Click Accept

Yesterday morning, 5 January 2012, I received the second and final printed proof of Chasing Innocence. At midday yesterday I clicked 'Accept' on the printer's website. About 20 seconds later the book was listed as being available for printing. Which means it's done, finished, good to go. Ready to be bought, shipped and delivered into the eager hands of Amazon buyers all around the world. Of course there would be the obligatory spanner in the works - I updated Nielsen's who manage book data in the UK, and brought the publish date forward from 31 January to NOW. But Nielsen's takes a few days to update and Amazon is stuck in the pre-order state. That will fix itself in the next few days, I had just hoped the pre-orders might get shipped for the weekend.

So, yesterday was full of a thrilling sense of jubilation, expectation and a huge chunk of hope. It was a marker for the end of a process and in so many ways, the beginning of something else. I look back to October 2007 when I first had the idea for Chasing Innocence, to the months and months of daydreaming and the uncertainty of how to even start a book, what should a first chapter contain? Who am I writing for? What style should I be writing in? Of Sunday afternoons in Borders reading through a stack of Chapter Ones while drinking tea. The uncertainty of it all really stands out. Of trying to find time to write as I started a new job and found myself commuting 3hrs a day, and then moving house. I did leave the uncertainty behind at 60,000 words in October 2008. I got my head down and finished the first draft in April 2009 - one morning after four months of 5AM starts. I felt then a sense of jubilation just as I do now, little knowing just how much of the journey still stretched before me. Just like it does now I suspect. The rest of that year and much of 2010 was spent taking the rough draft and making it as good as I could, while learning the very important and difficult art of getting feedback and taking criticism. I recall the endless mistakes and the steep learning curve. The very steep learning curve. The wasted time, the wasted months I spent preparing letters for agents, another lesson learned. Of trying and failing to give the whole book a consistent grammatical narrative.

Throughout the whole process I had been determined the book would be a product of my creative endeavours alone. I knew a lot of people that spent a lot of time TALKING about writing books, I knew a lot of people that spent a lot of time studying writing, researching and attending lectures and conferences. A lot of people that spent a lot of time involved in the concept of book writing without actually doing much of it. I never have been any good at studying something and applying the knowledge seamlessly to the real world experience. I would and did learn all my mistakes the same way I have always learned them - the hard way. I wanted the experience of actually writing a book to shape my knowledge. The process also gradually brought about a startling realisation - that I am a bit of control freak. Having lived 44 years as me, this had never once occurred to me. The irony being I know people exactly like this and often shake my head sagely and might even voice the thought that they need to, 'Let go.' Once I realised that was also me, I tried to understand it. I'm control obsessed, not because I don't think anyone can do it better, it's just that I doubt anyone to fully realise what I have in my mind to a finished product that matches my expectations. Others say I'm just driven, others say I'm mad. In Chasing Innocence this had led me to create a great story and great characters. I wasn't sure though. I mean I thought I had, but I was also full of self doubt. I spent the close of 2010 and early 2011 toiling over and over grammatical issues that were artefacts of many lessons learned, that I couldn't rectify because I'd been looking at them for so long. I realised if I was to progress, I did need to let go. I needed help.

I came to Daniel Goldsmith Associates via a literary agent recommendation and lots of research. There are a lot of companies willing to take your manuscript and make it a book, but too many of them are like production lines with limited capacity for quality. I wasn't even sure what the next stage towards publication might be, I just wanted to know what a professional editor thought of the book. I wasn't even sure what to expect.

If there was ever justification needed in my letting go, Katie Green is it. I contracted Daniel Goldsmith to provide editorial feedback on Chasing Innocence and in return I got from Katie a detailed and illuminating report. It turned out the story and characters were everything I thought they were, the epilogue didn't work and some of the chapter endings needed tweaking. Some things weren't clear. There were some real grammatical issues. I made almost all the changes Katie suggested and her second editor report confirmed that the grammatical issues remained. I wonder if she ever contemplated that she would be the one to eventually fix them? I got two colleagues to read Chasing Innocence. Others had gone before them but these were the last two. The first read the pre-Katie version, the second the post Katie version. The first confirmed what Katie said in less specific terms and the second reader gushed. I decided it was time I took the next step. I decided I would publish Chasing Innocence. There was no way I would hand it to the production line of self publishing companies. I wanted the control being my own publisher afforded me. I wanted the finished product to sit beside a 'properly' published book and look better. It seemed a natural move to use Daniel Goldsmith to help with this, they were a trusted commodity in an arena I knew little of. The service they offered also afforded me more interaction. As the publisher I would have final say at every stage.

The first step was Katie Green's great achievement, she heroically copy edited my whole book. Reading the manuscript for the first time after this process was a moment of triumph and utter relief that will be difficult to ever better. The copy edit was justification for the part of me that realised I could not fix the problems, over the part determined to belligerently do it alone. In return Katie had given a great story a consistent grammatical narrative and made it a great read. A huge difference.

The proof edit was done by a freelance editor who also works for some of the established publishers such as Transworld. Having never fed back to Daniel Goldsmith anything on a book's quality other than the content of the professional proof edit, she told them in Chasing Innocence we had a bestseller. The proof edit gave the manuscript a professional shine and highlighted two flaws that caused several late nights. In producing the book's front cover we surpassed my wildest dreams. I had provided Daniel Goldsmith with a stunning image. Getting that image was one of the most remarkable experiences and the combined effort of a photographer, make-up artist, model and my direction. The graphic designer turned it into something quite jaw dropping. He produced a cover that sells the book at first glance, for my mind, and puts questions in your mind that only reading the book will answer. You can't really ask more of a cover. The final stage was the mystical art of typesetting. Something I know a lot more about now. Daniel Goldsmith produced a layout that took the eye easily down the lines of text and from page to page. A typeset that was easy to read and very importantly, took my higher than average word count and made it 366 pages. A fact that becomes more important when you consider each and every page impacts the cost of printing the book.

In clicking 'Accept' yesterday and releasing Chasing Innocence for printing, I was completing another stage in a personal journey. Getting my book into the hands of lots of people, is the next stage. One that I need to balance alongside the two books I intend finishing over the next twelve months. Finishing this leg of the journey and putting Chasing Innocence in a position where people can read what I write, took learning something about myself, and embracing it. It was a lot of hard work, at all times a wonderful creative experience and through collaboration, I saw the book grow into a polished product through the input of many people. WE really did do it.