I just finished a book. I don’t mean I just completed reading a book. Seriously, I wrote a book I plan to publish.
During the 45 years I spent in the medical field I had a hobby or sorts – aging. I published a few papers that dealt with aging and worked on methods to help prolong a vibrant life. It wasn’t my primary area of expertise. But, over the decades of reading and studying how we age and why there are differences in the aging process among individuals, all of which I find fascinating, I’ve piled up a lot of information.
I’d never planned on writing a book about aging but the idea popped into my head one afternoon and I had it outlined before I went to bed that night. Actually, I completed the first draft in about two weeks. The hard part is the editing.
It is really difficult to edit your own writing. If you’ve read many of my posts here you already know I am a failure when it come to editing my own work. Still, I need to edit the book a time or two before I beg for help from better writers or professional editors.
In the past I have used professional editors. Believe me, they truly have made everything I provided in need of help much better. All of those works were manuscripts. Easy work generally less than 2500 words. Books are longer and the one I just finished is no exception.
The book isn’t my first. It is my third. The first was on how to preform a medical physical exam and the second on neonatology. Both were written for industry and weren’t available for general purchase. My copies have long since disappeared along with the knowledge I once held that provided the insight into those two books.
This third one, once it is edited, is a labor of passion. Decades of reading medical journals, making observations, and drawing totally unsupported conclusions have gone into the words of this latest book. Now, it is just the misery of editing and I’ll see if it can be published or even self-published. I expect to earn tens of dollars from the effort.