Recently I read a book called, “Dear Writer You Need to Quit” by Becca Syme. Midway through she casually mentions writers who write a book a month. What is that about? A BOOK a MONTH! ARE THEY INSANE? Turns out they probably are, but they are making mega bucks writing for online platforms where they’re the final arbiter of their work. If you’re churning out 80,000 words a month you aren’t going to stop and look up “arbiter” and I doubt it would even be possible to read the final product let alone cast a critical eye over the work. But reservations aside, I’m beginning to see the drawback of having a critical eye. I’ve just spent the last two days re-bloody-formatting ‘I am not Joe Donovan’ and it’s still not entirely complete. Revisiting Joe began with an email from PeterPal late last week. Ahha, I thought. Pedophile looking for something to do, but it did have the tag “Purchase order Quotation” so I set aside my loathing and opened it up. Wow! Turns out PeterPal is a library supply company in Australia who had a request from a Queensland library for 2 copies of my book. They (well Desley her name is- how authentic Australian is that?) were checking out how much it would cost. It was head spinning stuff but it was also something I didn’t want to screw up so I didn’t reply straight away. I converted NZD’s to AUD’s and, ever the optimist went down to the post office with 4 books and plonked them on the scales. This was to make sure that when I was rushed off my feet with orders, I was prepared. Then I went home and counted how many books were left in the last box. Eleven didn’t seem enough to supply the whole of Australia which meant getting Book Print (who by the way are an absoluely awesome NZ book printing company), to send me a quote to print more. Which brings me back to Joe. As I read it through looking for the two ‘waswas’es’ and the ‘sand’ that should’ve been ‘and’, I came across passages that were as clear as mud, across words that stood out like sore thumbs and dribble that sounded more like me than any of my characters. .I apologise to my readers for making them work harder than they should have. But if you think about it, making the book easier to read is probably the decent thing to do for Australians.
PS – I sent the quote and I still haven’t heard if they want the books. So much for the little heart flutters of hope.
– And the two “waswas’es “are nowhere to be found.
– And writing this blog took over and hour and had 4,000 revisions. I’m destined to remain poor and unknown.
Robyn Anderson 