The crap read

I don’t know if every writer goes through this, but it’s about the most upsetting and, I suspect, the potentially most dangerous part of this writing lark. It’s the read-through where you realise that this book is a complete and utter disaster and nobody in their right mind could possibly get even to the bottom of the first page…

My second Frank Sampson story, Pariah, is due out at the beginning of Feb 2016. I got the first typeset proofs back from my editor at Random House Children’s Publishers ten days ago, for me to read through and, hopefully, make as few corrections as possible.

I don’t know what happened. Maybe I was suffering from some sort of minor virus, or something. My sinuses were all blocked up and my IQ felt like it had dropped to single figures. The day job was a bit on top of me and I was exhausted.

Anyway, I sat down with the proofs… and I just couldn’t read this shit!

Nothing made sense. It was like each sentence was in a different language. Like each paragraph had been pasted in from a different (bad) book. It was like climbing the last couple of hundred feet to the summit of Everest without oxygen. Why had I written this rubbish? How could the grownups be stupid enough to publish it. Could I just call the whole thing off, please, and go back to bed?

The danger is, of course, that you panic and do something stupid. I did, in fact, panic. But I managed not to do anything stupid. I accepted that I couldn’t do a coherent, sequential read-through; that all I could see was disconnected words on a page. So I just concentrated on finding typos: spelling, punctuation, nuts and bolts…

I gave it another read-through a few days later. Maybe my brain had finally rolled back down into the little hole at the bottom… Anyway, it was fine. I was reading a coherent narrative and was able to see points at which minor tweaks would clarify the flow and meaning…

I can’t judge Pariah’s finer qualities, but — to my infinite relief — it read like the book I thought I’d written. So panic over, I suppose. Until the next time…