The long haul

My current job, a book edit, was supposed to finish a week ago. A combination of circumstances meant I needed an extension to complete it. That was duly negotiated and I even worked over the weekend to ensure I'd complete it today.

Alas, it was not to be. I'd been working at a good pace over the last fortnight or so, despite the aforementioned issues. Then I hit a brick wall. With just over 60 pages to go, my pace plunged to an all-time low of 2 pages an hour. Yes, 2. I'm used to doing 8-10 pages an hour. Even the ghastliest stuff I've worked on - usually something written by a non-native speaker of English and therefore prone to all those typical foreign errors - I can scrape through at 5-6 pages an hour.

Not this bastardbaby. I'm doing the reference section and it is, frankly, the worst one I've ever had to work on. And that's saying something, as I've edited some real stinkers in my time. I am having to google every single citation to check author names, title, publisher and the rest, because nothing - but nothing - is consistent, not even where the same citation crops up several times. Then there's the spelling, the punctuation, the styling... ok, ok, I know that's *my* job but the author had at least made a fairly good hash of it in the body of the book. When it came to the references, I suspect he chucked out the publisher's style guide along with his empty beer bottles and pizza boxes.

I've done a 15-hour day today, with barely a break. And I still have 40 soddingpages to go... Spare a thought for me, please.

At least I have an away-day tomorrow. Perhaps I'll be in a more willing frame of mind when I return to the grindstone on Wednesday. Then again, maybe not.

(Think of the cheque, Wordsmith, just think of the cheque...)

A book and a video

I may be about to land a book-writing contract.

{jumps up and down and makes funny whoop-whoop noises}

A lovely hack colleague of mine suggested me to her publisher last week as a potential author for a practical handbook on living with epilepsy. I quickly fired off some emails - one to the publisher to establish initial contact, one to a hack pal who is also a published author and very generous in helping other writers put together credible book proposals - I asked her for a copy of her fabled how-to-do-it guide.

On Monday, the publisher emailed back and invited me to call her for a chat. I did so this morning, having read through her company's general briefing for pitching to write a title for them. We had a very useful discussion and the upshot is I've been asked to put together a proposal within the next fortnight. She seemed very keen to have me on board, as I'd be writing very much from an inside point of view. Fingers crossed, I'll get the contract.

It's not going to make my fortune, that is clear, but it'll be good to have a book on the old CV and boost my profile. And I know I will enjoy writing it.

In other news, yet another hack pal has been busy creating. Cast your mind back a couple of months to our dear food critic Giles Coren and his little tantrum towards the subs at The Times. Naturally, an outburst like that doesn't get forgotten quickly and the hackosphere is still chattering about it. Enter my pal Shandypockets who, while ill in bed the other day, put a video together for our amusement.

The clip is from a 2004 movie called Der Untergang (The Downfall). The subtitles, however, belong solely to Shandypockets.

Enjoy!