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An update on Windsong and my free English lessons
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Windsong: an Introduction to Windsong and my free English lessons
by Philip E. Hyatt
As many of my Chinese friends know, I spend about 3-4 hours each week preparing for and hosting free English lessons on Skype every week. I want to discuss the calls briefly today here. For those who may not know the details, see this blog: http://ok-english.net/space-83-do-blog-id-876.html. I also have to emphasize that my Skype name is “headsedge” (not sedgehead).
Windsong is my autobiography，我的自传。We are currently reading Chapter 8. This week (Saturday, Sept. 10 at 8 p.m.) we will start on paragraph 311. The upcoming topics are my summer home with my grandmother and uncle in Calabasas, California, baseballs games we attended, the time I almost burned down the state of California on a hot windy day, how we caught a poisonous rattle snake, and our visit to Disneyland.
I continue to make Windsong available for free. You can join my group and get a copy, ask my friends for a copy, or ask me for a copy by email. Remember, I check my gmail address most frequently, but also check my QQ mail from time to time. Once you have a copy, you are free to share it in any way you please.
I am currently writing chapter 35 and the book has 135,000 words. It now covers 1952 to 1985. This compares with August 2010 when only the first 11 chapters were available and contained only 35,000 words! The August 2010 version covered only to 1970. My goal is to complete Windsong for 1952-2011 by the end of this year! That is an aggressive goal, but I think I can do it.
When I have Windsong complete, I plan to post a copy on the internet and make it available for a small fee. For now, it is still free. Why charge a fee? I am a professional writer. I earn money by writing. Windsong is writing. If you are an engineer, and I asked you to do some engineering work, I would expect to pay you for it. Nevertheless, the fee will be minimal. And if anyone cannot afford to pay, I will probably still give it away for free.
Why do you get to get Windsong for free now? You are getting an un-edited and incomplete version! Also, I can use it for my English classes for free because I wrote it! I expect to continue to use Windsong for my weekly classes and continue to teach English indefinitely. I may even give the current chapter to my students for free at that time, in the future when it is more or less complete. And I plan to continue to teach English for free. But if you want to support me in my efforts, you are always welcome to pay me a small amount, whatever you can afford, for Windsong if you enjoy it. I know that many of you are students, so I want to keep the price of "free" as available to as many people as possible.
My goal in writing Windsong and teaching English is not to earn a living. My original goal is stated in the old introduction, which you can see at: http://www.ok-english.net/space-83-do-blog-id-218.html along with the older versions of Chapters 1-11. I also enjoy sharing American culture with my Chinese friends. But like everyone, I have to put food on the table. So, for those who can and want to support my efforts, I’d be glad to hear from you!
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Post comment Comment (3 replies)
- Reply huckabee
- When your book is complete, do send me one with your signature on it. I will cherish it as a real prize. Surely I will also pay a fee for it as I, unlike the students, am able to afford it. You see, I spend nearly 2000 yuan on books each year in the past twenty years. The writer's efforts deserve our respect. If possible, I might purchase one in America when I visit some university in the future. Nowadays distance is not a problem. More and more Chinese students are going abroad now.
I do appreciate your selfless help in teaching English on the net.
- Reply sedgehead
- huckabee: When your book is complete, do send me one with your signature on it. I will cherish it as a real prize. Surely I will also pay a fee for it as I, unlFor now I am giving it away for free, but that will change. Let me tell you why and how. People can get it now for free because I have not thoroughly checked it for errors and misspellings.
I've thought about it for the past year while I've been expanding it. As you noted, writers put beans on the table by writing. So, if I can support myself as a writer from home that is better for me than working somewhere else.
I am getting my website set up so that people can download Windsong for free, but with a password they get from me. After Windsong is "finished", I will charge a fee for the password and the password will only be good for a week or so.
As long as I am alive and can write, Windsong will never be finished. I say “finished” in the sense of “up-to-date.” As my blog says, in early 2010 the book only covered 1952 to 1970, but now it covers up to 1983. I want to get it up-to-date in 2011. Windsong will only be finished when I am dead, at which time I will also be finished!
I will be glad to sign and print off a cover sheet for you to include in your copy. But I doubt I will ever see Windsong as a printed book. Why? No publisher will by a book that has appeared on the internet. They want to only print new books, so one that is on the internet is not considered worth publishing as a printed book. That’s ok with me. I would rather distribute it myself. It is cheaper to sell it electronically than to make print copies. If someone like yourself wants a print copy, they can always print it on a printer!
Lastly, I do want to write a Chinese version and sell it as a printed book. I think a publisher would print it because I am not releasing the Chinese version to people on the internet.
