CHILDRENS BOOK SERIES | A SELF PUBLISHING JOURNEY

Meeting Your Allergens

Stepping into the unknown

I have been procrastinating. For months now.

I wrote this as a draft and hesitated to publish it. Not understanding why. Then I giggled as I read this piece by Mike Alexander.

The hesitation made sense. It fit perfectly so I had to change my intro to include the golden connection of dots.

My self-serving bias has been telling me that I am torn between designing a book series about allergens or finding someone to help me. Continuing to seek the traditional publishing path with agents, slush piles, editors and submission processes or to step along the journey of self-publishing.

I knew deep down I needed to do this on my own. It is about my daughters. It is too close to me to let it go…yet anyway. I was allowing myself to procrastinate with believing I was still deciding.

The time has come to stop hanging at the waiting place.

Waiting for walls to fall and start smashing through them myself.

Take a step and start the mess, learn, reflect, realign as needed and share the journey along the way.

I am not the first to take the self-publishing route, there are plenty of breadcrumbs to feast on..and potentially over-consume.

I will need to be aware of when I am in self-doubt, overconfidence mode or purely lost. But… not too much. After all the journey is all there is. A willingness to embrace the mistakes and all.

Taking Tim Maudlin’s advice and adapting all that I learn to do it “my way”

What sparked my intention to stop stalling… a few nudges within this community recently. Over time, there have been many inspiring reads that have prompted me to start, but of late these stand out.

Hearing Michael Beckwith’s words “a delay is not a denial” recently after reading Trista Ainsworth’s piece on going with the flow …inspired also by her own journey

Henery X (long) ever guiding presence, especially in this piece

WALLOBOOKS founders Sanjukt Saha and Swastika Gurung as well as the good Dr Mehmet Yildiz’s encouragement to keep working on personal writing projects.

And Diksha, who has given me courage to give it a go with my quirky designs

Being blind to what I already have distracts my energy on continuing to gather what I think I need. Staying in a consumption mindset instead of a creative one.

So here I go, taking stock, recognising and being grateful for the abundance of tools I already have at hand —

A personally driven “why”

The idea of this series is to give kids living with allergies to access to information about their allergens at their level. Sparked and encouraged by my own children and a mother I met last year at my daughter’s school who is also managing risks for her daughter with anaphylaxis.

Many kids are told they are allergic to something before they can read. Clueless as to what their allergens even look like or where they can turn up. Their parents taking control of their safety.

By ensuring the images in the book are as real as possible, my hope is to empower kids with allergies to help manage their own risks, especially when Mum and Dad aren’t around.

A rough draft and storyboard

A weekend children’s writing course I took late last year gifted me a couple of drafts. One of the sessions involved sharing our ideas and having them critiqued amongst the group.

Have to admit, it was challenging first off to hear why my stories possibly won’t work from a group of people…but when my ego hushed up, their insights were golden.

Guidance from those who have published before

I joined a children’s writing group lead by an experienced and children’s writer last week.

Taking notes on writers such as Robert Nelson and P.G. Barnett who write a chapter or section at a go.

Reading plenty of kid’s books… with my kids and as a volunteer support reader. Being around kids and a big kid myself helps too.

Software and skills I already have or am learning

A plan to use google slides, my own and stock photos.

Experience with taking photos from working in a camera shop when I was younger, and a love for taking pictures. Over 20 years of intimately using a computer in my daily life and a knack of learning new software as I go.

A couple of rough character designs hand-designed with my limited but growing understanding of Procreate.

Skillshare and YouTube filling in the gaps of my knowledge.

An aim to help others

In addition to directly helping kids with allergies, I envision any proceeds will go to Allergy and Anaphylaxis Australia. Who

“…strive to raise awareness of allergic conditions including life-threatening allergies in the community by providing evidence-based information, resources and services to support children and adults living with allergic disease”**

There are plenty more I haven’t mentioned here too. Sooooo… with that abundance of resources at hand, there is nothing more needed except for me to take the next step.

Let’s see where this goes! Stay tuned.

Thanks for reading

Thanks for being you

**I am beginning to believe strongly in the power of self-healing but I hesitate to rely on it solely for my daughters — doing so when it just involves me seems way less risky! Trust me, I see the obvious flaw in not having enough trust in self-healing for my daughters means I don’t fully trust it!

So to balance my trust, I resort to mixing scientifically researched methods and the less common but still very powerful methods (kinesiology, homeopathy, diet and managing the energy in our home) to help manage my daughter's allergies with the strong belief that one day they will be free from their life-threatening reactions.

Rasheed Hooda story about self-healing really resonated with me and has stayed in my head since I read it.

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