The countdown continues. NINE.

The process:

It was easy to decide what to quote this month. We have a tradition in Moldova, to give small talismans to friends and family on the first of March, which symbolize love and friendship and how everything is entwined in life. But the curious thing is that without a hint from my editor, I would not have much to quote on this. I got the corresponding edits yesterday and found that I did write about this tradition by naming it but not by explaining what it actually is. I was very grateful that my editor pointed the places, where such explanation and description would suit best. And as per magic, my fingers started moving over the keyboard and composing the scene. See below.

It is incredibly wonderful that we have prompts for creativity everywhere. We just need to see or feel them. And if we don’t see but need to, then life will make us see them anyway. And sometimes, it does it quite gently, in form of a kind advice from a good friend.

Quote:

This is a quote from Chapter 27. As mentioned above, it is about Moldovan tradition of Mărţişor. The whole book including this chapter, but except the prologue, is written in the first person from the point of view of the protagonist, Misha Ikizli, based on my father.

Most of this quote as not edited yet. So, please disregard any apparent failures.

***

Zina glanced at me briefly and then looked out again at the shady veranda. “Only a few weeks before, Ion and I had been in Tiraspol buying red and white wool for the Mărţişori. It was almost time for the children to start making them for their teachers and friends.”

I nodded. I remembered well how we would all sit together braiding red and white threads into strings, then making little men and women or flowers out of the same wool, binding these to the ends of the red and white strings, and finally making a small bow on each of those strings. How we gave these little Marches, these special little talismans, to each other on the first day of March. How we made wishes, when we bound them to tree branches on April first. And how our teachers had a whole display of Mărţişori decorating the left sides of their jackets and sweaters through the whole March. Mărţişor from every child had its place of honor on a teacher’s cloth.

Misha used to hide when he was making one for me. He wanted it to be a surprise. I always made small pompons out of the wool before binding them to a white- and red-braided string.

***

Note to the scene above: Misha mentioned in the scene is Misha Fiodorov, one of the best friends of Misha Ikizli at the orphanage.

Pictures:

1) Some Mărţişori, I made this year. 2) A pompon Mărţişor, I made last year. The idea to make it came from remembering my father’s ability to make perfect pompons. 3) You can see for yourself on the third picture with me in a jumper knitted by my mother and pompons made by my father. My father took me shortly after we came back from Algeria in 1982 to a photo studio to have this picture taken. Wishing all wonderful March and spring!

I love countdowns to the books by my favourite authors.

And now I am starting my very own countdown!

While starting into space they start with 10, so I will also start with ten. Self-publishing my very first novel is for me not less than starting a space shuttle or a rocket into space. If anything, it feels like much more.

Since this is a weekly post and we start as bespoke with 10, my first novel “The Truth about Family” will be available for purchase as an e-book and in print in ten weeks or less. My goal is to publish it this spring and I give myself ten weeks to do so.

Please excuse me if I forget and sneak a blog post outside of the countdown series. I am sure you will enjoy those too. Apart from that there will be some shortcuts in the countdown as well, like one post for 6 and 5 for example. Or maybe it will be 3 and 2? I have no idea when this will be. We will discover this together.

The countdown will be about the process of self-publishing. I find it so exciting, that I simply have to share it. And I will share some quotes from the book, with each of these posts. Further I will share photographs of my father, which are mentioned in the book, and/or which inspired various scenes in the book.

So, here it goes…

The process:

I am working with a wonderful editor on my book and enjoy seeing the transformation of the text in the book. It is the same text, the same story, but better. Difficult to describe. Yes, as many writers I was scared to open the edited files, but when I started going through them change by change, I started to enjoy what I saw. Very inspiring experience.

The cover is also almost ready. My family were the main advisers in brainstorming the cover. My editor, who is also the cover designer, has brought the whole cover to a very rounded concept.

More details on the whole team of helpers and supporters of the book will be of course in the acknowledgments section.

I will learn formatting the inside of the book soon. The text-books and resources found are in place. I am quite excited to see how the book’s text will take shapes of an e-book and a book for print. It is scary, but very exciting. If you are interested what I will use for it, here is the information. I will use the widely used writer’s software Scrivener (http://www.literatureandlatte.com/). I must admit I became its addict. It is fun to use and write in it. This blog post is also written using Scrivener.

Quote:

Today I will share not a quote directly, but the back cover blurb of the book. I think it worth sharing in order to introduce the book to the new readers and remind the supporters of this page what it is about. At some point this description will replace the one on the homepage. But right now, you are the first to read the almost ready draft.

Misha lost his family.
He can’t rest until he has found them,
if only to find himself.

Inspired by true events in the life of the author’s father, Mihail Ikizli, this remarkable novel tells the story of an orphanage graduate, who set out from a village in Soviet Moldova, to the University of Odessa, Ukraine, in the hopes of finding the family he had lost as a toddler during World War II.

His quest will not be in vain. But will what he discovers bring him a much  longed-for peace, or will it only bring him misery? Little does Misha know what he will find out – not only of his own past, but also about the orphanage; a place he believed he had left behind for ever.

 Picture:

Working at the orphanage’s workshop. My father is the first from the right.