Monday 27 July 2015

july updates: changming's lit endeavours

- after two months of waiting in anxiety, i finally had the representative of the author of Create Abundance sign yesterday our 'contract for publishing and importing Wisdom for Abundance  《豐盛的智慧》', the second book by the same author Zhang Xinyue. it took them a whole month just to do the signing, although i finished all the supplementary translation work in addition to collating, editing, proofreading, copy-editing, formatting and typesetting by mid-june. as a famous chinese traditional medicine doctor put it for me, their working style does not simply match mine, since they never care about others' schedules, or show any genuine respect to publishing as a profession.

nevertheless, i am 'relieved' that i can gear up now: today i have just signed the printing contract with another shenzhen-based printer, and soon i will sign a contract with a local logistics company to handle all the importing matters. this time, we will print 30,000 copies, roguth 440 pages, also a first bilingual (chinese-english) edition, but will import only 20,000 to vancouver. this book is actually a collection of what can be called reflective poetry on spiritual cultivation.

- as in the past 7/8 years, i write about 13 new poems, make nearly 300 poetry subs, and have at least 12 acceptances by literary publications on a monthly basis. (21 acceptance in june, and 20 in july.)

- early last month, a few of my poems were translated into hungarian and published in magyarul babelben (babel in hungaria) - thus far i have had poems translated and published/broadcast in spanish, german, romanian, hugarian other than chinese (self-translated).

- i feel a bit bored with literary creation: although i still have much poetry to write, i really hate having to make submissions and try to get my poems published. mainly because of this lethargy and ambivalence, i often feel like resolutely and completely giving up all my plans to write any prosework (short stories or long novels). on the one hand, i know my prose writings will be too 'purely' literary to be enjoyable to editors/readers; on the other, it is simply too exhausting for me to try to get them published even if i finish writing them. while my attention span is always short, my health condition does not allow; more important, i am losing my motivation besides enthusiam; indeed, i need neither any extra money nor any extra fame. i am already living a posthumous life.

- beginning from today, i will be busy with the publishing, printing and importing of wisdom for abundance, exactly as i was between march and may. from early september to late october, i will be travelling in china. then i will probably start to work on the third book by Zhang Xinyue...