Trying to stay UPBEAT

Pre-order UPBEAT: the Story of the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq

Just over a year ago now, the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq’s visit to America was cancelled, and left me, in Cologne, devastated. That’s hardly anything compared to the musicians in Iraq, who are trapped at home just miles away from ISIL. For the moment, they are all still safe, either in Baghdad or Kurdistan. We’re supposed to say “The Kurdistan Region of Iraq”, but that hardly seems relevant any more. Even if ISIL were defeated tomorrow, Iraq can never return to the way it was before. People, and I mean the real people of Iraq, are sick and tired of having their lives continually moved around like pawns and wrecked with impunity.

Since the collapse of the American tour, I’ve been keeping in touch with the players and writing the book on the orchestra from my position as its Musical Director. Though the stories are as numerous as the people involved, I was determined to create a factual account, starting back in 2008, when I saw a newspaper article about the search for a conductor. As the only person involved in the orchestra's daily business over six years, I feel I have a powerful story to tell, and lessons to share.
So, still raw and wounded from the calamity of the ISIL invasion, I sought out a couple of months' refuge living with artist friends, in need of patience and loving support as I mapped out the journey.
Backed up by an archive of every single document, e-mail, press article and media report I've stored over those years, memories bubbled to the surface, jostling with each other for attention. How could I forget this, that, the next? Weaving the several yarns that ran parallel through the book became the challenge, to keep me up all night drawing mindmaps on sheets of coloured A3 paper laid out across the floor. Much rearranging of yellow Post-Its, one for each paragraph of a chapter, made sure the multidimentional threads would ebb and flow around each other authentically, and clearly for the reader.
The reader – who is she? A musician or music lover? A Middle East expert? An intercultural guru? Or a social entrepreneur looking to do something as crazy as this, but in need of insight and guidance? That’s what everyone wants, to change things for the better, pain free. I guess it’s possible nowadays, but most change makers still have to go through the 99% of dirt to find the 1% that really works. Or maybe the reader is just looking for a great story to read, one that actually happened but at the same time contains bizarre elements of luck, paradox and magic realism.
Once I’d taken each chapter as far as I could, I farmed them out to dear friends from different backgrounds for feedback. Some created highly professional editorial comment, others marked it like school teachers, still more gave me their view on style, political sensitivity and so on. Sean Clayton and John Shea, with whom I’d worked in Montepulciano, David McNally, my old friend from Edinburgh now in Spain, Simon Crookall from Hawaii Opera, David Ramael from BOHO Ensemble in Belgium, Russell Jones from the New York Phil, and many more gave me the food for thought to steer my revisions. Some wanted more emotion, others less. Still others wanted fewer names and acronyms.
I wanted a story whose emotions arose from honesty and compassion, my own strengths and weaknesses, an ordinariness that blossomed from an extraordinary situation. I also banished the words “was” and “were”, two cop-outs when writing in the past tense that can nearly always be substituted for more entertaining verbs, often forcing more interesting sentence structures.  I knew that most of the world's readers mentally process text into pictures. I do not. As a musician and conductor, I hear and feel words on the page, and so retraining my prose to become as vivid for visual readers as possible became an interesting challenge.
Once the manuscript had hit about 100,000 words, I started to look for a publisher. I prefer this to self publishing because the book, in a vast ocean of literature, needs every chance to look and feel brilliant. Some sniffing around online produced a list of fifteen publishers, mainly British, who accepted open submissions from unknown authors and may have an interest in the subject matter. Clearly, they are scared of the rising tide of independent self-publishing through sites like createspace.com, and would welcome those with a marketable story back into the professional publishing world.
After I'd laid out the contacts and conditions of submission on Excel, I started pumping out the e-mails and recording the responses. It’s always wise to reduce one’s cold calling log to rows and columns, as this is invariably what your prospects do to you. It allows me to keep a healthy perspective and not feel defensive when rejected. Generally, publishers wanted the first three chapters, a synopsis and a cover letter. When some went on to ask for the whole book, I had it ready. 
Within 48 hours, one publisher came straight back, saying this was right up their street. Another two followed up within a fortnight, but being much larger companies, had a longer process for manuscripts farmed out to independent editors for evaluation. On return of a positive verdict, the board would choose which submissions to move forward on.
Meanwhile, I began initial talks with the first publisher, leading to an informal editing process which built our relationship up before deciding to sign with each other.
Because the publishing industry is new to me, I took the time, without rushing into a contract, to phone up distributors, business partners and even benefit from an American author who ran workshops for other authors on how the publishing industry works, as well as negotiating a deal. The key here is to remain transparent with all the interested publishers, because nothing is worse than being a time waster in their evaluation process.
I’m now signed with Sandstone Press in Britain. UPBEAT will come out in the middle of next year, and there is already foreign interest. Sandstone tells me it’s a great book, and we're both working hard to get it ready.

I’m looking forward very much to the cover design and choosing the photos for the two picture sections in the first hardback edition. I have literally thousands from the past six years, so that will be quite a job. 

Sandstone asked me to look around a bookstore and reflect on cover designs, so I chose Waterstones in Princes Street, Edinburgh. The music section largely contains pop and rock biographies, with a small, rather unassuming collection  of books on ballet and classical music. The whole bookshelf seemed to want to apologise for its presence amidst the veritable candy shop of contemporary novels, exotic travelogues and popular non-fiction. The bestseller, "This is Your Brain on Music", sat quite separate piled up on a table, not terribly nearby.

As a first time author, I feel very lucky indeed to have created something that a publisher wants to take on.  This is a new adventure for me, and I’m sure I’ll be doing a lot of talking when the time comes. Indeed, my first interview is scheduled for 2pm today with a journalist from Deutsche Welle.
As well as the story itself, I round the book off with a chapter each on reconciliation in Iraq, the orchestra as social entrepreneur and answer the question, who are the Iraqis? In the meantime, I just hope they stay safe.

For enquiries about the book, please visit:

Sandstone Press
Please feel free to follow the book on Facebook and Twitter:
Tweets by @Upbeat_book
UPBEAT on Facebook

You can also find articles about the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq in five languages at:
NYOI on issuu


For my TEDx talk, go to: