Dangerous Writing
About three or four months ago I began to start editing the proofs of my manuscript that arrived. There were two sets. I began with a totally untouched one which was exactly as I’d typed it initially, and this clearly needed some work. ‘Some’ in this sense means ‘a lot’. I literally re-wrote chapters and cut huge swathes of the text completely, wondering most of the time how I’d ever thought it passed for good prose. It was also at this stage that I carefully removed any unflattering references to people that I thought may read the book and recognise themselves. Either through identifying subtle but significant character traits, or because I’d used their name. It wasn’t too hard because the main characters are entirely fictional, but a few supporting ones were – shall we say – based on reality. Interestingly, there is one person in the book who is almost exactly as she appears to others in real life. But happily this is so far removed from how she views herself that it shouldn’t be a problem. So I’ve left her as she is. And once I was happy with those proofs they went off to be corrected and I received the second set, checked those and sent them back.
Around this time, people began asking me if I was excited. To me, this was a bit of a non-sequitur. Excited about what? About the fact that I’d written a book? The fact it’s being published? The book itself? The reception of the book itself? And these last two points were so far away at that time I hadn’t really thought about them. So the answer was essentially ‘no’, which sounded a bit silly and ungrateful so I didn’t say that and struggled to know how best to handle the question. ‘Excitement in progress’ was probably about the closest that I got.
Anyway, that aside, there was one thing that I was definitely excited about. The Front Cover (cue revered and hushed tones). For me, this was the embodiment of the book itself. Not only is the Front Cover spectacularly important in terms of luring people to look more closely at the book, but for me it represented the whole story in one picture. I had a very specific idea of what I wanted and it needed to be perfect. But it’s a very simple illustration so I didn’t think it would hard for the graphic design department of a publishing house to achieve. I thought wrongly. To put it mildly.
First of all, I had to elect whether I wanted a ‘photo-style’ (and there I quote) cover or whether I wanted an illustration. Photo, I thought to myself, that gets the message across nicely. So I duly received the ‘photo-style’ cover, and I was taken aback. Photo-style did not mean photograph (silly me). It meant computer-generated images stuck onto a background that was offensively blue. Steph had paw-like hands with no defined fingers and my twins looked like crash-test dummies. I felt dreadful about rejecting it but I had to, it was just too disappointing. And I couldn’t imagine anyone being lured to pick it up in a bookshop. And I felt a little suspicious; had they really expected me to accept it? Or was it a joke? So I emailed and said, no, that wasn’t quite what I had in mind, some details were wrong. Colours and so forth. I had a revised copy which was equally as bad so I changed my mind (cringing slightly) and said actually, could I have a drawing instead? The less detail the better, to minimise damage. A simple line drawing would be perfect. I probably deserved the disaster that followed. ‘Minimal detail’ had been interpreted as ‘none’. I had some figures with a few lines to denote hair. I felt I was being unreasonably fussy but really – I couldn’t accept that. It was embarrassing to reject yet another idea but not as embarrassing as having it on the front of my book.
It was clear by this point that they weren’t going to come up with the goods, but I couldn’t blame them really. It’s incredibly hard to try and match an image which only exists in someone else’s imagination. And I was being a particularly fussy someone else; I remember one of my principal points of complaint was that Steph’s hair wasn’t long enough. Eventually I decided that I felt too awful saying no all the time – which was why I decided to create the Front Cover myself. When I say ‘myself’ I mean that I directed someone who had the necessary skills and equipment into producing precisely what I wanted. Which he did admirably well and I am thrilled with the result. When I sent it to the publishing co-ordinator he commented that it was the first time he’d ever heard of an author putting themselves on the front cover of their book, which surprised me. I thought it was a completely natural link, I don’t know why I didn’t make it before. Quite clearly a photo of me was the only way to achieve perfection.
So with the book itself now sorted out and hopefully in pre-production, it was time to look at marketing and promotion. When I delved a little deeper into this hitherto unexplored world, I discovered that I was approximately six months behind my ideal schedule. I mentioned in my postscript to the previous blog that it is de rigeur these days to begin promotion before the book is written, and this is only a slight exaggeration. So – a detailed list was concocted of exactly what needs to be achieved and when. I’m not going to detail this list because if I’m successful then it should be self-evident! Jury’s out on that one, I suspect.
But probably the biggest difficulty I face is combining what is fairly intensive effort (for me, who is used to writing as and when I feel like it) with both of my children being at home for nine hundred weeks over the summer. Or should that be nine? The difference is minimal. It’s very difficult to be productive with “Mummmeeeeee!” being yelled every ten seconds – no word of an exaggeration – as I discovered last Wednesday. I hope I’ll find a balance that works, indeed I thought I had. I was capitalising on a particularly productive mood, whilst my children were being suitably entertained by a DVD and crisps. And a pile of coins, as I later discovered. The smallest child swallowed the biggest coin and what followed was a whirlwind twenty-four hours, involving two hospitals, lots of x-rays, a team of specialists and an hour in an operating theatre for the small child. Obviously I am not as balanced as I thought.
Next time: trying to understand the complicated world of Social Media (as I’m told it’s called) in my attempt to self-promote. And the emphasis there really is on ‘trying’. I consider myself a relatively intelligent individual, but for anyone observing my painstaking crawl into a more complicated area of technology you’d be forgiven for thinking that I’m not. And also trying to look after my children better. I hope this week passes with no more visits to the A&E department in Portsmouth; slightly out of concern for my girls but also because it’s just one of the most horrible places to be.
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