Thursday 24 April 2008

The highlights of my day . . .


Have been wrestling with different coloured highlighter pens and a 600pp set of proofs (a textbook on Employment Law - oh joy of joys) for the best part of today. And now I am typing like fury into the night to capture the results of my fluorescent daubing.

It's all far too arcane and complicated to explain here, but I can tell you that it's so enthralling that I'm not even going to stop in order to write a proper blog post. No, I just can't wait to get back to it asap, and I thank my lucky stars that I worked hard and passed lots of exams at school and university because if I hadn't, well, I don't know where I'd be, but it certainly wouldn't be perched up here in the dizzy heights of the publishing world, colouring things in.

Oh how I must be envied by my peers - the ones with boring jobs with boring add-ons like . . . paid holidays and company cars and pensions. And who can blame them? They're probably reduced to putting their feet up and watching telly right now. Poor things.

Anyway, I have managed to wrench myself away from this delightful task on a few occasions during the day - principally to intervene in various noisy altercations between SDs #2 and#3, who have been enjoying the extra holiday provided by their striking teachers; but also to surf at lightning speed through the blogosphere, screeching round corners and bumping into things all over the place (part joy-ride, part guilt-trip).

Here are two that are well worth a read:

A characteristically perceptive piece by Danuta Kean (which has attracted some equally illuminating comments from writers and publishers) about the perils for unwary authors of entering into a relationship with a small publisher - written in the light of (though not specifically about) the disaster that was The Friday Project. Some insightful thoughts about the nature of blogging, too ('just a form of vanity publishing'), and the limited potential of the whole 'blog to book' ('blook') concept.

And Susan Hill on copyright and the Internet, 'are we the owners of our own work?' (vis-à-vis the J K Rowling court case in New York)

1 comment:

Juxtabook said...

Those who work for others want to work for themselves, and we who work for ourselves are frequently doing mundane tasks at midnight. But at least they are our own mundane tasks!

Found my way here via your comment on my blog. Just reciprocating interest and some links. I enjoyed this blog, but also your site about your grandfather's war service. I shall be back to both.