After The End Comes The Beginning

It’s been a strange week since I got back from Byron Bay. The celebrations about the new book signing are over and done. I made a couple of announcements – here, to a few friends, and to my writers’ group – and the congratulations have rolled in, giving me a feeling I can only describe as ‘satisfaction’. Maybe not quite the feeling I was expecting. Getting that first book deal was the end of a long, log road. Making something lasting and solid from this opportunity is the beginning of another one.

The reality of having signed a contract for TimeSplash is like finding I’ve got tiny gold threads woven into my old denim jeans. It’s the same old mundane world, but little bits here and there have started to glister. My publisher (I just can’t get enough of saying that) has given me lots of little jobs to do – filling in forms to help their marketing people and their cover designers mostly, but I also have to do things to satisfy American government bureaucracies -  like registering my copyright there and applying for a tax ID number. They have also assigned me an editor (hey, I’ve got an editor!) and she has already set me work to do and a deadline to meet. I’ve also been doing a few things off my own bat, like letting the agents who were still ‘considering’ representing TimeSplash know that they don’t need to ponder it any farther, and registering a domain name for the book’s website – timesplash.co.uk. (Would you believe there’s a cybersquatter sitting on timesplash.com? I hate those creeps.)

So I’m busy working on TimeSplash again, my current novel on hold for a while. And, I have to say, it feels good. I’ve already worked that book over a couple of times. I’ve had writer friends reading part or all of it and sending me detailed feedback, I’ve pared and pruned it and tightened all the loose bits, and it was pretty well polished when I sent it out into the world. But there is always more that can be done to a book – even if it’s just rearranging the deckchairs. Going over it this time feels different though. It feels more purposeful. The business relationship I now have makes the work of editing feel less open-ended and more focused on a specific end – creating a saleable product. And I like it. It feels right that this should happen now as a final transformation of the book. It was once my plaything and pleasure as it took shape in my mind and on the screen. Now it is becoming a separate and independent object that will pass into the ownership of others.

It is a rite of passage for me. One I didn’t expect but which I am glad of.