Why was Irie Offered a Publishing Deal? (Part 3)
I sense that faraway deadline creeping nearer.
I shall not bang on about procrastination, suffice to say, I had become proficient in this over-described aspect of the writer’s craft. So some months later, the deadline begins to loom.
A ponderous phase of fits and starts trundles by both this deadline and an agreed extension.
I treat writing, at best, as a hobby. But under increasing barrages of badgering, five months after the second extended deadline, I submit a draft.
The manuscript is back on my desk within days, returned by a concerned editor, pages swathed with comment and draped in suggested revisions. The prose ‘fails to be conversational’ whatever that means, no anecdotes, not enough insight, ideas repeated, unclear in places.
Another deadline is proposed.
But I had thought the volume complete – obviously.
Over subsequent months, showers of cold and demoralising feedback from editor and dispassionate proofreaders gradually nurtures within me a self-conscious critic (a deadline passes). Slowly begin to understand the role of keen-eyed editing (a deadline passes). Am cajoled into writing to a publishable standard (a deadline passes) and offered the necessary time (a deadline passes).
A year later, all sides seem content with the work and Teach Yourself Cricket is published in time for Christmas. A few weeks later I see the book on shelf in Waterstones. I am hooked.
Colliding with that first unexpected hurdle – that I had thought I could write, learning otherwise, then in a process of trial and error developing some understanding of readable text – had proved challenging, worthwhile, but hideously time-consuming. Along the way I had fallen in love with words. Had started reading again.
I ring Hodder’s Commissioning Editor. I want to write another book.
‘What about?’
I run though likely and less-likely Teach Yourself options; various Microsoft software, not screwing up as a celebrity, being an agent. To no detectable enthusiasm. I throw in online gaming and a virtual world developing in a corner of cyberspace. Second Life is being spoken of as the future of the internet.
Bingo! Hodder are already contemplating a Second Life edition for the Teach Yourself series, but are yet to find their author. I raise both hands.
