Of all the things we hope to accomplish during our college career, few of us are likely to have ‘write a book’ at the top of our to do list. Oliver Haynes, on the other hand, has been devoted to completing his book, “The Searing Veil,” since he was a Senior in High School. He began writing the novel when he was just eighteen years old after he helped start a writing club at his school. Here, he wrote a short story that was based around an eccentric character who wore a hat and a moon mask. Haynes couldn’t seem to shake the idea and the story continued to develop in his mind, so he continued to write.
Of course, upon entering college, Haynes’ time was quickly filled with other priorities. As an International Business major with an English minor he certainly had his work cut out for him academically. Thus, he was unable to focus on the book as much as he would have liked. Fortunately, he got a chance to recommit himself to writing after returning from his time abroad. With about six months to kill before coming back to Rhodes, Haynes devoted himself entirely to getting his story down on paper. Yet, the task was not as easy as it sounded. Haynes constantly got frustrated with his work upon reviewing it. In fact, he “almost threw it away at one point.” The only thing that stopped him was the amount of effort that he had already put into it. For this reason, Haynes knew that he could not stop writing. However, it was not easy work, and Haynes even says that if he “had ever known what a struggle it would be to write a book, [he] would have never started to begin with.”
This struggle eventually ended as the story came to a close and Oliver decided to take a shot at having it published. Though the purpose of writing this book was initially just to get his thoughts down, Haynes decided to take a shot at selling it. Being young and unheard of set him back in his feat. He remarks, “people who are getting publishing deals are people who have been in the industry for a while.” For this reason, Haynes looked at several different self publishing options, and finally landed on an amazon.com affiliate called Create Space. He conducted most of his marketing through Facebook and people he knew and, before long, the book was being released.
Haynes remarks that if this book were to succeed he would happily pursue a career as a writer. However, he also acknowledges that “the amount of authors that can just write for a living is very small.” Thus, he doesn’t have high expectations of becoming a full time writer. Whether Haynes is able to make a career out of his writing or not, the publishing of his book is an incredible achievement. Fraternity brother Parker Nelson comments on how accomplished the work is by pointing out, “we as students complain when we are assigned two thousand word essays, but Oliver’s book is about 200,000 words.” Oliver’s impressive work should serve as an example to us all to follow our bliss. What we do should not be dictated solely by the weight it will hold on our resumes, but the fulfillment it will bring us as individuals.