Unlike the actual book production process, reaching the point where a manuscript is finalised has been long and slow. And it’s left plenty of time to ponder that despite advances in digital prepress, the book publishing process is about as efficient as it was in the days of hot metal typesetting. Book people still actually refer to typesetting, even though everyone else calls it page layout and composition. And the idea of variable data novels, where you can have multiple different endings for instance, don’t even think about it. The slow production processes which were up-ended in the 1980s, were of a piece with slow book editing and design processes. But where prepress is now rocket-fast, editorial and design processes for books still seem to take an absolute age. It’s at once frustrating and sobering.

From a writer’s perspective, it’s as well editing takes so long and has to be so drawn out. Reading a novel, even a little one, takes so much time. It requires care and attention to detail, so fixing a dodgy piece of work necessarily takes an age. Editors need plenty of time to recover in between sessions. Whatever the quality or not of a manuscript, editors must also have a vision of what a book is trying to become. And writers must be super-disciplined to avoid the temptation to completely overhaul the thing, rather than make judicious edits as the editor requests. This is especially difficult for writers with a sparrow’s attention span and a memory that dumps every word once it’s saved and filed away somewhere on the desktop. Maybe it’s on a memory stick (which one?), or the laptop or iPad? Or maybe it’s only alive on that extra hard-drive. Wherever it lives, it’s by no means in one’s head any more.

The novel production process only really begins with the editing process. The carefully organised and curated words are just raw material for an editor to advise on what the book is really about, who the characters are and what happens when. The editor sees the manuscript as an independent entity, unhitched from the writer. At each stage in production the thing comes into sharper focus, moves further away from its creator and into the light of its own being. The structural edit, then the copy edit, the proof edits, each add definition for what the finished work will look like. Like bringing a photo into focus or balancing the sound during a live music performance. By the time the author reads the final PDF or three, they are seeing a sharp picture, hearing all of the music. Then when the writer is ready to sign off on the manuscript they often need to have a little lie down, or at least another cup of tea and bar of chocolate.

Where I am now with the Draftsman is the post-signoff-lie-down-with-a-cup-of-tea-eat-more-chocolate stage. I have also approved the cover, so the next thing is to wait. The good news is that as this production saga has been so protracted Unbound has agreed to make advance copies available to all supporters, prior to the launch date of the 29th April. I don’t know when the advance copies will be available, so every delivery van hurtling past the study window makes me jump up, just in case. It’s surprisingly good exercise.

Between now and the launch date we will be working to get some visibility for the book, ideally through online book reviewers. I am working with Barnett’s of Wadhurst, our local bookshop, for an and will hold a launch event at the National Liberal Club in London. Except I have no idea who to invite. I intend to write some reviews of The Draftsman myself, all of which will be about all the things I hate about the book.

Then there is the identity anxiety, a corrosive confusion that won’t go away. Few authors dare not call themself ‘author’ in the beginning. It sounds even more pretentious than saying ‘I’m a writer’ when someone asks you what you do for a living. I’ve been saying ‘writer’ for the last 35 years, because it’s basically been how I have supported myself. I am comfortable with this and inclined to hide behind it. And I’ve had a handful of book-length titles published, am a member of the Society of Authors and the Authors’ Club. Yet to describe myself as an ‘author’ feels just way too bold and far beyond me. Until now; -ish. Now that The Draftsman is done and the publisher is sending the pages to Clays (digital and analogue printers extraordinaire) to be printed, it seems okay to use the word ‘author’. I can nearly, almost, say it without feeling that I somehow grubby other, real, proven and proper authors.

If once we are allowed out, someone says to me, ‘so Laurel Lindström, what do you do for a living?’ I hope I’ll be bold enough to smile and breezily say, ‘I’m an author’. And then I’ll wonder if they spot the paradox in this reply.