Surf Nation: The Writing Process: How It Works, And How It Doesn't Work

Alone with my injuries, nearing the kind of permanent mental collapse that would mirror what's going on with my body, I have been reflecting on the writing process. This is what I have found ...

What happens in the writing process is this: author has idea for book. Or publisher contacts author and asks if he or she would like to write book. Terms are agreed, the deal is done, the scribe starts scribbling. The manuscript is delivered late – whatever the contract says, it is obligatory to miss deadlines – and the publishing machine grinds into gear. Lo and behold, the author is sent a set of copy-edited proofs. This, when it comes to a book about surfing, provides an unrivalled opportunity for a clash of pedants over crucial things like whether single or double quotation marks should be used, whether the subjunctive tense has any place in surfing and how many surfers can read. Once these thorny issues are resolved, the proof-reader gets to work. Changes at this stage ought to be de minimis, as those surfers versed in Latin like to say, and before anyone else, surfer, Latin scholar or otherwise, can say ‘Is Gabriel Medina an aeroplane?’ the book appears.

This is a pleasing moment. There it is, the fruits of one’s labour, the wages of one's sins, a real book complete with a price tag and, in the case of Amazing Surfing Stories, in hardback form to boot. What joy! At this point, even the most jaded author cannot but feel a surge of pride and the stirrings of hope. Will this be the tome that is loved by all? The one that is feted, revered and admired because of its coruscating and fearless, and yet subtle and nuanced, evisceration of surfing’s truth that dare not speak its name (drug use)? Will an eminent literary critic note the clever allusions on pages 7, 89 and 9,501? Will the surf world rise up, as one, and declare its undying love for the serially injured and psychologically unstable author from the wilds of West Cornwall?

These thoughts jostle in the febrile mind of the serially injured, endlessly delusional idiot of an author. But they soon pass. Hours after publication of the book, days even, the author realises that NOTHING HAS HAPPENED. Aside from inexplicable jumps up and down Amazon’s sales rankings, nothing has changed. Life goes on. The phone cannot stop ringing, because the phone has not started ringing. The book is doomed. The author stares into the abyss. There, amid the Nietzschean gloom, the answer is obvious:

Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.

The book is a monster! It must be stopped! But no, surely that’s not what Nietzsche, a philosopher of the 19th century, meant. How could he have done? Amazing Surfing Stories wasn’t even thought of, let alone published, back then. No, what Nietzsche – one of whose contemporary relatives is, of course, Mark Zuckerberg – meant was that to make a success of the book one has to EMBRACE SOCIAL MEDIA.

As Nietzsche himself put it: “The irrationality of a thing is no argument against its existence, rather a condition of it.”

Armed with this, the increasingly deranged, often injured and eternally idiotic author creates a Facebook page. He calls it ‘Amazing Surfing Stories’ because, as a writer, he is imaginative and good with words. He tries to navigate the uncharted waters of Facebook and send out an alert asking people to ‘like’ the book. He has no idea whether he has succeeded but within moments 27 people are kind enough to ‘like’ it. How, though, wonders the author, can they have read it so quickly?

Life is mysterious, thinks the author, whose ribs are now well enough for him to resume surfing. Before taking to the water, he decides to risk a game of 11-a-side football. He misses a few chances but scores two good goals. Perhaps there is still time – QPR may yet field him as the oldest delusional, serially injured idiotic author ever to play professional football. But how to make this happen? He decides to rely on Nietzsche – who, of course, helped pioneer social media – and so creates a Facebook page. It’s called ‘Amazing Football Skills’ and there, standing tall in goal, is Big Chris from Dynamo Choughs, who says:

“I got in at Spot N in that massive swell the other day. The Smart brothers, Sam and Seb, were out too. Top surfers, those boys, good at football too. I hear they're updating their website. The set waves were bombs, over double-overhead I’d say. It was a great session."

Inspired, the foolish, decrepit and deranged author paddles out at Spot G with his good friend Aerial Attack. The waves are small, there is no one else there, his first wave is good, the others not so good. And so, alone with his injuries - which, in truth, are chronic in various parts of his body - the author thinks: there is nothing for it but to write. He dreams of a new Facebook page called 'Amazing Writing Stories', the rest is not history, and he consoles himself with Sons of Sickness and the generation of global radness.

Comments

Hmm interesting thoughts on the process which clearly works- http://www.unionsafety.eu/docs/HSNewsItems%2012/LymeDiseaseInvisibleAndMisdiagnosedDevastatesSufferersAsNHSAndGovRemainIdle%20.html
However the scientific evidence continues to grow turning earlier preconceived ideas on their heads. Journalists are slow at realising what is going on excepting your own excellent article in the Times there are few to follow your lead.

Posted by: Joanne Drayson | October 30, 2012 at 08:07 AM