Book Progress & Vlog

Ever since I announced that I was going to try and write a book, I have been anxiously thinking of ideas. I started thinking about fiction and a lot of it felt forced. The ideas were not flowing. I had some real winners cooked up. Everything from murder mysteries to the story of a rockstar. I was not feeling any of those. That is usually a sign to me that I will never be happy with the end result because I am not passionate about it. So, I started focusing my brain power on non-fiction. I re-read the comments on my blog from readers and decided they were probably right. I need to write about fat acceptance and self-love.

I decided I am going to write a book of my experiences, struggles and journey to be a confident and happy fat woman. I am working on a list of stories I want to tell. Things that have happened in my life that has taught me something, pissed me off, made me laugh, cry or just a better person. I want my book to be fat positive and have a liberal amount of sassiness, humor, curse words, honesty, inspiration, color and intensity. I want to avoid sounding too angry, cocky, cheesy, generic or boring. I want it to be as unique as me! Because we are all snowflakes, guys. Ah crap, I am already sounding cheesy. But seriously, there are some things that scare the shit of me about doing this. And like I said before, you should probably do the things that scare you. They are probably the things that are worth it. And most likely, somebody else hasn't already done it.

So, what scares me? To start with, that I am going to fuck it up and fail. I am scared that people will think I am silly, stupid, vain or narcissistic. That what I say will be misunderstood and taken out of context. I am afraid that the fat acceptance community won't accept me or that I will be attacked by "concern trolls" or fat haters. That I won't be able to finish it, like so many other things that I have dropped. Or that I will hurt someone's feelings, like friends or family or that I will get the details wrong or forget what happened. Shit, I am scared that it will be awesome and huge because then I will have to explain myself to the world. I am afraid of all the things that could change my life and what other people will think. Also, books feel much more permanent than anything else. Books are personal and when someone reads it they are opening up my life and seeing inside of my head. That's what it will be. A raw and vulnerable look into the life of this fat girl's life. Not anybody elses. I don't want it to to be a self-help book but would rather see other people relate to it, laugh or cry with me, and provide some sort of insight into their own lives. Because I am not an expert and by no means want to be in the position where I am telling other people what to do or the best way to live their lives.

That's where I am at so far with this whole book idea. I have no idea how I am going to weave all my ideas into a book, but I have a feeling it will come together on it's own as I go. I also have no idea if I am going to publish my book, sell it, hide it, give it away or use it to line the cat litter box. I don't know anything about publishing, ISBN's, formatting eBooks or any of that. Also, how can you possibly proof-read a book!?! You have to read like a whole book, maybe even up to 300 pages and it would take forever. These are the things I think about! I do have a working title but I am keeping that secret to myself for now.

I made a little video of me chatting about some of my ideas:

P.S. Ignore all my um's! I was going to rerecord it but that seemed weird so you get scatter-brained Rachele that tries to record vlogs on her lunch hour in her bed with an iPad.

- Rachele