The Things They Don't Tell You

One of the things they don't tell you when you begin to write a book is that eventually someone will read it. This may seem like an obvious end use for the printed word, just like a doctor snapping on a rubber glove is a good predictor of certain events, but the thought that a person would soon be reading what I wrote didn't sink in until the final days before publication. The reason for this was simple. As a novice writer I was constantly reminded not to self-censor. "Let the ideas flow unhindered", was the mantra. Don't worry about spelling, grammar or punctuation, that can all be taken care of later.

The problem is that "later" eventually becomes "now", when those mistakes of form and style must be addressed. So distracted is the writer in finding all those split infinitives and dangling participles that it's easy to lose track of what the words are really saying. And what they are saying are all of the embarrassing, soul baring and relationship straining things you put in there while your censor was out for coffee.

For me this hit home on two occasions. The first was when I realized that some of my colleagues may read the book. I completed the original draft of the manuscript before I was a full-time employee of the Oceanographic Institution. Now that I must sit across the table daily with people who know much more about the subject of oceanography than I do, adds a level of anxiety that I was never prepared for. I found out today that the institution library has just purchased copies of the book for their shelves and for each of our ships. What this means for me is potentially being at sea for many weeks, trapped and surrounded by what I expect will be my harshest critics. I now realize that writers live mostly in solitary places to avoid such situations.

The second set of readers that I neglected to anticipate were my parents. I visited them this weekend and presented them with a copy of the book. In every instance where I envisioned the day that I would hand over a copy of my first book, the fantasy never involved them actually reading it. Show it off to their friends, yes, place it conspicuously on the coffee table, probably, open it up and start reading it in front of me, never. At that moment I couldn't remember a single sentence of what I had written, but truly believed it was two-hundred-and-thirty pages of things I didn't want my mother to see.

In the end they said it was great. But parents have to say that because even after fifty years they still feel responsible for your self-esteem. I'm holding out for the autonomous critics. Those that have no horse in the race. The readers my uncensored self was writing for.