Learning patience

Seven months after the edited manuscript first lay in my hands and several rounds of approvals later, I’ll Do It My Way seems to have cleared all hurdles. The book is finally ready for press.

We are still waiting for a few final pictures for the already-many-times-revised picture section. But the wait finally ends, with the book scheduled to go to press next week.

I’ve gained and lost many things on the working of this book. But if there is anything it has taught me, it is the meaning of patience

A book comes together

Today’s mail brought the formatted manuscript from my publisher into my inbox. The pictures still have to be frozen. But the finalized manuscript is in my hand and it looks good. As the author, I feel happy to have dedicated the last few years of my life to the making of this book. The moments of deep pain that were sometimes part of this journey seem vindicated.

The most miraculously beautiful part about working on a difficult book is that instant when it occurs to you that you are watching your creative piece finally falling into shape

It’s a May title

It’s a big moment for me. I’ll do it my way now has a finalized manuscript. We’ve also almost made up our mind on the picture section. The book will also be a May title.

This means that the first dummy copy of the book would be in my hands in May. I’ll finally see the cover and also get my first glimpse of what the layout would actually like. After this comes the planning for the book’s roll out. 

Currently, the book is expected to go for formatting on Wednesday. We’d then have to run through it with a fine comb to carefully eliminate any proofing mistakes. As I’ve learned in my many years as a Communications professional, the quality of any work of art is finally judged by its details. If we get this bit wrong, all the work that went before this would make little sense. We’d still have to live with the description of a tacky product.

But meanwhile, there is still cause for celebration. Slowly, but surely, our goal seems closer still.

Re-editing Round 1: Done

It is finished. And it is perhaps appropriate that I said those famous last words on Good Friday. “I’ll Do It My Way” has been re-edited over the last one month and the revised text has been sent to my editor. We now have an almost final manuscript that needs to be stitched together and sent to the press.

For me the great learning in Round 1 has been about giving a book flow. In the context of this particular book, it’s also been about retaining the book’s rich cinematic content while giving it mass appeal.

My greatest fear – to ensure that the end result of mainstreaming this book has not left us with a pedestrian, soulless piece of literature, lacking in depth. But at this point, I do believe that we have the right balance.

This part of the editing process is really tough because this is where the book you first imagined now has to b re-imagined. Flow that has been taken away has to be given back to the book. Finally it’s about putting your ego aside and acting in the interest of the book.

It’s been a tremendous difficult journey.

The re-editing process

As the writer chisels away to make 70,000 words in a manuscript find their perfect place, battle scarred eyes droop and then squint. But also in the chaos of all those blurred and crossed lines is the first hint that a beautiful book is emerging

Re-editing a book is tough work. Between the cuts and revisions from your editor, you have to now give the book a new flow. There are so many times along the way when you just feel like giving up. But slowly, as you reach the end of the process, there is that satisfaction of seeing a better book emerge

Happy birthday Aamir!

I’ve got mail.

Yes, you guessed right! After all that cribbing, it’s my first edited manuscript of “I’ll do it my way”.  I must say that my editor Dipa Chaudhuri has done a great job. The book looks so much better for having passed under her pen.

Incidentally, the edited manuscript reaches me on March 14, 2011. As any Aamir Khan fan would tell you, it’s AK’s birthday today.

Superstitious folk would call it a sign. But let me just say that I am over the moon.

Happy birthday Aamir! We raise a toast to you.

PS. In my excitment I think I forgot to mention, it’s a May title

The Editorial Review

So what’s been the most painful part of working on this book? You would have thought it would have been the research, the chasing of celebrities, the bad press or the actual writing? As it turns out, it’s the editorial process.

To give you a bird’s eye view into how it worked for me, here goes:

1. June 2010: Send the final manuscript. Told to chop it down by 25,000 words (God grief! Yes… That’s almost a book by itself!)
2. September 2010: Return a manuscript that’s shorter by the mentioned length.
3. Wait.
4. November 2010: Told I’ll have my edited manuscript back by December.
5. Wait.
6. December 2010: Missed deadline.
7. New target – Early January
8. January 2011: Target pushed to mid-January
9. End January 2011: Missed deadline
10. New target 07/02/2011
11. 07/02/2001: Missed deadline
12. New target – Weekend
13. Weekend: Missed deadline
14. New target – What new target????
15. Then, the sound of silence.

It makes you wonder doesn’t it, why would anybody want to be a writer?

Well, I do

A non-celebrity author writing on a celebrity actor

The most difficult thing in the world is to be a non-celebrity author writing on a celebrity actor. Nothing moves when you are nobody.

I guess if I’d seen the book in this spirit when I started out, I’d never have written it. But that’s not how I started out. It was just my act of love for Indian cinema, through the work of an actor who reflects many of its finest shades.

I knew nothing about the doors that would be slammed on my face and the rollercoaster ride of joy and disappointments that would be all mine on the course of this journey.

I learnt what it was to be made to wait, without an end in sight.

I learnt what it was to be let down by the ones that you trust the most.

I learnt what it was to rise again.

After all, the greatest acts of love don’t always emerge triumphantly from the echoes of loud laughter. They are etched in blood.

The self losing itself, only to find the “self”. Becoming nothing to finally be something.

At the editor’s desk

How do you chop off 20,000 words from an 85,000 word document. That’s the challenge that now lies before me as my editor has reverted with comments on the first draft of my manuscript.

Many of her comments are valid and will add richness to the book. Yet this is a painful job and lots of hard work. So this manuscript is still being shaped as I type.

In the weeks to come, I hope to post some of the interesting bits that do get chopped off onto this space.

Manuscript complete

Almost 1.5 years and 85, 297 words after I first began on this journey… The manuscript of I’ll do it my way is now complete. It just needs the final edits and it will now go across to the publisher.

A long time ago I’d written this blog post about being a writer…

“Sometimes, it is a privilege and a curse to be a writer.

You work for hours, days, months, years – sculpting, sculpting. You delve deep into your spirit – not always to find experiences, but definitely to draw out and then draw for an audience the laughter and the pain of life.

While doing this, you need to pay attention to your choice of expression. The attempt is to use often quoted, worn out words in novel ways.

And of course, the tale must not be too short or too long.

So the writer sets out on one endeavour after another. Again and again and again.

But, will the writer be successful? Well, who is to say?

And yet, the writer crafts a tale. It is the need of an idea to express itself. Success – if it comes – is purely incidental.”

Nowhere has this been more true than on my journey with I’ll do it my way. The journey has been long, lonely and hard. But I’ve learnt so much and pushed myself in ways that I never imagined. I’m definitely not the same person who started out.

And now as I move into the next part of this journey, I know that it will soon be time for me to take my hands off this book and let it find a life of its own.