Ready to Launch

I received a final pdf manuscript of The Hotel Hokusai just before Christmas. After reading it through, and having one or two tiny changes to send as feedback, I had a real sense of ‘At last! We’re ready to launch.’

Perhaps this is how space scientists feel, seeing the rocket in position at the launch site.
Or perhaps that’s a facile analogy, but I’ll make it anyway – this post is in need of an accompanying image…

It’s been a lot of hard work since The Hotel Hokusai was accepted by Ringwood Publishing a year ago. But after years of ploughing the lonely writer’s furrow, it’s been a delight to work with the editors at Ringwood. I hadn’t appreciated before just how much of a multi-stage process editing a novel is.

The first stage feedback report gave me large scale suggestions, leading to me adding in sections that weren’t there in the first draft. This was followed by a second editorial feedback report where changes were suggested at the line-by-line level. In theory this shouldn’t have taken that long, but finding myself with an unexpected window of opportunity over summer, I went into self-critical mode. The result was an amount of tweaking/rewriting that went significantly beyond the line by line suggestions, including a change of narrative style in the middle section of the novel. (out went a past tense ‘diary’ format; in a present tense, ‘in the moment’ feel) In the end (and just in time before the return to college teaching) I had a text I was much happier with. However, I’d also given the Ringwood editors a whole new level of work to deal with in reading it again and checking that my changes worked. Luckily, they are lovely, patient people, and agreed that the effort was worth it to make a better version of the novel.

Finally, in December, I received the final manuscript, my editor telling me to read it through to confirm I was happy, with a gentle reminder that there could be no more major changes. Point taken! Not that I had any intention of making any – all my energy was well and truly spent. Still, I felt an element of trepidation as I approached a final read-through. Would I feel satisfied with blasting this version out into space, assured that it wouldn’t blow up spectacularly? (too bad if I didn’t, it would be going anyway)
Luckily, the only things I found were tiny, at the level of capital letters or italics. I’m happy that the novel’s as good as I can make it. In fact, scratch the ‘I’; it’s as good as me and several very hard-working, eagle-eyed editors can make it.

The next thing to look forward to is seeing The Hotel Hokusai go from digital to printed form, complete with terrific looking cover design by Skye Galloway. Then the launch, which is set for the 18th February at Hillhead Library on Byres Road.

All systems go. Clear the area for lift-off..