For many years I had a desire to write books. My first, Essex Coast Walk, I started in the autumn of 2006 and published in 2009. Prior to that I’d considered various ideas, made some initial research and a couple of aborted starts.
Some ideas went on the back burner as I was keen to complete a long walk and write a book about it but the demands of family and work made this difficult. Then I had the idea of walking the Essex coast, a walk that no one seemed to have written a book about but doing it in single day stages to fit in with home and work.
I’m now working on my eighth book, which like the last is based on Dartmoor, although this time not a walking guide. Well, I say I’m working on my eighth book but in fact I’m also working on what may be my ninth, tenth, eleventh and twelfth. Rather than one book at a time, I’ve found that it works to have more than one on the go, at least in terms of gathering information and noting down ideas. Two of them I’ve been working on for more than ten years. Progress on these has tended to jump forward when travel or walking related books meet a quiet period, such as lockdown, or when (as is the current position) all the walks / trips have been written up and I’m waiting for the opportunity to do more.
How I write has change too. A big mistake with Essex Coast Walk was to ‘complete’ a chapter then put it aside until the book was ‘finished’. It then took me a year to repeatedly read through, edit and check the manuscript. Now I write each chapter (or often work on more than one chapter at a time) soon after the walk or journey has been completed, then edit it by reading it over and over again, usually on the long train journeys which I make very regularly. Each chapter is read at least twenty five times, with the number of changes and corrections gradually reducing.
Finally, I learned from Essex Coast Walk the value of paying for a proof reader. Having read it many times myself and my wife and both parents read it too, I thought that all the errors had been spotted. I was wrong and the first print run of a thousand copies had far too many errors, albeit most small. Several reprints later all (I think) have been corrected but I learned that a professional proof reader is essential to cutting out errors, particularly as the typesetting process can introduce new ones. The odd mistake still slips though, sometimes typos, spelling and sometimes information. I’m always grateful to readers who point these out and usually kick myself, for example repeated instances of referring to those who built railways as ‘navies’ not ‘navvies’ in Remote Stations.
Please do let me know if you spot and errors in my books so they can be amended at the next reprint, particularly walking guides where changes can occur over time – pubs close, gates replace stiles etc.
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