Thursday, May 24, 2012

A Glimpse of Happiness – The making of…


Find more about A Glimpse of Happiness

It all started as a joke, someone saw me writing and ask if I was writing a book, and the funny thing is that he was being serious. I had never pictured myself writing an entire book, but after that moment the idea started to linger in my head. I had just recently gone back to my writing, I was bored to death and  I had to sit 8 hours a day in front of a computer with little to do so I figure I could give it a shot. For years I had been hoarding these plots on my mind, so why not try to do something with them.

Very unlike everything I do, I didn’t put much thought in it, I didn’t plan ahead, I just started to put in paper what was coming out of my head, really just letting it flow.  I started it on the 9th of September and 22 days later it was done. I never thought it could be so addictive but all I could think about, day and night, was that book and all that I wanted to put in it. It was all very clear in my head, it was just a matter of typing it and hoping it would make sense.

While I was writing the book, another friend told me I should publish it, which was something that would have never crossed my mind and that I had mixed feelings about, so I decided not to think about it until it was done. Oddly enough, once I finished, I was quite pleased with the final result and felt almost… proud for what I had done (which is very unusual). I was glad I had done it but I was yet to figure out that the biggest challenge wasn’t putting one of my stories on paper but to actually share them with other people. Therefore, I put my little project in a drawer, where it stayed for a few months…  Luckily the few people that knew that I had wrote the book didn’t let me forget about it. They kept pushing me, asking me about it, trying to allure me to let them read it.

There were moments I would convince myself to do it, but then I would change my mind, I needed a bigger reason, something that wouldn’t allow me to get cold feet, and that’s when the idea of making this a part of the Operation: Let's Build a House came up. I have been trying to raise money for this family in Mozambique and I figured I could use this book to try to get some contributions too. This decision forced me to publish it, because now not doing it, didn’t just mean I was losing an opportunity for myself, it meant that I might be wasting a chance to help someone that needed it. I also decided to translate the book to Portuguese in order to be able to reach more public and hopefully get more help to the family from Mozambique.

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