review |

Somehow, we’ve ended up here, in October and my work on The Bone Dragon is nearly done.

The second proofs are being prepared. The big new thing is the addition of a special scene-divider symbol in place of the basic *. My wonderful project editor, Lucie, said she’d come up with several to discuss and I asked if – pretty, pretty, please – a dragon could be one of the options. The Wonderful Lucie sent me these.

I can’t wait to see the new proofs with all the dragons in them!

At this stage, it should just be a matter of checking through to be absolutely sure that no weird computer glitches have introduced errors since the last proof… and to double-check-squared that there aren’t any little mistakes. No other corrections are permitted. Which is a relief. I am ready to move on. I’ve done all I want creatively with The Bone Dragon. It’s time for a new project.

… Actually, it’s proven time for several. I’m re-writing several ‘old’ manuscripts and I’ve also started something completely fresh. But more about that in a separate post.

For now, I need to sit tight until the second proofs arrive and then check them as quickly as possible because after that… copies for early review will be printed. I was equal parts excited and terrified about this but all of a sudden I can’t wait for people to read my wicked little book. Whatever anyone else thinks or says, I’m happy with it. It’s even better than the book in my head – the first time I’ve ever felt that with a manuscript. It’s exactly what I wanted to write.

And of course I want people to love it, but I’ll be OK if they don’t so long as they’re not nasty about it. If someone points out legitimate flaws, then I’ll learn from that. If they just don’t like something, then fair enough. But if someone doesn’t judge the book on its own terms, I’ll find that really hard – mostly because reviews aren’t a conversation. They’re rhetorical statements: authors aren’t expected to reply.

So what do I mean by ‘judge the book on its own terms’… It’s easier to explain with reference to non-fiction. When you submit an article to a peer-reviewed journal, all identifying info is removed from the article and then it’s sent out to three or more specialists in the area to see what they think. They write a review to say whether the journal should publish the article. As a journal editor, I know all too well how often reviewers disagree – and disagree dramatically. But the thing I found hardest as an author wasn’t rejections based on flaws in my work, but the one review where the ‘specialist’ basically said ‘You like orange and I think green is better’. I was writing about dyslexia. It’s a tricky field as no one agrees on what dyslexia is. I was using one of the ‘industry standard’ definitions… But it wasn’t the one the reviewer preferred. The reviewer believed that dyslexia is a reading disability – I don’t agree. I believe dyslexia results in reading disabilities, but I see those as a consequence of more basic, cognitive processing differences. Uta Frith has done some fantastic work about rhythm, sequencing and insensitivity to the frequency of vowel sounds as the root of phonological deficits.

Anyway, my research supported my views about what dyslexia is. Unfortunately, the reviewer wasn’t interested in the substance of my work. Instead of pulling apart my methods, results and conclusions to show how I was wrong and he was right, he used the review to criticise my approach to studying dyslexia – even though my approach was more inline with the bulk of the literature than his. I am still furious about the review because I didn’t feel like the reviewer judged the article on its own merits.

And that’s the one thing I’m really worried about review-wise with The Bone Dragon. But there’s one big difference between that experience and this. The article was rejected on the balance of that review. All the other reviews had suggested the article be accepted with corrections or revised and resubmitted (for further review). All the other reviewers made legitimate criticisms about the article, which I then corrected when I submitted elsewhere. Unfortunately, by the time that happened the research was in danger of getting out of date so I chose to submit it (now in the form of two linked articles) to my university’s online journal (read article 1 here and article 2 here). A lot of participants had given up their time to the research: I had to get the findings published, even if it wasn’t in my ideal choice of journal. The big plus side was that my work supported the launch of a new open access journal. I’m a big believer in open access publishing for academic work, though I do concede that finding sufficient funding is a real challenge: the EHRR, the journal I edited, was also open access, so it was nice to support that movement as an author.

The point here is that, even if I do get what I feel is an unfair review, I’ll be able to hold on to the fact that it’s a review of a published book. My published book.

And maybe they’ll be good. I love my wicked little book… And I now have an agent and publisher who love it too, so maybe – just maybe – other people will love it too.

But I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. Fingers crossed! Wish me luck.