In the last blog we started to talk about the road to publishing, and established that I had come up with a title for my nearly finished book. I do like to make sure we are all on the same page before I dive into my new and exciting blog! My lovely crossfit friend Colleen had edited my story and now it was time to go through and make the recommended changes. What I liked most about Colleen’s edits was the true teacher stylie in which they were written, complete with smiley faces and teacher-like anecdotes. Colleen very kindly awarded me 10 house points and even let me off my detention for that day.
When I received my printed story back from her, (it’s very exciting to see it in black and white and physically on paper rather than its virtual place on my laptop. Does this concrete the evidence that I am a 70’s child!?) I looked at the thick mass of paper and took another deep breath. Here we go again…. It was time to open the file on my laptop and get back to work. So I started going through each page – word by word, scroll by scroll – and made changes as per the recommendations. I had a glass (ahem, bottle) of red wine in hand (I blame Colleen for this as she demanded payment in vino, so of course I had to sample a few first, just to make sure I was paying fairly for her work) and I made the tweaks.
I was on a roll, transferring the red notes from the hard copy to the soft with the speed of… of… of well, a slightly tipsy author I suppose. I got into a routine of doing a bit every day and it was all going very well until one afternoon when I returned from work. I pressed the ‘on’ button (technical IT term- do try to keep up) on the laptop and nothing happened. Nothing. Now, never let it be said that I have poor technique when it comes to turning things on (cue frantic self-assurances that, “This has never happened to me before, it’s not a big deal, maybe the laptop has a headache”) so I tried again but this time I pressed firmly on the ‘on’ button. Nothing happened. Nothing. Next I tried a special trick and lightly massaged the button. Nothing. The only obvious thing to do from here was press it 73 times, frantically jabbing at it with shaky fingers. Nothing. I unplugged the laptop charger from the wall and blew on it, a well-known IT trick. Nothing. I plugged the laptop back in and still, NOTHING! *Cut to Corina rolling around on the floor in a proper tantrum, or ‘tanty’ as we say Down Under.* Why am I talking about myself in the third person all of a sudden? I am not sure.
So, 20 pages were complete pre-laptop meltdown, and there were still 153 to go. And here we are, in the present day, with a broken laptop and 153 pages left to edit. Luckily I was clever enough to back up (that’s right, another technical IT term) the book, otherwise this blog could have had the tragic ending of me trying to remember and rewrite 173 pages of my story before voluntarily checking myself into a psychiatric facility. That would also annoy the sh*t out of all of you, as I know you are desperately awaiting the finished version.
So now I am weighing up options for a plan B. Plan B either involves getting the old laptop fixed or buying a new laptop (ooooh the second option sounds so shiny, new and appealing) and getting the edit fully finished. Once that’s been done, my wonderful friend Lindsey will then give the prose a read through for a final edit. Then my friends (ah, cute, I’ve I promoted you all to friends! Too soon? Are we all comfortable with this?), we hit the critical time of finding a publisher. This is where you liking and sharing comes in very handy – the more popular the blog, the more likely it is someone will take pity and publish my work.
Shameless plug? Yes. But essentially everything that has happened so far has been with a little help from those around me. Everybody has played an important part – especially you, my friends, the readers of the blog. So if you share, you are helping my plight (or plummet) to get the book published. Have I mentioned that I would like this very much?
Written by Corina Hawkins, soon to be author of ‘Tattoos of memories’ and creatively bossed by Lindsey Barnett, who is a legend. Photo from Cordoba 4, Cala Lllonga, Ibiza.
