Day 47 - Hanging at the Hyatt

Rest day today, so I haven't been up to too much. I went for a wander round downtown and it was extremely hot. Restaurant after restaurant was shut, they only opened Monday to Friday. By the time I had walked a mile I was scorched, how did I cycle in this temperature? I eventually located a deli which was open, only just though, as they had aprivate party arriving shortly. The plus side to this deli was that on the corner of the same block was a bike shop. They were having a few issues in the bike shop as someone had decided to park an RV in their car park, but not only park, camp too! Its very hard for me to resist not just buying item after item in bike shops but I limited myself to two things. A tiny puncture repair kit so I'm not stranded again and an insulated 24oz (750ml) water bottle by camelback. Its a nice bottle and I am interested to see if it actually works, my water has been getting very hot in about an hour in this weather and this should limit the heating up progress. I've also been doing some planning for my upcoming route to and past Little Rock. I think I need to get some early starts in to avoid the heat.
One other thing I have been thinking about is books and more seriously turning this blog into a book. Pam and Carol have been very enthusiastic for this, they are ofcourse completely biased and would probably read anything I write. So here are my thoughts:
1. The Ability to Write
Great as my posts have been and yes some good anecdotes, the english, grammar, punctuation is absolutely terrible. I use semi-colons with flagrant disregard for their proper positioning, sentences go on far too long and I have a tendency to use '-' which is never used by proper writers. Let's not even talk about spelling.
2. Ghost Writers
The only way to actually deal with point no. 1 is to have a ghost writer, I.e. someone who can write, and properly turn this into an actual book. This would mean ofcourse sharing the royalties and finiding someone actually willing to do it! Preferably on a no win, no fee basis. Maybe Rick Mick has a few spare months?
3. Personal References
This blog is littered with references and jokes to my friends, of which the general public know nothing. Most of you would therefore sadly face the chop in the final cut. This might be a good way to cut a good few thousand words.
4. Language
Am I writing in British or American English, I'm not to sure, I've been popping 'z's in all over the place but still pronouncing them 'zed'. So there would have to be two editions, a UK one, a US one and maybe we will even let the Canadians have their own special version (shout out to Deron - oh, no can't do that, see point 3.)
5. Words
Or more specifically the number of words, I'm not sure how much I have been writing but somewhere around 500 to 1,000 words per post is a good guess. This is a lot of words, Shakespeare would be proud, but let's be honest that is one thick book. It would need a cull, and also what about structure? Do you keep it a day by day account or maybe consolidate each state into a chapter?
6. Pictures
Most of my rants relate to specific things which I have seen; a picture tells a thousand words or blah blah something similar. I have far too many pictures to make this work. The colour section in the middle would be thicker than the friggin standard print text itself. And the pictures wouldn't be next to the text, or if they were the book would be really expensive.
7. Pseudonym
The massive downside to becoming a published author must be the fame and mad people who stalk you. An easy solution must be to take a fake name (something a bit more cryptic than Prian Beers) which means you can't be searched on facebook. This ofcourse could be a chance to get in touch with my feminine side and become a woman!
8. British Library
In fact the whole idea of this becoming a book is ridiculous, but there is only one reason i'd do it. Not because I want anyone to read it, although I have enjoyed the comments I have received. No, only because every book published which gets an ISBN and is stored by the British Library for eternity. I'd be quite happy knowing that I had a book in there, read or unread.
Enough bizarre ranting over my career as a writer. I qualified as an accountant because I do numbers not words, and besides I think the life of a writer must be fairly lonely. This blog post has taken me over 3 hours to write as well! I've been at the bar with an aluminium business tycoon called Carey. Absolutely wonderful guy, but he has bought me too many beers which has threatened my early night and my future career as a novelist. To bed I must go!