Getting published in Romania

Getting a book published in Romania with a foreword by Dumitru Constantin Dulcan, in the series curated by him at the publisher Școala Ardeleană.

I’m very pleased to announce the publication of my book, The Call from Within in Romanian.

Chemarea din interior, as it is called in Romanian, comes with a foreword by the celebrated Romanian neuroscientist, Professor Dr. Dumitru Constantin Dulcan, who honoured me by picking the book for publication in his series Noua Spiritualitate at the publishing house Școala Ardeleană in Cluj, Transylvania.

The launch will take place in Bucharest. I will let you know the date when I hear from the publisher.

Some of you might remember how in this newsletter last year I alluded to some good news that I expected to be announced soon. It took longer than expected, but I did have an inkling that it might - so I held off on making the announcement.

I have noticed that the accomplishment of meaningful projects generally takes longer than expected.

It is something that I discussed in the section “The Myth of Inspiration” in The Call from Within. I referenced the examples of the myths about Sylvester Stallone hammering out the screenplay for Rocky in 20 hours straight, and how Jack Kerouac supposedly wrote On the Road in 20 days with hundreds of sheets of paper taped together so he wouldn’t have to spend time changing the paper in his typewriter.

In actual fact, however long it took for Sylvester Stallone to write the first draft of Rocky, it took nine substantial rewrites before the studio would accept it, and even though Jack Kerouac did have that extraordinary 20-day spurt of inspiration and productivity, it took him nine years from he started working on the book until he finally got it published.

The Call from Within has been through a similar process. I churned it out in three months in 2016. At that time, it was a cohesive string of obervations about the creative process that I was aching to get off my chest, so it virtually wrote itself. However, I wasn’t at all sure what I had written, or what its purpose was, and I changed the title and cover several times over the years before it reached its current name and form.

The first dicussions about a Romanian version of The Call from Within took place in 2019. From then on, the project took a winding path until now, five years later, I’m able to announce the publication of Chemarea din interior.

The Call from Within starts off with a quote by Seneca that is highly relevant here:

“It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness.”

Or, in Romanian:

“Pe căi anevoioase se ajunge la stele.”