The school holidays are not just a time for the kids to let their hair down after the end of the academic year, but a chance for adults to also take a big break and enjoy themselves.
It is not even necessary to have a family to do this, especially for those like teachers who will have six weeks free with or without their own kids in tow.
The question is, what to do with this time away? The answer will not just lie in where you might go on holiday, but also in what else you might want to do with all that free time.
For some, it’s a great chance to catch up with some reading and plough through some novels, be it a trashy romance or some great classical literature, from E.L James to Dostoyevsky. It’s a chance to switch off, use the time and space available to you, and lose yourself in the literary world.
However, the summer reading list may not just represent an end in itself, but a chance to be inspired to write a novel of your own. All sorts of ideas may be developed from something you have read, just as, for example, the early HG Wells science fiction novels like War of the Worlds and the Time Machine inspired a plethora of stories of alien invasion and time travel.
They say everyone has a novel in them, and if we ignore the riposte to that comment by the writer Karl Kraus that “in most cases, that’s where it should stay,” the summer break could be a good time to start.
Of course, you may have a great idea and the talent to produce a magnificent tome, but then the question arises about finding a publisher.
You might wish to be the next JK Rowling or Douglas Stewart (the 2020 Booker Prize winner), but getting a publisher to sign you up is not easy. That’s why self-publishing using our book printing service offers an alternative option.
Indeed, you might be amazed to discover just who used the self-publishing route to introduce great books to the world, tomes people are still reading today and may indeed be on your summer reading list.
This does not just include past writers like Charles Dickens and Beatrix Potter, but modern authors like Fifty Shades of Grey writer E.L James, and Andy Weir, who wrote the Martian – subsequently a feature film starring Matt Damon that’s so feel-good and life-affirming that even Sean Bean’s character doesn’t die.
Potter’s case was particularly interesting. She faced prejudice from male publishing company executives who thought women couldn’t write. Without her determination to self-publish and prove them all wrong, Peter Rabbit would never have become known to the world and the leading bunny in the whole of fiction would have been General Woundwort.
Talking of which, Watership Down author Richard Adams developed the stories initially as tales told to his daughters on long car drives, which they urged him to make into a book. All of which goes to prove that even if you do have kids in tow on some long journeys this summer, you might still get the inspiration to produce a blockbuster.
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