Hello friends,
no, aa ooo, no way… again! We’ve reached the last article of the week, that quick?
I have been receiving many comments on blogging and writing. I believe this article could put to rest some questions one might have around the topic of writing. The most bizarre thing was that in six months at least two hundred copies of this book were sold, i.e., after being released in the year 2013, the title was something different and to think that this book’s draft was written in the year 2009.
After releasing my first novel in 2013 (at this point I was working on it for roughly four years) and then after leaving the toxic relationship there seemed to be a nagging voice (Roughly in May 2014), i.e., “Nope, this can’t be the price of the book? Nope, this is not where it ends with this book. I don’t think the title is good enough. This can’t be the worth of such a lengthy struggle, lengthy life experience, lengthy failure or loss of not only me but the people who I know that lived through such events. It deserves more professional work from my end and other professionals for it to become known. What about my parents? Their lives first and foremost isn’t cheap, not ever cheap, to begin with. Is this your final shot at it, after what they’ve been through?”
“I think not!”
What was wrong with the book?
December 2013 comes, and I walk away with some £350 +- in my pocket leaving the relationship that sucked the life from my soul. £350+- all that was left from me working hard at a job I never wanted to leave in the first place, a job that I knew would be dangerous to have if I lived in the same town as my ex, some kind of intuition that I’d be driven out of the life I had by being stalked every single hour forget every single day. As I started meditating in that year (2014) the inner voice kept saying, “You cannot leave such a quality story to die in a book that has never been given a chance, you need to pick this book up again and reinvent it, sort out all the grammatical errors, it’s simply unfinished, there’s much that is missing.”
Slowly, I began letting all sites who had it up know if they could possibly remove it off their platform. This was a bit of work and then I start revisiting the book. (Great thing ever considering my ex had been leaving nasty comments on the book, pretending to be other people on these sites etc.) Wow! You can’t imagine what I was looking at. I was looking at a piece of work that contained:
- A lot of sentences written in the passive format.
- The characters needed more sense of character, i.e., it was alright to add more mystery to them, not have all of them walk on eggshells.
- I saw the writer as a person who wrote the book in a different mindset mixed up with a new mindset that possibly isn’t correct for the impact she was hoping to make. This was another person at another time.
- Tons of grammatical errors and spelling mistakes which strangely enough arrived in dark climaxes not so much during uplifting moments.
- With too much narration and passive voice, the story had less life. I wanted people to, actually feel it in real-time. This wasn’t the case.
- When one begins the healing process, they slowly step away from recognising what was not ever okay, i.e., the person they once were, man… it was what I saw on how it was written.
- Truth be told! Parts of it had been written with a sabotaged mind.
Here is where the healing really started. This was when I pulled the entire book apart and looked at each sentence, what it was saying, which place inside of me was it coming from and what did I want for the reader and future readers to feel, i.e., that it’s alright, or that this isn’t alright or that it’s a passing state in people’s lives. What is the solution then?
The reinvention was much more interesting than writing and rewriting the first the draft
The reinvention felt more inspiring while the dark parts of the story came and went, it was the inspiration that I built on especially when I saw that coming up in the book. I just worked on making those parts overpower the darkness. The more I bettered the story each day until the release of The South African: True Colours in October 2018 I kept doing my daily practices, I also kept praying in general and for the book. I honestly hoped every day that this time I’ll do it justice.
One day I’ll give a speech on this, however, recently I had an interview on Gary’s Glorious Golden Nuggets and he was interested to learn how writing can heal a person. When I explain this in the interview, you’ll be very interested to learn how writing cleanses and heals. Look out for updates on this article so that once the interview is released, I can provide the necessary links for you to access it.
So, my last tip is this, when writing, the questions to ask are, where is each sentence you’re writing coming from? Does that sentence contain unresolved anger, unresolved pain, unresolved bitterness, etc. that you thought you resolved? What is it meant to show or reveal? What is the root of it and when released in a book is it going to heal someone else, is it going to open up their wounds but most of all will you be the one to close it spiritually or will you be the one to teach someone the correct way to close it? Basically, what is their takeaway? – T. Dench Patel, 27 January 2021, 17:49
Yours sincerely,
T. Dench Patel
Thank you for the comments and support. Thank you for offering to donate if there was a donate button on here. I prefer not to take donations. You can support by purchasing my books (Paperback or Kindle), The South African: True Colours, The South African: Roamer or my children’s book Light. These books can be found on Amazon mainly and other sites in your country.
The audiobook for The South African: True Colours is available on iTunes, Apple and Audible. The South African: Roamer and Light will be released soon.
Note: Do keep referring back to this site as much as possible, as I grow, a more profound perspective may form and so I will always come back to each of these articles to re-evaluate them.
