I am afraid. No point being shy, now.
Of course, I have been all along. I’ve just tried to hide it. I blunder through, but the load I carry on my shoulders is starting to slip.
It’s all to do with the book, naturally. You see, on Sunday I spent a truly fascinating hour with a woman who knows her stuff when it comes to children’s literature. She’s been in the field for over twenty years. She reads well over 400 childrens’ books a year, from basic picture books right up to teenage/ young adult. She agreed to meet me at a cafe for a chat and I gave her the mocked-up manuscript for Surprise! to read as I went to get the coffees. When I got back I asked, “So what did you think?”
She replied, “Well, I’m going to be totally honest…”
And it went downhill from there.
Oh, she wasn’t damning. She pointed out areas of improvement that as the publisher I committed to memory and promised to make, but as the author I couldn’t help – perhaps quite naturally – to feel but a little chided.
So this means re-writes. Not many, just to take out another 50 words or so. Make it flow better. Have less words down on the page and let Kim’s pictures ‘speak for themselves’ more. (Which, I must admit, I’ve already done in previous drafts but obviously it’s not enough.)
I will do these, but time is running out and I’ve spent the past 48 hours walking around in such a funk; feeling most of all like a fraud. I rang several people to moan about the situation and they all tut-tutted in the appropriate places and one friend summed it up nicely: “How funny, isn’t it? You’re due to get an award next weekend for your writing and then this weekend you get, well, kind of the opposite. It just shows how subjective this whole process is.”
And she’s right. All along I’ve said I’m not doing this for the money. I’m doing this so perhaps other children get the same enjoyment out of this story that mine have. But, altruism aside, it’s still nerve-wracking. The anticipation is beginning to get to me, and not in a “Boy, I hope The Dark Knight will be as good a movie as they make it out to be” kind of way but in a “I hope this project doesn’t turn into a Gigli or a Waterworld or an Ishtar.”
[Sorry for mixing my metaphors there.]
But, I believe. Faith will get me there. If only just.
