Engine Punk

I've taken to calling my shed a studio because of the arty farty things I get up to sometimes. Some might call it glorified bodging. This weekend I was sculpting in steel a new bottom edge to the radiator grille for this Nuffield 9/16 Mini tractor. It belongs to my very good friend and neighbour Andrew Snell. He bought it on eBay about three years ago with severely corroded front wheels and another of his mates converted some old Massey Ferguson wheels to the peculiar stud pattern that Nuffield used. Andrew also managed to find a spare bonnet for this tractor on eBay although the bottom lip was badly corroded. The original much-bashed-about bonnet had quite a good lip so he had the idea to make one good bonnet out of the twain. Some of mates among the local tractor owning mafia reckoned a repair in glassfibre was the solution but Andrew felt this area could be prone to damage and steel would be preferable. For some reason, he thinks I'm a better well than he is. I quit...

I am currently re-drafting the beginning of my next book and it has occurred to me how much of this self-publishing lark has nothing to do with the simple act of getting your thoughts down on paper. Or a screen. Or a digital dictaphone. Assembling these often random ideas into a coherent story also takes a lot of time but I quite enjoy doing that - drafting and re-drafting until the story has a direction that and sense of purpose that makes it almost write itself. Once I have that all important orientation in the narrative, the story assumes a kind of critical mass and I get carried away by it until it's finished. It always needs more polishing once I've reached The End but by then I can see the whole story, something no amount of planning can bring out. So that's the writing part, the easy bit. The self-publishing manuals are also telling me to do a whole lot of other things. Some of them I find easy, others I don't. And if I am to be a writer who actua...