At last my first book is underway

During 2023 I was volunteered by my wife to proofread the copy for one of our friend’s books. When I received the manuscript and saw that it was 160 pages of A4 in PDF format, I have to admit that my heart did sink a little.

‘What have I let myself in for here?’ I asked myself.

Having made the promise I had no way of backing out and so I had to crack on and get the job done.

What I soon found out was that by proofreading the friend’s work I became increasingly motivated to finally get on with a book I have been promising myself that I must write. The more I looked at the friend’s words the more I wanted to get on with mine and I have.

What I also found out was that my best creative working times either proofreading, researching and writing are very early in the morning or very late at night. The house is quiet and darkness has taken over the view from my office window cutting out all visual distractions. It is at those extreme ends of the day that I am at my most productive and creative.

Six months later I have assembled a collection of 50+ short pieces based on my travels around Great Britain and just a bit further afield. Luckily the basis for most of these pieces had already been written and self-published here on Vocal Media and another self-publishing platform called ‘ABC Tales’. So, it has been a question of reprising those pieces. They were written on the fly so to speak in that I would have the experiences and with a journalists fervour write them up as soon as possible, include a couple of photographs and self-publish.

Consolidating them into one collection has given me the opportunity to go back to my original diaries and review everything I had written. I could see if after the passage of time there were bits that could come out or bits that could be added. Also, during this part of the project I took the opportunity to carry out some research on the places I wrote about and cross check some of what I saw and heard with other sources such as national databases, travel review websites and travel books. That is old and new ones for historical context.

The first proof reading ha been done in batches and each set of feedbacks whether or not they were critical instilled more motivation to carry on with what will hopefully be my first book. Until last night (16th Feb 23) the project felt like it was getting out of hand but by 2300 that same night I felt I had some grip on it again.

It has been so easy to lose track of what has been written about, whether or not my friend has proofread it and their suggestions actioned. The other night I hit on the idea of creating an Excel spreadsheet and made one up. It took a few minutes but already within 24 hours of developing it, it has rewarded me by illustrating what has to still be done before the manuscript lands on my friend’s desk once again for a final read through before publication.

The travel experiences included in the collection have taken place over the last twenty years and I wanted to make sure they were in date order. I wanted to check if they had been proof read or not? I wanted to see what the word counts were. And how many had illustrations included? With the Excel file I can now see at a glance what the status of each piece is and from that know what has to be done before I can say about the complete manuscript 'That is as good as it gets and can go to be eviscerated by the proof reader'.