Life After the Book Launch

Nothing‎ changes after the book launch took place days ago. The blue boy still gets busy with his dreams, plans and future itinerary while time is floating subtly as usual. He goes to campus, attends classes, and takes notes. Everything a university student usually does.

Or not. I just find out it’s the time when university students take recess between semesters. So that explains why the book launch was on last Saturday.

He works like a slave even on weekends. I don’t even understand why he has to do so in the first place. Get a life, I say it to him but soon I find out it’s I who need the reminder more than he. I work ‎on weekends sometimes, I admit it. But it doesn’t feel like work because my pastime is the same thing I do for a living. I write.

Speaking of the intensity of my love of writing, I almost throw up when I want to declare: “Writing is my spouse”. That sounds a little bit too much for a normal guy. I then sit and touch my forehead lightly and mumble,”Gosh! Maybe I’m not.” I should see a psychiatrist perhaps. This is not good for my well being. Blame it all on Elizabeth Gilbert and her wildly inspiring TED Talk about writing serving as home. But as I realize how easy spouses can get divorced these days, I change my mind. I don’t want to marry writing.

The last time I wrote a long and more intellect-demanding piece on weekend, a silly and curly old spinster warned,”You shall not write too much. Your feeble mind can get tired and that affects your work quality.” And my everyday work is in fact writing. So what’s the point of the heed? I dump the ridiculous piece of advice instantly. She might be out of her mind. Needless to say.

The privilege of being young and healthy is you can do anything you want until you almost kill yourself from extreme fatigue. But who cares? The blue boy keeps on toiling like a bull even though his mother shrieks,”Where are you going to go again?!!” She gets frantic of course. The blue boy just got home and he refuses to lock the gate, saying:”Don’t lock it. I’ll go out in a minute.” The clock strikes 9.30 pm. Luckily no curfew is in effect in the house.

Life is still hard even for a published writer like the blue boy, who is still 18. But at the very least, he is already selling his maiden 143-page book‎. He’s got something tangible to show off.

I frown to find the blue boy not having a personal site or‎ a Facebook page for himself. He’s the brand right now. He has to market his book and his skills as an author. A published one! No one can deny that. And he has managed to separate himself from a zillion of unpublished hopefuls like me. He has a product to sell but too bad he’s not aware of it.

The next effort needed to make his book best-selling in many bookstores‎ is making sure he can sell with whatever marketing tools and strategies available for free or applicable at very low cost. And he seems to be disinterested when I mention about Facebook or social media sites other than Twitter. He needs a profesional help for this. Badly need one.

‎All he needs now is writing a blog to promote his book and tweet like crazy to build a bigger audience.

The blue boy doesn’t need it, so it may seem. The mentor has done it all for him. ‎Definitely he wants to show people that he succeeded as a mentor of a fledgling young writer.

I suppose the mentor will bring and obviously sell the books to every participant of his trainings and public talks or whatever event he holds, co-holds or attends.

‎The books are then brought and sent to several cities in Indonesia. The mentor may promise the blue boy a greater channel of distribution if he agreed to write under his guidance. And boy, did the mentor have it.