Dear Kickstarter backers,
1. Book writing update:
I’ve written 10,000 words of the first draft. I imagine the book will have about 60K words total. I write 2,000 words each day, Monday through Friday. At that rate I will finish the first draft by the end of June. After that, of course, there will be about 3 months of revisions (second drafts, third drafts, copyediting, etc).
2. The Gym:
On Sunday evenings at 6pm Istanbul time a few of us meet at a Starbucks in Şişli to go over some stories I’m working on for the book. Think of this meeting as kind of a “workout room” for the book.
Hearing the questions people ask, and what they respond to in the stories, helps me make the stories better. Today, for example, we’ll be talking about a couple Polish guys I met in the first couple days of the walk, and where’s the story in that.
If you are free Sunday evenings at 6pm, come to the Starbucks in front of Cevahir AVM in Şişli and help us whip a story into shape. The Gym groups are small so far — all it takes to start whipping a story into shape is the feedback of a couple people.
3. An idea:
I have an idea I want to run by you, and a request for information if the idea catches your fancy…
Last night I was having dinner with a friend of mine, a follower of the walk who is in Istanbul for the weekend. She is not a Kickstarter backer — she heard about the walk after the Kickstarter funding window had closed.
She had an idea I really liked. It was to scatter some words from followers of the walk throughout the book. Not as in-line components of the story, but as stand-alone pages in the book where followers of the walk would talk about why they followed the walk.
Some people followed the walk because they had been to Turkey and liked it; some people followed the walk because they liked showing others this part of the world isn’t dangerous, it’s welcoming and friendly; other people followed the walk for other reasons. What almost everyone had in common was that, for whatever reason, my walk across Turkey was triggering something in them.
I imagine collecting followers’ stories would involve two steps: a follower writing a rough draft to me (something short, like just one or two paragraphs), and then, later in a few months, that follower and I having a conversation (face-to-face, phone, Skype, whatever) to pull out some ideas and polish their words up for the book.
Anyway, my question for you: Would you be interested in having a page in the book all your own (with your name on it), and if so, tell me, why were you following the walk? What was it triggering in you? My email is mattkrause@mattkrause.com, and my phone is +90 535 680 9680.
Best regards,
Matt Krause