NEWSLETTER

MY WRITING LIFE

  

Making corrections in Philbeach Gardens

JUNE  2025

WRITING

The whole month has been spent making corrections to my new book. 

Design 

At the start Ana, Filament’s editor, sent me my manuscript designed as a book – very clear and easy to follow.  However, I found about 90 corrections to make. I typed them all out and sent them to Ana who did then deed and  sent the book to the printers.  We ordered just 5 copies.   I knew from my experience with ‘Daily Prayers from the World’s Faiths’ that unnoticed error keep cropping up.

Sure enough, the book arrived hot off the press on Saturday 6th.  When I looked at it on the Monday, I found 126 corrections to do. Plus replacing 68 running headers (at the top of each page) to reflect the section they were on; and one replacement chapter. The corrections included getting the right font size for various headings and sub-headings, making sure all quotations are in italics, including line gaps to separate paragraphs on separate topics, and deleting line gaps to reduce redundant white space.  The big change however was improving the running headers so they reflected the chapter they were in. I put it all in an email attachment and sent it out on Tuesday.

Disaster!

I phoned Ana on Wednesday 11th, but that was her day off. I phoned again on Thursday, but there was no answer.  The reason is that Ana was cycling along the Purley Way – a big urban dual carriageway – when a speeding car tried to overtake a car, spun out of control, hit a tree and then Ana, breaking an arm and a leg and giving her concussion.  The Air Ambulance took her to St George’s hospital. 

But you can’t keep a good woman down.   Before going to theatre for her first operation on Friday morning, she emailed the file over to Chris my publisher. And told me about a spelling mistake on the back cover (it’s instead of its).  I visited her on Tuesday, when she was amazingly cheerful, though the major pain relief was about to be discontinued.

Chris found changing the running titles almost impossible. He the  realised that Ana and I work on Mac, and he is on Microsoft.  He worked all weekend and on to the next week.  When he had finished, I read it and found over 40 more.  The most significant was that a week before, I had replaced the chapter ‘Why did Jesus die – according to Jesus?’ with an earlier blog which included Philo’s definition of sacrifice. (Philo was a Jewish philosopher in Alexandria living during Jesus’ lifetime). But Chris’s latest still had then older chapter. In re-writing it I ensured the new version had the same word count as the old one, i.e. 550 words. This meant that the latest version did not throw all the later page numbering out of sync.  

Trinity and Vedanta

I had been delaying writing my monthly blog on the Trinity and Vedanta. The more I thought  about, it there harder it was to know what to say.  (Vedanta is the Indian philosophical/religious system based not the later Hindu writings, i.e. the Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita).  After sorting out the major corrections, I did write the blog, concentrating simply on explaining what the different terms meant.  I sent it to my friend David who is a Christian and also involved in a school of Indian philosophy.  He thought it was excellent, so that encouraged me to send it out into the world.

Back to corrections

Saturday 28th Chris had been juggling with one of the black-and-white  images I wanted for the book.  It is of Roman soldiers carrying the captured Temple menorah n the Arch of Titus.  At last Chris got it into an acceptable format for printing.  I then received the next file and found  it needed just 14 amendments .  These were now more to do with bigger issues such as losing the sub-heading of Part 3, ‘Telling it like it is in 18 blogs’. ‘Being Credible in the Post-Modern World’ on its own was clearer.  

On Monday I went and sat with Chris going through all the current  corrections.  It took three hours of hard work for both of us, but we finished it.  I agreed to put in a paragraph on the new Pope Leo XIV, which I did on Wednesday.  When I got the new file on Friday 27th I found that a photo of Pope Leo now replaced the section about Pope Francis.  We put back the previous section, 240 words, but the upshot of was that page numbering of the next 130 pages was out of sync and had to be corrected, together with the running headers

I also took out a fun but irrelevant paragraph on the royal title of ‘Fidei Defensor’ or Defender of the Faith.  It was given to Henry VIII by the Pope in 1521 for writing a book attacking Martin Luther!  The Pope later revoked it, but Parliament gave it back to him. On Saturday I sent out a further 14 corrections.

The revised file arrived on Sunday morning and that evening I made the final final final changes while travelling by train to Sutton, just 11 of them.  It included tidying up a couple of headings and putting in italics a quotation from the Qur’an.  So on Sunday evening Chris was able to launch it to the printer, with just a week to go before it is launched onto the world!

So – if you are thinking of writing a book, be aware that writing it may be just the first stage!

MARKETING

I circulated the flier about the book launch to some churches and handed out details of my book to people I met, e.g. at an Imperial College Choral Evensong and a LibDem Summer Party.  I also gave copy to Chine McDonald, the new director of Theos, a Christian think tank.   But my main marketing achievement was putting details of the book launch on the home page of my website, revandybooks.org.  I have tried to use Divi Builder several times and failed.  I watched the tutorial on Youtube but that did not help.  Then I thought of AI.  I asked ChatGPT who instantly gave me clear instructions in writing and success!

CHURCH 

Normal church this month, including preaching two sermons, one on the Trinity and one on the demon-possessed man of Gadara.  A bit different!

I went the ordination of two friends, Tiffany and Basir.  Eighteen people from the Kensington Area were priested at a lovely service at HTB (Holy Trinity Brompton).  

Plus a choral evensong at St Bride’s where all the music was by Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625), absolutely wonderful music.

Wednesday Saints

We continued our weekly Zoom reflection and prayer about the saints.  In June we remembered: the martyrs of Uganda 1885 – 87, Barnabas, Bernard Mizeki of Zimbabwe and John the Baptist.  Every Wednesday from 10.00 to 10.30 followed by coffee and chat.  All welcome.

FILM and THEATRE

We went to see Terence Rattigan’s play ‘In Praise of Love’ at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond.  Very good indeed, moving.  Then two films at the Ciné Lumière, ‘Trois Amies’ a sort of French ‘Sex in the City’, and ‘Jane Austen Wrecked my Life’, both delightful. The only possible  response was to go out and have a galette and a glass of wine.