The other day , in the bookshop of the National Shrine at Walsingham, posing beside my second book. Nine copies sitting on a wire shelf., right underneath Gerard Hughes ; a long time inspiration to me.
This book writing thing , it is not for the faint-hearted..
Take a dream , take two heads, find the idea, say yes, drink gallons of coffee, mix with scraps of paper, recover lost note books, and deleted files , find a pen, add more than a dash of creative tension, the air was blue, sometimes, soften with red wine and mix behind a windbreak, one summer's day on Cley Beach. On that day, writing , heaven and earth collided ; and you have this book.
And then it starts. The rejections. Plucking up of nerve. Picking yourself up. Holding on to hope. The rewrites, draft after draft after draft. Plucking up of more nerve.
Every muscle screaming .
The publisher -yes, the contract - yes-but....
and you end up holding a rather special brown paper parcel one day in your lap.
And nothing you have ever experienced matches the feeling, when you open it.
So, book three is the big one. “Imagine, it is not difficult...”
The opening words .......
