I have always felt I will be a writer one day...

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I have always felt I will be a writer one day...

By Karel Kosman,
Freelance Translator,
Prague, Czech Republic

travel at kenax cz
www.islandhoppinginthephilippines.com

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Karel’s letters written during travelling

Karel Kosman photo Ever heard of wordpress? It just occurred to me you may want to put your content up there. You have a lot of these emails and can pretty much create a website straight away.

The beauty of this is that: a) WordPress posts are very well tuned for SEO out of the box b) your posts can automatically go to Facebook and Twitter, expanding your audience a bit c) your images can also go to Instagram, which also has quite an audience.

I think this could be an easy way for you to build a following and then make some additional income, get word out, sell your future book, etc. etc. Honestly, you have so much mental capital here it is more than most corporations have. You have to set in some direction a bit but people dig this stuff. It’s not about being a billionaire but this money if you don’t want it you can use towards those projects you talk about. I’d be happy to help you out as charity when I have time. Anyway, let me know. I can try to explain it better for you.

Yup, switched to WP a billion years ago and interesting that JUST as I received this letter from you I was about to add the below article I just wrote to my Christ counseling pages. I have many WPs set up, for different subjects, know all the SEO plugins etc., and have been adding content to my pages this way, as it is much less time consuming that making the manual html pages. But I haven't even had time for that much of the time. It is already within my plans to hire someone for 3 bucks an hour to work on the boring SEO dredge work but also to upload literally thousands of unique content. Most of it is in terms of correspondence with translators, so not necessarily very interesting, but the person will be trained to filter it down somewhat for the more interesting stuff. Not to upload such "thin content", as they say in the industry. But a lot of it is my own personal emails. For example, your letter and my response will go into the SEO section. I have so much such content saved up over the years, stored in different Word files, it will take more than a year for someone to upload. Travel related correspondence put into its proper WP.

Create different categories and centralize things somewhat. But still it takes about an hour per article, because I understand it is important to also have pictures and do a good job, to get viral lift, so to speak. So definitely in my plans once the cash starts flowing in from this new customer, which should take a few months after I pay some debts.

What concerns the travel stuff, the correspondence will probably go to the WP set up on my travelgoof.com site, to hopefully generate interest. For these travel updates I decided to experiment by adding them to my new account at travelblog.com. From their point to my picasa account. Easiest and least time consuming. Just organizing these pictures and writing that letter took a long time, which I just can't afford. But hopefully things will pick up once I get my SEO dude into action. I have a good idea what needs to be done but long gone are the days when I was with very little work in Montenegro and spent most of my time dabbling in my pages and learning about all this. Definitely a good investment I'd say. Depends on finances though. Occasionally though I do upload what I would consider very worthwhile material, like the below. I type almost as fast as I speak, and adding the responses of my friends is definitely a free bonus (although I always erase out names or respect privacy – depends on the material).

Those relate to the dabbling SEO promotion, but also today Keta wrote she is almost done with her editing of my book and ready to send back to me. She works in the publishing industry and I will simply trust her, cause the approach you mentioned below has not worked all these years. I will use the correspondence for that and save the actual story for her to deal with. She feels rather confident I could earn at least two bucks a word just from putting it on a good travel website. That's 20 times what I'm getting now for translating this tough medical stuff, which pays almost twice as much what I've been getting for the past 20 years!!!! So we'll see how that works out, but she is totally rewriting and restructuring everything, and she explained that we have to bounce it back and forth between us a few times, to iron things out, perhaps I had some touch and feel and eloquent Jack Karoak type words in parts, before she submits an excerpt. It has to be done right she says.

Once accepted then there will be another round where its bounced back and forth between us and the publisher, so it could take a year. Who knows. But I'm learning how to write it better and expect that I will be peppering up old material (once it has been restructured etc.) with touch and feel, because my memory is good for this. It is visual, and I can almost smell the moment and feel the emotions when I think back on them. So I need to learn to put that into eloquent words, cause that is what these bookworms apparently love.

Not long ago I needed to go somewhere quickly, got stuck, didn't think to bring my power cord, ran out of battery, and out of desperation bought a book. Sold 42 million books and translated into 172 languages. I could not understand the fascination, and my stories seemed much more interesting, but it is true his words were very eloquent. I remember once when I was in grade 11 and struggled for half an hour to write a single paragraph of a story for my English teacher. It exhausted me and I breezed quickly through the rest of the story. But a book worm walked up to me, because the teacher went to him and said, "Holy, read this first paragraph." The bookworm shook my hand. So I think I got it in me and have always felt I will be a writer one day, and it is an interesting exercise learning how to entertain these people.

Someone once explained to me that there are three types of people: touchy/feely, words, visual. I'm strongly the latter, but I got a good imagination, and with some muscle I can be quite eloquent. I think the decades of translation have been a secret blessing, as it has taught me to type very quickly and forced me to work on my grammar. Not to focus on the eloquent, once the structure is up right. Definitely getting interesting bro!

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Travel Tour Guide in Europe

Island Hopping in the Philippines

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See Karel Kosman's Articles at TranslationDirectory.com:

Karel’s letters written during travelling

47. Making preparations for the big bike trip

46. The ONLY Thai girl I am attracted to

45. Miscellaneous letters

44. I have always felt I will be a writer one day...

43. About freelancing and travelling

42. Thai girls are like demon possessed little witches

41. Living on a mystical island of Koh Phangan in Thailand

40. From Malaysia to Thailand

39. From Laos back to Thailand

38. How to publish a book

37. Back in Thailand

36. Feeling increasingly uncomfortable here on the island in Malaysia

35. My belongings

34. Staying in Malaysia

33. About running a blog

32. A short travel update

31. Planning to publish a book about my travels

30. In Thailand, God’s hand

29. Getting ready to go to Asia. In the airport

28. Escaping from Galia’s place

27. About Bulgarians, earnings, plans

26. Starting to earn more after approaching thousands of translation agencies

25. About writing and publishing content online

24. How to find really cheap plane tickets

23. The girlfriend: would like to find THE ONE

22. Still staying in Bulgaria but planning to go to Thailand

21. Travel outline

20. About translation industry

19. About female friends

18. About computer, online marketing, translation, CAT tool

17. About blabber - waste of time. About wanting to be a writer.

16. About God

15. More about software sales

14. More travel updates

13. Staying at a pension

12. About borders etc.

11. Software sales

10. Travel update

09. Translation job industry

08. Partying is a waste of time

07. How much they pay etc.

06. Translator charges, programming etc.

05. Working as a translator and travelling

04. Travel life

03. Why NOT to cheat Google...

02. About opportunities for working as a freelancer

01. About advantages of working as a freelancer

Working While Travelling

26. Gone treeplanting (September 8, 2008)

25. First friends visiting me to Cyprus (February 29, 2008)

24. Staying in Cyprus (December 09, 2007)

23. Escaping the Cyprus heat (February 8, 2007)

22. Escape from boredom (February 8, 2007)

21. Barelling to Bodrum (November 20, 2006)

20. Staying in Stoliv, Montenegro (October 2, 2006)

19. Arriving to Montenegro (August 22, 2006)

18. Traveling through Croatia (August 9, 2006)

17. The trip begins - off to Croatia! (2006)

16. How to Live in a Caravan

15. How to Connect to Internet While Traveling

14. How to construct a caravan - Beautification

13. How to use solar panels to electrify your caravan

12. How to construct a caravan

11. Designing the caravan

10. Back to Czech - buying a travel van (April 10, 2004)

9. Mexico Trip - Off to Yosemite and Beyond (December, 2003)

8. Mexico Trip - Getting a Driver’s License (December, 2003)

7. How to Buy a Used Car (December, 2003)

6. Mexico Trip (December 14, 2003)

5. Traveling through Bulgaria (July 20 - Aug. 4, 2002)

4. Czech Republic: My Reflections

3. My life in Prague

2. My flat in Prague

1. Dream of working while travelling

Published - August 2013

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