The pain of deadlines

Deadlines are a fact of life when it comes to writing books. Of course not everyone sticks to them. Douglas Adams famously said: 'I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.' But for most authors, particularly if it's your first book, the deadline can be a pretty scary thing. This isn't helped by contracts that contain dark threats along the lines of 'If you don't submit your manuscript by the agreed date, you will have to pay back your advance and sacrifice your first born.'

The good news is that most publishers will cut you a little slack if necessary. I didn't really understand this to start with. My first professional writing was for weekly magazines, and with them, the deadline was 5pm on day X, and that was it. Then on one book I misread the deadline as the last day of the month, where actually it was the first. When I was about two weeks late, the editor mildly asked if I would be ready soon. It wasn't a problem. In fact I've talked to academic publishers who reckon most academics think that if they get a book in within 3 months of a deadline, they've hit it.

That's excessive, but as long as you give them some warning, editors are usually happy to be a little flexible. For me, though, that magazine heritage is still there, and it's very rare that I don't deliver on the specified date. (In fact apart from that accidental overrun, I think I've only once delivered 2 weeks late by agreement.)

You might think that the pain of a deadline goes away once you've sent off your manuscript, but in some ways the worst bit is still to come. Now there's a pause. You know that eventually the editor is going to come back and say:

This is great, we just need a few tweaks, or
I do have quite a few notes, but it's fine or
Okay, we have a problem here

... but you don't know which. Being a writer, you are naturally paranoid, and despite any experience to the contrary tend towards the third option. So you are on tenterhooks. And the editor doesn't get back to you. Days roll by. You might think this is because the editor is spending a lot of time on your book, but I've had editors admit a month after submission 'I haven't got round to it yet, I have another project to finish.' Sigh.

I realize an editor isn't just working on my book. But I do think there could be a little more communication in this period. If (s)he knows a few days before deadline that (s)he isn't going to pick up your manuscript in the next month, it would be nice to be given some breathing space. If once (s)he's got it there is a delay that isn't caused by trying to work out how to salvage your book from disaster, it would be great just to get a little 'Everything's fine, I should get round to looking at it next week.' But on the whole there is very little communication.

It's not true of every editor - some really keep you in the loop, and/or are lightning fast with an initial assessment - but these are relatively rare. So perhaps the worst thing about a deadline is that you hit it not so much with a bang as a whimper. The big day arrives... and nothing happens for a month. Hey ho. Don't you just love deadlines?

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's 2010 gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some exp

Is 5x3 the same as 3x5?

The Internet has gone mildly bonkers over a child in America who was marked down in a test because when asked to work out 5x3 by repeated addition he/she used 5+5+5 instead of 3+3+3+3+3. Those who support the teacher say that 5x3 means 'five lots of 3' where the complainants say that 'times' is commutative (reversible) so the distinction is meaningless as 5x3 and 3x5 are indistinguishable. It's certainly true that not all mathematical operations are commutative. I think we are all comfortable that 5-3 is not the same as 3-5. However. This not true of multiplication (of numbers). And so if there is to be any distinction, it has to be in the use of English to interpret the 'x' sign. Unfortunately, even here there is no logical way of coming up with a definitive answer. I suspect most primary school teachers would expands 'times' as 'lots of' as mentioned above. So we get 5 x 3 as '5 lots of 3'. Unfortunately that only wor

Why backgammon is a better game than chess

I freely admit that chess, for those who enjoy it, is a wonderful game, but I honestly believe that as a game , backgammon is better (and this isn't just because I'm a lot better at playing backgammon than chess). Having relatively recently written a book on game theory, I have given quite a lot of thought to the nature of games, and from that I'd say that chess has two significant weaknesses compared with backgammon. One is the lack of randomness. Because backgammon includes the roll of the dice, it introduces a random factor into the play. Of course, a game that is totally random provides very little enjoyment. Tossing a coin isn't at all entertaining. But the clever thing about backgammon is that the randomness is contributory without dominating - there is still plenty of room for skill (apart from very flukey dice throws, I can always be beaten by a really good backgammon player), but the introduction of a random factor makes it more life-like, with more of a sense

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