May
30
2010
On Friday, the whole ‘I’m getting published’ rollercoaster hit the biggest high yet. I went into the offices at HarperCollins in Sydney to meet with various people and discuss publicity, marketing and the way forward from here. The second best bit of the day was having lunch with my editor, who is a lovely person (as well as damn good editor) and who loves my books, so she’s therefore fantabulous! No, really, it was great to chat and I left the building a little in love with her. And the people at the meeting loved my ideas for things to do on the website to promote the book, which made me very happy.
However, as wonderful as that was, it was kinda overshadowed by this:
 | Yes, my friends, that is it. An actual copy of Secret Ones. After spending some time oohing and aahing over it, I actually sat down and flicked through it and I have to say, that was a very surreal experience.
For six years now, these words have existed in one of two formats – on the computer screen or printed on A4 paper. Even the proofs were printed on A4 paper. That’s the way my brain’s used to reading this book.
At the same time, I’ve been reading books by other people, with other people’s words. So my brain has the divide worked out – other people’s words in books, my words on screen or paper.
It didn’t deal well with seeing my words in book form. |
It’s been weird as well to come across scenes and be surprised to find that while I considered it something that happened early in the story, in the book it’s two-thirds of the way in. That’s got me thinking about structure and plot and how it can seem one way in planning and on the screen but then in the book, it looks different and maybe that affects the reader and how they perceive the book and maybe I need to think about how it looks in book form as well and whether something’s taking too long to happen or not -
At that point, my brain exploded.
So now I’m just looking at my book and sighing prettily at it and I’m not going to actually read it until I feel my head can cope with the fact that my story is now a book, and they are actually two different things.