Finally, after almost a year of hard work, perseverance and continuous creativity, it was accomplished. My childhood goal of being a published author had been achieved. Piece by piece, poem by poem, this composition had come together. But now in retrospect, it feels as though, it wasn't just about the destination, it was also about the journey, and this journey of writing a book has made me fall in love with it. Something that I hope to keep up in the future.
P.S: Take a peek into what the final product looks like in the " Gallery " tab Publishing was just the penultimate step in this journey, as I had also planned to distribute 50+ copies to educators, doctors and students aged 12-18 in order to gain their feedback on the book. This became especially difficult due to a resurgence of COVID - 19 cases at that time which restricted my ability to distribute physical copies of the book. Hence, an alternative method of sending the soft-copy to people through e-mail was used and an online form was created to collect their responses. The few physical copies that were handed out after complete disinfection included QR codes of the online form to minimize physical contact. Overall, 68 responses were amassed through extensive distribution of the book (analyzed results are shown below). This allowed me to comprehend how helpful the book was for the readers, and what aspects of it could be improved in a future reprint.
This was an extremely challenging phase of the project. This required immense resilience and continuous perseverance as numerous publishers had to be contacted before being published. Despite of over numerous emails to over 20 publishers, I had received no reply from them, hence I decided to go forward with the Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing and Paperback Publishing option, which in itself also proved to be quite difficult and time-consuming. So I watched videos to understand how to format the kindle ebook using the Kindle Create software. Side by side, I also continued to contact local, regional and global publishers in hopes of a reply from them. Some time later I published the eBook and the paperback versions on Amazon. A few days after this, I received a reply from a publishing house in India called - The Impish Lass Publishing House which had agreed to publish my book under their Young Bards Project which aims to publish books written by students and teachers who have just started their foray into book writing. I agreed to go forward with them, and had to take down the versions that I had self-published on Amazon to avoid any clashes between my copy and the copy that was going to be published by the Publishing house. After this, I continued constant correspondance with the publishing house in order to ensure that the process was quick and the book could be published as soon as possible. Finally, after consistent hard work and amazing co-operation between the publishing house and myself, the book was officially published on 6th February 2021
I started this process by deciding on some common rhyme pairs that I could use in my poems Next i jotted down the topics I would cover (draft TOC image 1 & 2) along with the extent of info I would cover in most of them (image 3) Next, I also decided to include pictures in the book to aid the understanding of the readers and hence started collecting images for the various parts of the body Some of my initial poems... Lastly, I came up with my own cover page.... And copyrighted my manuscript before sending it out to publishers.
The final formatted copy of the manuscript was completed by 6th November 2020 The creation of 40 poems specifically tailored to a target audience with each poem revolving around the parts of the human body was never going to be easy. So I had to start early and stay consistent with the writing process of my poems. But before writing anything and everything, I had to research to ensure that the information that I included was accurate. Picture 1 & 2 - Research Plan: Some of the questions I needed to answer and the sources I used to do that
Pictures 3 & 4 - OPVL (Evaluation of the sources I had used): this was based on the origin, purpose, value and limitation of the source. To answer the questions above, I had interviewed a science poet, Mr. Eric Rose, who provided some amazing and valuable information on how to tailor the science poems for the target audience, and a lot of other tips and tricks. Along with this, in order to gauge the interest of fellow peers and adults, while initiating my project, I had conducted a questionnaire through which I asked people if they preferred the conventional methods of textbooks, and websites to provide information, or would they prefer an unconventional and creative method, such as a poetry book. The results of this survey, helped me solidify on my choice for the final product. Creating an action plan and a success criterion for my project was extremely important to organize my plans and set expectations.
Today I submitted my circular inquiry map for my personal project idea. It was something that I had been brainstorming for the past few days, considering my interests and what I would love to create as that was also a piece of advice I received from the seniors; to choose something that I would thoroughly love creating. Therefore, after analyzing and identifying my two main interests of writing poems, and learning biology, I decided to combine both of these to create a book of compiled poems on biological aspects. According to me, it would be something through which I would be able to channel both my interests in a rather unique and creative way. In the circular inquiry map, I was also supposed to decide which global context my personal project idea would fall under, and I decided that to be, Personal and cultural expression, as a book was definitely a way for me to express my personal creative thoughts related to biology. Next, I thought upon how to make it challenging and I believe that publishing would be a rather challenging feat that could be achieved if I could finish the book early enough for me to contact and get in touch with publishers. Also, if my book is published, I could get some feedback on its effectivity by sharing it with students to see what they feel about the book and how helpful it is for them. Finally, I think that I would write around 40 poems making the book neither too long nor too short. Picture 1 - circular inquiry map - basic idea of what I wanted to include
Picture 2 - SWOT analysis method used to evaluate each of my ideas (and yes I like colors) |
GoalI arrived on the conclusion of publishing a book of compiled self-written poems on different biological aspects, making sure that the book has at least 40 poems and is published, to make the product challenging enough. |