Numbers 2 and 3 on my to-do list are challenging

Now that I suddenly have all this time again (kids back at school), I have this list that I'm working through. Yesterday I barely got past "monthly prayer/newsletter". Today I've moved onto number two and three, which are both things I've also been finding hard to get much momentum on. Perhaps my 2 1/2 weeks of little computer work has refreshed my resolve to tackle those harder projects.

Number two on the list is centred around this gorgeous book. I have a Japanese colleague who is translating this into Japanese for the girls in her church. She is so enthusiastic about the book, every time I see her she raves about the project. 


The reason she directs this at me is that a few months ago I volunteered to help her get her work published legally. She's just using it for her local ministry at present, which is quite legal, but it would be great to see this more widely available as there are very few devotional resources in Japanese for girls 8-12. 


Little did I know what I was getting myself into! First I emailed the author, who was very happy to give her permission, but she didn't own the international copyright. So I went on to email the publisher in South Africa who owns that. They've agreed and sent us a contract and require money! So now I've moved on to try to persuade a Japanese publisher to take on the project (and pay the money). Publishing books is very complicated and expensive. Legally I get out of my depth pretty quickly. Nonetheless now I'm pulling together a proposal, trying to sell this project to the publisher. I never expected to be doing something like this.


But, hopefully I can persuade someone to take on this project and my responsibility for it will finish. But somehow, I think that there might be more of these in the future . . . my colleague has dipped her toe into translation and is enjoying it. She keeps finding more and more books that she'd love to see in Japanese. We English speakers are so spoiled with so many resources in our heart language. 


Number three on my list is also a difficult, but much larger, less glamorous project. It is the Style Guide for the magazine that I edit. I also cannot believe that I'm doing this. Delving into whether commas should go before or after inverted commas/quotation marks. Researching American English and Commonwealth English. Discerning differences in vocabulary, deciding standards for referencing etc. 


It really isn't my scene, but once it is done it will help us get our editing done faster. Instead of pondering each individual situation, we can look it up in our Style Guide and know straight away what to do.


At the same time I'm following the cricket. After many lackluster matches, finally Australia is producing an amazing, record breaking performance. I won't bore you non cricket fans with the details, but it is making it hard to concentrate on these other two projects (not that it takes much to distract me from them).

I don't know where this photo has disappeared to...

But something that is helping me along is this muesli bar. I had to take a photo before I ripped into it. I haven't had the pleasure of eating an Australian muesli bar for about 18 months. Wow, it tasted good!