"Self-publication" - the idea that you do everything yourself when writing and publishing, be it books, blogs, podcasts, journals, you name it.
I've wanted to do this for a long time now but until recently haven't been able to find the time or energy to do it. The reason for that is that work plus the commute that goes with it is 9.5 hours each day, and on top of that I like (.....well, liked, since we're living in a pandemic at the time of writing this) to train at my local gym too. In total, I'm out of my house for around 12 hours each day. Add onto there that a lot of energy is being spent masking, something I didn't think I was doing (a topic for another blog later on), all I want to do when I come home is eat and sleep.
I've got nothing but admiration for those who are able to do a full working day every day and still be able to work on their side projects similar to this one. (Maybe also a little bit jealous that they're able to find that energy to do so, but .... shh!! ) So this current situation that we and I find ourselves in has provided a good opportunity to get this off the ground and for me to start doing something that I want to do and that hopefully will help people.
One thing I've learned over the last few weeks or so is that self-publication really isn't "self" at all. And here's why
Information and knowledge
I won't ever claim to know absolutely everything. I know that there is always more to learn in any subject area, and knowing that fact keeps me curious and also keeps me humble
"One of the great challenges in this word is knowing enough about a subject to think that you're right, but not enough about the subject to know you're wrong" - Neil De Grasse Tyson (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kPINNhHGNw)
So the information in my blogs is a mix of my own knowledge and what I have learned through years of study, as well as information that is publically available and referenced wherever it has been used. So this is a clear indication that what I am doing isn't self-publication because I am taking publically available knowledge and information and, when doing my commentaries, giving my interpretation of that information in as clearly as possible.
Imagery
Let's face it, words on their own with no imagery or photos or visuals would be boring and wouldn't be read. We're naturally attracted to colourful and eye-catching things, hence why I've tried to incorporate images and graphics and colour into my blogs. Online blogs have the advantage of being electronic and not paper-based, which means writers are able to use their own creativity in writing an attractive and captivating story each time, and the easiest way to do that is to include some colour to break up the monotony.
Images I've used in the body of my posts have again come from sources that have publically available information, and arguably some of the best sources of that information for their target audience, ie students, aspiring solicitors like myself, and existing practitioners who are keeping their knowledge base up to date. The cover images that you see for each of my posts on my site come from a source called Unsplash (https://unsplash.com/). The website allows photographers to upload photos to the site, which are then curated by a team of photo editors, which can then be used by others completely free and unrestricted, similar to a Creative Commons license. I credit the creator each time, simply because that is the right thing to do, and am grateful to have come across this website as there is a huge range of images to choose from.
I'm not a photographer or an artist ...... seriously, you should see my work from school! So in my mind, this is another nail in the coffin of the "self-publication" idea.
Proofreading
I'm fortunate enough to have met some brilliant classmates on LPC, some of whom have become mates, who I ask and agree to proofread parts or all of my intended blogs to check for knowledge, language, tone, and interpretation.
For example, parts of my first blog where I explore if the novel coronavirus pandemic is making us all think more about writing wills and thinking about our final wishes due to the rising death toll was read over by Chelsea Shore, a Private Client paralegal, to check my knowledge was correct, and by Siobhan O'Brien, a recently qualified solicitor working in-house, to confirm that my blog was exploring facts and publically available information and not offering advice which I am obviously not qualified or insured to do.
Also, the 2nd part of my blog where I explore the different routes to qualification was looked over by Chelsea and Siobhan and following their advice, a slight edit was made from what I was going to publish because the way I had worded one particular sentence could have been misinterpreted.
Whilst the information was right, it is not always about the fact that it is right. More often than not, the important point is the delivery and how the information is read and interpreted, and words and language play a huge part in that delivery. Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon, was taught that "its harder to be kind than clever" when he spoke about a time where he worked out how many years his grandmother lost to smoking. This is relevant here because you can claim to have the correct information, but the delivery of it is just as, if not, more important.
Being autistic, it hasn't always been smooth sailing for me with regard to delivery and language and tone. It is something that I have improved upon considerably in recent years, but I would be remiss if I didn't say that it has been a weak point of mine for a while. Further study, self-awareness, gained wisdom and maturity, and the understanding and patience of friends and family have played a big part in my development here. I won't claim to be perfect and there have been times where I've slipped, but I'm happy that it hasn't been often as of late.
Hosting
Using Wix has given me the opportunity to realise this project. The site has been relatively easy to set up using the tools that the application employs. I put this site together using an example site and I changed some photos, deleted some existing pages, added some new pages to house things like my blogs and photos, and changed and added some text to make it personal to me. I made the point that I didn't want it to be too loud and fancy so as not to distract away from the purpose of the site:
- to inspire, encourage and add value to persons of the neurodiverse community who are thinking of pursuing law as a career path;
- to try and assist employers and more senior workers with some knowledge and insight of how they can support and help neurodiverse lawyers success and thrive (I can speak from the point of view of an autistic aspiring solicitor); and
- to offer a view of what one neurodiverse aspiring solicitor (ie me) does with his downtime to keep himself sane, curious, occupied, and also to give an idea why I do it and how it can be useful in the long run
I doubt I would have been able to create something like this without Wix or another website creator application as I just don't have the technical know-how or the creativity to be able to make it into what I want it to look like. So Wix has been a real help to me, and another reason why the idea of self-publication of blogs really isn't self at all. Blogs need somewhere to be hosted and to be contained - they can't just exist out of nowhere.
I am following Rosie Weldon on LinkedIn who is a well-known autism advocate and has actively shared how the difficulty affects her and how her workplace has understood, listened and supported her so that she can thrive. She has recently released her book called My Autistic Fight Song which has been very well-reviewed so far. She has also written about how she self-published her book, but actually didn't self-publish it because there were many other talented individuals who knew more about the different aspects of publishing and worked with her to achieve her goal of publishing her book.
I took inspiration from her and her post when writing this one because she has hit the nail on the head here in that there were so many others involved in the process that we don't often think about. Its easy for us to think that because someone self-publishes books or blogs or podcasts, they do everything that goes along with it. We don't often think about how many other people are involved behind the scenes, whether its friends and family using their own skills or people that we employ to do a task like create art or professional formatting. I certainly didn't when I started, and am learning that now that I'm having a crack at this.
Having only done this for a couple of weeks I still feel like a newbie and am still learning a lot about things like how to maintain a consistency in the frequency of posting, the balance of topics that I want to talk about and that will be interesting to anyone reading, and what a manageable length of a post should be for writer and reader (this one says a 7 min read). Its always a learning experience and will continue to be - there will always be room for improvement and development with time.
Thanks for reading. I'm going to bake over the weekend ........ like, actual baking, not me sitting out in the sun and cooking myself!
Be safe!
Credit: Cover image by Jen Theodore on Unsplash
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