achieved in spite of 2 month-long trips back to the UK for family events, a month trekking in Nepal and 6 weeks travelling through South-East Asia! Stage one accomplished. Then came the task of proof-reading and finding a literary agent and publisher. When you consider there are over 3500 new books published every day then it's clear this is a very competitve market so the chances of being 'discovered' as the latest Tolkein or J K Rowling are fairly slim.
Brandishing the finished work he sent off emails, letters and manuscripts to the key players in his genre of fantasy fiction. We waited with excited anticipation for the responses. Some replied, others didn't. The disappointment was immense. However, Sat's belief in his book is beyond question. He knows what readers enjoy, what presses their buttons and he's delivered something that is sure to exceed their expectations.
Determined to be in print, he investigated the self-publishing route. It's becoming a more popular option for budding authors these days as it can be done pretty easily through companies such as Amazon. In this age of social media marketing through sites like twitter, Facebook and Linked In, the reach is truly global if you get the message pitched just right.
With his CanDo Sandhu attitude, his first book, Spirit (Dragon Crown Series) is available today (3rd November 2010) to buy on Amazon Kindle. The paperback version is just days away. Our travelling was the physical journey but there have been so many parallel journeys for us in the time we were away. Sat's journey was one of drive and determination to write and publish his book and is clear proof that you can get where you want to go when you focus on it. Of course, his ultimate destination on this journey is to become a NY Times Best Selling Author. He's so far along this track already, I've every faith in him that he'll get there. CanDo Sandhu Spirit rocks!
1. Everything happens for a reason
2. There are opportunities everywhere, you just have to open your eyes to see them
Never were these beliefs more important than when Sat, my husband, and I lost our jobs in March 2009. Losing one earner in a household is bad, both was unthinkable. On the plus side, we'd known a few months in advance that this was going to happen so we'd had time to work through the various emotional states - "why me?", "what are we going to do now?", "how are we going to pay the mortgage?", etc, etc. Lingering in this state wasn't going to help us, we had to figure out Plan B, and get on with it. Time for the CanDo Sandhu spirit to spring into action!
Plan B actually formed in our minds very early on and quickly snowballed. "Let's take a year out and go travelling!". It was an audacious idea since we had no income and a millstone known as a mortgage. The state of the job market was at rock bottom - 12 months would give us time out to discover the world and let the market pick up in the meantime. But what about the mortgage? Selling wasn't an option so we opted to let it out - which we managed to do.
We worked out an itinerary and booked our tickets. By mid-April 2009 we were on a plane to India to stay with Sat's parents for 3 months. Full details of our travels can be found at CanDo Sandhu blog. During the planning stage we knew there were things we wanted to see, experience and achieve. Most important for Sat was to write his first book. A fantasy fiction novel was something he'd been preparing in his mind for over 10 years but had never focused on it enough to make it a reality. A summer in the Punjab gave him that time to focus. Once he'd worked out an overview of the structure and written the prologue, he started to produce several chapters each week, tapping away on his laptop and wouldn't be satisfied until he'd found just the right wording for a particular battle scene or a character's facial expression.
He'd set himself a target of Christmas 2009 to finish the book. This challenging timescale was achieved in spite of 2 month-long trips back to the UK for family events, a month trekking in Nepal and 6 weeks travelling through South-East Asia! Stage one accomplished. Then came the task of proof-reading and finding a literary agent and publisher. When you consider there are over 3500 new books published every day then it's clear this is a very competitve market so the chances of being 'discovered' as the latest Tolkein or J K Rowling are fairly slim.
Brandishing the finished work he sent off emails, letters and manuscripts to the key players in his genre of fantasy fiction. We waited with excited anticipation for the responses. Some replied, others didn't. The disappointment was immense. However, Sat's belief in his book is beyond question. He knows what readers enjoy, what presses their buttons and he's delivered something that is sure to exceed their expectations.
Determined to be in print, he investigated the self-publishing route. It's becoming a more popular option for budding authors these days as it can be done pretty easily through companies such as Amazon. In this age of social media marketing through sites like twitter, Facebook and Linked In, the reach is truly global if you get the message pitched just right.
With his CanDo Sandhu attitude, his first book, Spirit (Dragon Crown Series) is available today (3rd November 2010) to buy on Amazon Kindle. The paperback version is just days away. Our travelling was the physical journey but there have been so many parallel journeys for us in the time we were away. Sat's journey was one of drive and determination to write and publish his book and is clear proof that you can get where you want to go when you focus on it. Of course, his ultimate destination on this journey is to become a NY Times Best Selling Author. He's so far along this track already, I've every faith in him that he'll get there. CanDo Sandhu Spirit rocks!
0 comments:
Post a Comment