June 24, 2011

  • The Victorious Life of Joshua Part 20

    Jos 3:1 And Joshua rose early in the morning; and they removed from Shittim, and came to Jordan, he and all the children of Israel, and lodged there before they passed over.

    They’ve done their research. They know all they need to know to make their move. Note that Joshua is now beginning to move them into position. Just as I explained to my son, nothing just happens. There are a series of little steps one must take that gradually inches them into position to receive.

    Just like no one just wins an Olympic medal. They learn everything about their sport. They learn about their competition. They learn techniques that help them move better, faster, and longer without fatigue. They train, and train, and train.

    And then, they start with small battles. They enter competitions and contests. Most of the time, they start on a local level, and work their way up to divisional or regional levels. When they have become successful at these levels, they move on to state, and then national levels; and all the while, they are still in training with their eye on the prize. They earn their way into “qualification” by faith and faithful effort, into the group of those whose faithfulness have earned them the right to compete for the ultimate prize.

    But, no one ever got there by sleeping half the day away. Let me remind you...

    Pro 6:6 Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise:
    Pro 6:9 How long wilt thou sleep, O sluggard? when wilt thou arise out of thy sleep?
    Pro 13:4 The soul of the sluggard desireth, and [hath] nothing: but the soul of the diligent shall be made fat.

    “You‘ve got to get up pretty early in the morning, to pull one over on me!”
    “Early to bed & early to rise, makes a man, healthy, wealthy & wise.”

    In other words, it takes diligence. It takes consistency. And it can be quite frustrating; I know.

    My book, “Dear Child of God,” was published as both a hard copy book, and an ebook. However, at the time I published the ebook, the company I published with informed me that I could have the book placed into their premium catalog, but it required some adjustments to the formatting.

    At the time they first brought this to my attention, I was going through some drama with my son, having not yet received an evaluation on him, and not knowing about the ADHD and Asperger’s that he has since been diagnosed with.

    Because of the issues at that time, I was unable to even focus on these revisions with my book. Two years passed before I was even able to pay attention to anything else. So at the beginning of this year, I finally was able to start working on it.

    Let me tell you; talk about frustrating. Every time I fixed what they required and resubmitted the book, they had a new set of requirements. They would direct me to one section of their publishing guidelines for the corrections, and the next time, something else would come up.

    Week after week, I’d resubmit, sometimes even twice per week, and no matter what I did, it would never pass their auto vetter (formatting machine for ebooks). I thought I would go crazy.

    There were more than several times, when I seriously considered giving up. It was just that frustrating. What kept me going? I was really making an effort to make some changes in my life, and I just thought that I could be on the edge of a breakthrough and not know it. Giving up would make me miss my reward.

    I kept asking God to give me the strength. Additionally, I really tried to get the focus off of my dissatisfaction at having to continually redo it. I tried to keep my eyes on the goal: worldwide distribution.

    So, as frustrating as it sometimes was, I just resigned myself that no matter what, I was going to keep going, and redo it as many times as it takes to get it right, so I would get into that premium catalog.

    After 4 frustrating months of this, it finally dawned on me that part of the problem was the conversion from my word processor into a Word document when I saved it.

    This conversion was throwing things out of wack, and so, despite my best efforts to change the formatting, the document was still carrying hidden formatting that was not visible to me on the screen.

    Finally, I decided to copy all the text into my notepad, which would remove all formatting; and then, open a new document and paste it into that. Then I’d be able to redo the formatting from scratch.

    That brainstorm got me past the first major hurdle; the auto vetter. However, unbeknownst to me, there was another major hurdle. Not only did I have to get it past the staff, but also, the epub viewer. If it didn’t lay out correctly there, I still had more battling to do.

    After two more revisions, I got past the staff, but not the epub viewer. I still had more work to do, but I was elated to have won a few of these major hurdles.

    This time, they mentioned the epub viewer in their message on my revisions, and gave me a link to check it with. I made the changes and checked it and...low and behold! It passed! I was elated, to say the least.

    I resubmitted it, and it was approved, however, the president emailed me about some minor issues having to do with the trailer on my paragraphs being 72pts, and the unnecessary use of page breaks. I had made 6pt trailers, but again, the conversion from the word processor had increased it tremendously.

    These were minor fixes, and I took care of them, but it took 5 months and a lot of perseverance week after frustrating week to get to this point. Now, my book will be made available to every major retailer of ebooks worldwide.

    You’ve got to have a goal, and you’ve got to have a plan, and you’ve got to be determined and persistent, so that despite the obstacles, you can attain that which you seek. Nothing just happens.

Comments (2)

  • I am often to blogging and i really appreciate your content. The article has really peaks my interest. I am going to bookmark your site and keep checking for new information.

    • I haven't written anything here in a long time because I have been focused on my main sites, but all of my articles will be moved between two sites. I currently have articles in 6 and its a bit much to manage, so if you join my main site, you will be able to be updated on everything as I transform it and pull in my articles from around the web. Thanks again!

Post a Comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *