Smell the flowers

I’d like to get my hands on the guy who started the rumour that publishing goes quiet in August. Not here, it doesn’t. For the past eleven days I’ve written press releases, stuffed review copies into envelopes, made posters for upcoming events, read manuscripts, written rejection letters, explained politely but firmly that our feedback service doesn’t include a week-long exchange of e-mails… pretty much business as usual, in fact, except that planning 2010 has taken the place of co-ordinating 2009.

 

And since our annual two-week break in the sun (there, I’ve jinxed it; it’s gonna pour) begins in just over three weeks, in fact just about the time Sharon bursts into song on the Trafalgar Square plinth (go for it, Shaz, it’ll be fun), I don’t exactly foresee any let-up in the imminent future.

 

So why am I planning a marketing campaign that, should it happen to take off where others have barely made it off the ground, will entail working at least one extra evening a week?

 

I told you I was mad.

 

Yes I did. Months ago. Unless it was someone else I told…

 

Deep breath, count to ten, and… calm. Sorry. It all gets a little too much at times. There’s blue sky outside, and the late-crop raspberries are ripening. I ought to be out there, breathing it in, not flipping between Outlook Express and three different Word files in a very messy office, wondering if it’s actually possible to fit that gallon of projects over there into this teensy little half-pint cup over here…

 

It’s a disease, this inability to be idle. Other people manage to shake it off; I’ve met lots of them who work part-time, or, shock horror, have retired. What worries me most is that I think I may have infected my daughter. Though she did take last week off to visit her aged and not-in-the-least venerable parents (though this one spent most of that week surgically attached to the computer), and she went to the theatre last night, for pleasure, not because someone asked her to review it, so maybe she’s built some immunity over the years.

 

Take time to smell the flowers, my lovely friend Douglas used to say.

 

I do cast a glance across the lawn at the wonderful bright pink football-sized hydrangea flowers most mornings, when I’m heading out for the brisk two-mile walk which is so preferable to pounding a treadmill or cross-trainer if it’s not raining. They’re beautiful – my favourite shrub by a mile, and at their best at the moment. And every time I walk into the living room I smile at the orchid someone gave me three years ago, which started out as one skinny leaf, one stalk, and a couple of flowers arching elegantly like a piece of Japanese art, and now has five fat leaves all the year round and sprouts three stalks, several subsidiary twigs and over 50 flowers every summer. I like to think of it as a metaphor yet to be fulfilled.

 

And of course the manic work schedule has its golden moments. Like the brilliant manuscript I received about this time last year, which I’m hoping will form part of the planning 2010 part of the madness. And the equally dazzling one I hope I’m going to be given in a week or two, the next-in-series from one of our most popular authors.

 

Sometimes I need to remind myself that like writing the books, publishing them is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration. And that the one percent is the bit you remember.

Comments

[Term Paper]

You have written press releases, stuffed review copies into envelopes, made posters for upcoming events, read manuscripts, written rejection letters, explained politely.That's mean you are not a common man.Well I will read your written.