The tinkering is over

Like Claudio Ranieri in his Chelsea days, I have been tinkering. And now it is done. The final version of the manuscript has been sent to Mal, with his comments by and large acted upon. It was interesting reading through it one last time - it actually reads as though it was written by me aged 14, instead of the older, more cynical version. Every page seems to drip with the excessive passion and blind devotion I had for Bromley Football Club. As well as the growing desperation for just ONE good result.

I'm quite excited that some of the original press clippings from the Bromley and Kentish Times are going to be used throughout the book. It was only when reading through these that I realised just how bad Bromley were that season. I think I've always been in some kind of denial over it, but seeing it all in black and white really brought it home.

The book is now up on Amazon which makes the whole thing seem more real.

They Were The Best Of Times; They Were The Blurst Of Times...

Having finally finished the copy edit of Dave's manuscript, and delivered my lengthy revisions back to the author, I awoke today to find ineligible scraps of paper on my desk of notes to mention in my final blog. Hastily written, these notes were meant to be funny bits of information that would make people reading the blog rush out to pre-order a copy of the book. Well, in theory...

The first line of the first scrap of paper I picked up read 'Marmite and Butter'. For the life of me I cannot recollect why I wrote this. Was this the beginning of a shopping list I later abandoned? Was this something important I was meant to tell Dave? Was it a secret editor's code I’d devised? I have no idea – all I know is that I was so absorbed in the final few chapters of the book that I was writing nonsensical notes to myself and I couldn't figure out why.

I did write other fascinating notes to mention for this blog. I reminded myself to remind everyone that it's Dave's birthday in March and that we should all stop for a moment and send him a congratulatory message. I noted that Alan Stonebridge leaving Bromley FC is a traumatic point in the book that, for those readers engrossed in Bromley's success, will wonder if young Dave ever finds the strength to carry on supporting the team once his hero has jumped ship. I also noted that fourteen year old boys hitching to football games in the late 1960s was an incredible statement of the kind of freedom that people were allowed back then, and, of course, there would be an uproar now if such a thing still happened. I laughed out loud at Dave's mathematics when realizing that Bromley would need thirty goals to win the Kent Floodlit Cup. I found it interesting, but no less suprising, that even in the hippy ’60s The Sun newspaper was reporting football hooliganism. Last of all I noted (with genuine hilarity) that the decade that had seen Elvis, The Beatles, J.F.K. and Martin Luther King change the world so drastically, the UK's Number One single to close the most defining decade in modern British history was Rolf Harris' 'Two Little Boys'. It says it all, methinks.

So, the copy edit is over and Dave will be responding to my proposed changes in the next seven days. On the whole, the book charged onwards neatly and cohesively – though I have moved a few things about. One or two of the chapters endings were prolonged to tease the reader a few pages more; a few 'He saids' need to be turned into detailed discussions and some of the smaller floating paragraphs will require tightening and moving about. One of the main issues of doing a book with such a linear narrative is that some of the match details and analysis tended to repeat the same high and lows (In Bromley's case, lows) but this can be addressed easily. Dave has already come back to me on some of my points agreeing and questioning where required.

Oh, and I’ve just worked out the ‘Marmite and Butter’ thing. Apparently, and I assume this is a typo, young Dave liked Marmite and butter on Weetabix for breakfast.

My note in the margin read simply, ‘Really?’.

It's all in the details...

As the book comes together, we begin thinking about the flourishes that will enhance Dave's narrative - bits of incidental detail to really accentuate the story of Bromley's season.

Tom and Dave have voiced the idea that every chapter should end with a league table, effectively punctuating each episode, rounding off and reinforcing Bromley's steady rate of decline through goals conceded, games lost and points squandered. Dave is great at conveying this obsession with league tables, as he recounts poring over the sports pages in the local paper, feverishly calculating every single possibility and permutation from the week's matches, dreaming of the best-case scenarios that would enable his team to haul themselves one or two places above their rivals. His hopes, dreams and wide-eyed enthusiasm provide the perfect counterpoint to the stats, to get readers turning the page to be confronted with, in stark black and white, the full league table of the Isthmian League 1969/70 season, scanning down anxiously until they see the name Bromley - perpetually stuck in the bottom three at the foot of the table.

So begins some research, to obtain and compile enough tables for use in the book. Fortunately, Dave's collection of programmes and cuttings has meant that we already have most of the relevant league tables. Of the 38 games Bromley played over the season, only the figures for nine weeks in which the team had played league matches are missing. Off I trot to British Library Newspapers in Colindale, almost at the end of the Northern line, to trawl through local papers in search of those vital statistics. I order up musty, leather-bound volumes for 1969 and 1970 of the Bromley Advertiser and the Bromley & Kentish Times, with some success, but still need to search further afield - papers that covered news and results from Bromley’s fellow Isthmians; Sutton United, Hitchin Town, Dulwich Hamlet, Walthamstow Avenue et al. Rooting through the sports pages is a slow, protracted task, and it’s odd to pick out Dave’s ‘stars’ in the match reports – identifying Bromley players’ names when they appear, and studying the occasional grainy mugshots of ‘Postman’ Pat Brown or Johnny Warman with a strange curiosity. Such is the power of the Bromley Boys that it reels you in, as you become familiar with the Bromley squad and all its attendant injuries and suspensions.

The Newspapers Library closes up for the day, but there are still three tables to get – another trip later this week then, with more local papers to hunt out and look through. Unless, of course, there’s a reader out there in possession of a complete season’s set of league tables for a minor club playing in a lower tier of English football over 35 years ago?

Moving Right Along...

With the page count decreasing, it is time to report on the Bromley Boys again, now the hull has been breached and the sentinels are inside…

I’m making decent headway, with the questions and comments for Dave piling up as I do so. It’s a slow process, made slower by other nagging schedules Portico has, but then if no one can hear you scream in space, what hope do you have in publishing?

I’ve promised I would deliver all my questions and revisions to Dave next week. Possible rephrases, cuts and revisions are minimal – the only real issue is cutting down and amending sections that stop the energy and flow of the text when it’s pacing nicely. Though that’s to be expected for a book of this ‘memoir’ nature. Dave and I have revised a few bits and pieces together as we have gone along, but as far as I am concerned this is the fun part – studying the book as if it were a menu and coming to a decision that’s both filling and delicious.

The process is made slower by the fact that every couple of sentences it is impossible not to stop and think about just how many fun and imaginative ways we could design the book. I’m not a designer but it’s difficult to not think about it when the inspiration leaps out at you from the page. I keep thinking of how we could set out the contents list to look like a division table, or have the endpapers be a scrapbook collage of old ticket stubs or have an illustrated pair of muddy boots hanging over the pages as if they would do on a peg in some timeless 1960s stadium changing room. I'm thinking of tedious clichés, obviously, and I shouldn't, because so far I haven't come across any in the book. I’m getting ahead of myself, but the manuscript really does evoke that immediate kind of nostalgia and imagination.

Which is weird as I wasn't alive in 1969. Not even close. But, somehow, with each new chapter of Dave's text, I can imagine it just that little bit clearer; what it was like to have been a childhood fan of a team that was going through a 'bad patch' – just like I remembered when I was thirteen and wanting to be the next Bruce Grobbelaar. The outrageous transfer fees, the prima donnas with shaving foam sponsors of today, and their WAG’s, all seem such a distant cry from the innocent enthusiasm and passion of a young boy in the days when football seemed to mean a lot more to people is infectious. And thats the USP of this book – to use such a torrid modern acronym.

I’m pretty enthused by working on this book because, ultimately, with each page I tick off, I’m wondering when the next goal will slip past David Jensen… I imagine it wont be long.

My deadline for Dave looms, so I better crack on…

Covering Notes

The other aspect of the book process at this stage, is to start thinking about the jacket. It may seem quite early, but our sales people are already sounding out bookshops about August titles, so it is important that they have something to show.

This early version came through a trawl of many, many possible photos. What I like about it is that it captures the feel of the book -- Dave's teenage wide-eyed supporter anguish -- and I think pushes the book out to the widest possible audience. The other alternative was to take advantage of Dave's wonderful collection of memorabilia, but for me, that reduces the appeal of the book to a purely football audience -- whereas in fact it is a bigger book than that.

At this stage with a jacket, we take stock of responses: if sales and bookshops like it, then we go ahead with working it up properly. If the response is more mixed, then we're back to the drawing board. The response, so far, has been extremely good, so this will probably form the basis of the cover.

From The Top Of The First Line

Ok, so this is where I come in...

Now that I have broke the back of Dave's The Bromley Boys, scribbling notes untidily in the margins as I go along, while also trying to unravel my own childhood memories of being a Liverpool supporter in the days when John Barnes was prone to rapping and Ian Rush's moustache was still brown, I feel better equipped to begin blogging about my role as copy editor on Mr Roberts' lovingly composed prose.

My job is simple. All that is required is a complete line by line analysis of the manuscript, sticking my nose in all the nooks and crannies in the hope of gaining an insightful knowledge of the author's words and, potentially, discover some helpful tips to improve the book's overall brilliance. Along the way, you never know, I may even add in a few commas, colons and full stops and correct the odd dangerously spelt word. So far, so good though.

It's often been said that copy editing a book is a lot like cosmetic surgery – taking the skin and bones of something already brilliantly crafted and cutting, inserting – sometimes poking – it into an even more pleasing arrangement. It's an awful metaphor, I know, but copy editing isn't like making love to a beautiful woman, sadly. Once this meticulous probing is complete and the words are put to bed, Dave and I will begin our discussions on making the book look good enough to eat. and buy.

But, I'll be back blogging before then – keeping us all up-to-date with how the edit is going and what hidden gems I've discovered. As for now, it's back to reading how an infamous rabbit robbed Bromley of a well-deserved win...

The Next Stage

It may seem that I've been neglecting Dave for a couple of weeks. It's been one of those busy periods since Christmas where a lot of manuscripts have arrived at the same time -- some fantastically late, others (like Dave) early -- and it's been the fantastically late ones which have been demanding my attention.

What happens now is that the publishing process moves on to the next level. Firstly, it's time for the main manuscript to be copy-edited -- the line by line stuff now that the structural editing is complete. This I'm handing to my extremely able editor, Malcolm Croft, who'll be writing about his role shortly. Secondly, it's time to start thinking about all those additional bits and bobs that accompany the text. Dave has collected a lot of memorabilia, which we need to work out how to use. We also want to try and track down the league tables from the 1969 season: my assistant, Matt Jones, will write about his search for these. Thirdly, the sales team are starting to read the manuscript in order to think about how they're going to sell it. And finally, we are starting to think about the cover. We've got a rough visual which looks like...ah, you'll have to wait until tomorrow, when I discuss it in detail!