“Plant a Tree; Have a Child; Write a Book”, says an old adage of yesteryear, attributed to the Talmud, an old Jewish book about things to do and who said those things, or to José Marti, depending on which version of the Internet you try to find the answer in.
In modern times, this saying may have its digital equivalent (sign an online petition to plant trees; get a dog and call him/her your child; make a youtube channel). It may even become the topic of passionate debate – After a long night of heated discussion with friends or peers, somehow, to find solace in the never-ending spinning ball of rocks and water we are all traveling on top of, the phrase “I should write a book about it” comes to someone’s mind, only to be left as an afterthought drenched in Paracetamol and sparkling water, hours after the discussion is just a blur in the middle of the night.
“I should write a book about it”, however, does become a task for some. It is only a matter of… well, depends. That really depends. Some like things “the old fashioned way”, and spend countless hours getting that majestic typewriter the greats wrote on, only to leave it with all the winter sports gear that is used every two years, and maybe taken out for an Instagram picture to show that “Yes, I am working on my book!”. Otherwise, it starts with a Word document… named “book.docx”, which gets swamped among PDFs I will never read, pictures I do not want to erase, and maybe, a folder called “Backup” that comes up periodically to remind us that the Desktop once had a “book.docx”.
But how to get there? What to write about? How to write about it? How do I get it out to the world? Am I going to become a millionaire? All of those questions will be addressed by Orlando Torres, a Mexican-born immigrant who published his first collection of thoughts in 2019 “Cartas a qwXLEgLH”, a surreal deep dive into the aftermath of an unlikely love that just faded (as any other relationship in our teenage years and early adulthoods) and turned into memories that should have been kept in a drawer. But those 25 pages found their way to a computer, on the premise: “Can I transfer a paper idea into the digital realm without losing its beauty?“. The answer may surprise you!