11 | October | 2014 | betsybeadhead

I have to re-verse my book. I’m not making it go backwards. I have to take out all the Bible versions in the translation I have, and change them to another translation. This is the third time I’ve had to do this. Not every chapter in my book has Bible verses, but enough do that this is a real task.

I started off using the Holman Christian Standard Bible translation. I find it very easy to read and understand. The words don’t get in the way. I started using it because I’d gotten a free version of the Bible in that translation at the time I had committed to reading the Bible the whole way through. When I was writing my blog, it was easy to copy from this translation online because it was the same as what I was reading. The website “Bible Gateway” made doing this very simple.

Then I started thinking about publishing my blog as a book. I also started thinking about copyright and permissions. The Bible is old enough that it is in public domain – but not all translations are. The HCSB is new enough that I’d need permission to use its translation if I’m going to make money off of it. I’d probably also have to give them some royalties too.

I wanted to avoid all of that mess, so I did a little more research and found a website that said if the translation is older than 25 years, then you can use it with no problem. One option is the Revised Standard Version. It is fairly readable, even though there are a few examples of “thy” and “saveth” going on. I had to entirely re-write one post to make it fit this translation.

That was the least of my troubles, though. My book as it was assembled was 76K words. That is 76K words I had to wade through, find all the Bible verses and switch them out from HCSB to RSV. That took a long time. That was really boring. I wanted to quit the whole idea of publishing and move on to something else. There were more posts to write. I couldn’t be bogged down in re-versing this whole book. I doubt I’m even going to make money off this thing. Why am I spending so much time on it?

I had to really fight with myself over this. I decided that even doing a little a day was better than doing nothing. It wasn’t going to do itself. Every day I’d work on re-versing one post. Some days I could fix two or three. Meanwhile, I was still writing a new post every day. This is in addition to running a household and working a full-time job.

Finally I was done. I started looking around for help in formatting. I have a friend who has self-published books and I thought I could hire her. She told me that she’s gone out of the book business, so she gave me the name and contact information of someone she worked with. I dislike contacting new people, but I finally worked up the courage. Turns out she too was unavailable, so she gave me the number and contact information for yet another person. By this point I wanted to do it all on my own or give up, again. But I pushed on.

His price was too high. I couldn’t get how I should be expected to give a stranger $500 to make my book look pretty on the inside. I had done all the work putting it together – he was just going to polish it. He didn’t even have to edit it. He wasn’t going to touch the words – just tweak the margins and put page numbers and headers in. I shopped around for other people who provide this service and found similar amounts. I even edited out 10K words of it to reduce the cost. I figured I could publish those chapters later in a second book, depending on how well this one does.

Remember that I still don’t think I’m going to make money on this. I still don’t have any spare time to do all of this. I’m shoehorning all of this into everything else I have to do to pay the bills.

Then I hit another snag. I found out that the RSV translation is fine to quote from only under specific circumstances. I was looking up the exact wording on how to cite my use of it, and the citation said “Used by permission”. It turns out that permission is automatically granted up to 500 verses. After that, you have to contact the copyright holder and get written permission. That is The National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. I looked up their contact information and emailed them. I still have not heard a response, and it has been a week.

I am not going to take the time to count how many verses I have used, but I’m certain it is over 500. Time is slipping by. I’d like to publish this by Christmas.

Sure, in a way, it is already published. It still exists on my Betsy Beadhead blog. I created a second blog called “The Empty Cross Community” in order to put it together in a logical order. The words are out there. People are reading it and commenting on it. Two posts have been published in the Huffington Post. But it isn’t the same. It isn’t a real, physical book. I want that. Maybe some of that comes from having grown up in libraries. Maybe some of that comes from having an English degree. Books are special. Sure, the words are special – but there is something about having an actual printed book with real pages to turn that is satisfying and substantial.

Even the title was up in the air. I’d thought about using “The Empty Cross Community” for it, but found that there is a sculpture of a cross called “The Empty Cross”. There is a “trademark” symbol after that name. I wrote the group that is connected to the sculpture to ask for permission to use the name and didn’t hear back. This was yet another thing that blocked my forward progress. I’ve since contacted them again and found that they have the trademark on their design for the cross, but not the name. They can’t trademark the name (they tried) because it is not unique. I’m free to use it for my book title if I want, but by now I’ve committed to using another name. It is “Leaving Church, Finding Jesus”.

Meanwhile, I’ve started re-versing this book once again. I’ve saved it as a separate file, just in case the copyright holder gets back to me. Once again I’m grateful for the Bible Gateway website for making this a not-so-painful process of copying and pasting. There are a lot more examples of “thy” and “-th” at the end of verbs in the American Standard Version. There is nothing I can do about it. I’m using this version because it was put out in 1901 and is most certainly in the public domain. Anybody can use it for anything, with no restrictions on the amount of verses used.

Sometimes I feel like I’m in the story of Balaam with his donkey. Is there something in the way that is preventing me from moving forward that I can’t see? In that case an angel stood in his way and only the donkey could see it. He beat the donkey but it refused to budge, keeping him alive. Or is this entire ordeal like the struggle of Jacob wrestling with the angel all night long? He got blessed in the morning because he didn’t give up.

Maybe it is a little of both.

There’s a story that one day a boy was walking along the seashore. A lot of starfish were being washed up by the waves. They were slowly dying because they were being exposed to the air. He started picking up the starfish one by one and flinging them back into the ocean. A man comes walking by and he sees the little boy doing this. He says ‘Look at all these other starfish. You’re not helping them at all. You’re not making a difference in their lives.” The little boy said “I just made a difference in this one’s life.”

“What we focus on expands”, Oprah Winfrey says. It is very hard when you’re a compassionate or empathetic person. We tend to notice all the people we weren’t able to help. And while it is important to acknowledge loss, it is also important to not focus on just the bad. We have to open ourselves up and intentionally and consciously point ourselves towards that which we are doing which is helping.

We can’t save them all. We can’t help them all. But we are just one part of a huge ocean of people who are helping. We are not alone. We can’t all be Mother Teresa. But she didn’t do it alone either. She had hundreds of nuns working with her whose names we don’t know. Each one of them helped who she was given to help that day. Each one of them did what she could to make that person’s life better. She didn’t do it all but together they did.

If we focus on what we can’t do or who we haven’t saved then we lose energy. If we can help one person, it makes a difference in that person’s life. If we don’t help, locked up in our worry about all that we can’t do, then we’ll do even less.

Help who you can. Leave the rest for others to help. That gives them the joy of helping. By leaving something for others to do, you’ve actually given them a gift. Each of us wants to feel needed. A lot of people feel needed by helping others. When you do it all, you are taking away someone’s task. So you are actually doing a good deed by not doing it all.