Only five years? Should have been longer!
It is a funny thing baring yourself out to the world in a way like this, it’s kind of like choosing the best moment, closing your eyes and hoping for the best. NO matter how many times I’ve gone through the contents of Footprints On The Other Side, no matter how many times I have read, re-read, edited and corrected there will still be mistakes. Things that I will look at and think “really, how did I miss that!?!”
I remember the first draft edit (way back before it was anything like what it is now). I went through it and re-wrote entire chapters, chunks and removed so much that I must have lost 20,000 words easy. That lasted well over a year, scanning and correcting every last thing I could see was wrong in the manuscript until I could read it no more. I then did as I was advised and left it for a good length of time before looking again and then repeated the process again. Discouragingly I found even more then and I had in my mind already edited the hell out of it!
So then another stint of re-edits and then a blank amount of time away from the project whilst I swapped roles at work and had a third child. Come back to it and go through it. At last I am happy, we cross the five year mark and we are happy I say. And so I decide to bare all, risk everything and get it out into the wide world and release my ideas upon the world.
Was it a mistake? Day one and people point some bits out and I notice even more that I should have noticed so many times before. I suppose there must also be the acceptance from me (and hopefully my potential audience) that I have done this with no professional input – which I truly now realise will no doubt show like a thorn amongst the roses out there in the published world. I’ve had help and support from friends who have proofed, read and given me feedback yet still what I really seem to showcase is something that pales in comparison to those things created by those supported in the industry with Agents who get the right people to do the right things.
But then I also think that this is me. Yes I am imperfect, I’m being as perfect with this as I possibly can be. I am but one that has gone beyond just wishing away my ideas, thinking that there is always someone else who will do it and I never could. This isn’t my career, this is my hobby, this is me doing what I can to share what I have created. There is always pride, I’m the first to dismiss my ideas or flee from embarrassment but I have learned one thing through all of this in the fact that Agents have rejected me, Publishers have sunned me yet I believe in what I have written.
Perhaps there will be those out there who wonder “why even bother” but having poured everything into this it would be a waste not to share it just a little. Even if only a handful read it, even if in the future it gets mocked for being imperfect, it is my imperfect vehicle born of my imagination. But perhaps one day someone in that mythical land of “there” will approach me and offer me the opportunity to give my idea the full works and do it the justice it deserves.
Until then I apologise if it reeks of amateurishness but I am what I am and this is what it is. I present my mind in its most perfected form I can.
To that end I have removed the original file from CreateSpace and gone through another edit this weekend. As soon as the Kindle version goes live I will update that to the same newest, better and hopefully more appropriate version that will at least best reflect the effort I have put into this affair.
