Batteries not Included

[James Twining]

There's no instruction manual on how to be a writer. No simple "how to" guide that you can turn to for help and guidance. Or if there is, no-one gave it to me.

I'm not talking about the writing part of being writer - the "doing", if you like. That's the easy part! Well maybe not easy, but at least once you've armed yourself with an idea, a computer and (most elusive of all) some spare time, you can turn to all sorts of creative writing courses or self-help books if you need guidance with annoying little details like plot, scene setting, characterisation or dialogue. In other words, the help is out there if you need it.

What I'm talking about is how to navigate the far more treacherous and uncharted waters of "being" a writer. The tips and tricks and dos and don'ts essential to literary survival. When you first get going, for example, no-one tells you about copy editing, or six monthlies, or (the lack of!) marketing budgets, or in-store promotions, or being ranged, or how titles and covers have to get the thumbs up from the big buyers, even though these are all critical parts of the business. Instead, you're meant to pick all this up either through some alchemistic process of osmosis from other writers (who are mostly equally in the dark) or through a 'bright lights and thumbscrews' interrogation of your agent and publisher who, Wizard of Oz like, often seem strangely reluctant to lift the curtain on their Emerald Cities.

This is relevant because I am writing to you from Kitzbuhel in Austria (what do you call a blog written while away? A flog (foreign blog) or a hog (holiday blog? Anyway...) where I have just fallen into one of these big heffalump traps that you're somehow meant to intuitively know about, but that you only really find out about once you've fallen a** over t** straight into it.

There should be a top ten of these. In fact, I think I'm going to give it some thought and come with a list. I'm not sure where this one would rank (quite high I expect) but I'll call it the Foreign Bookshop Humiliation:

1. Go into Alpine bookshop where you are available both in an exported English edition and a local translation
2. Ask, in a confident manner, if they do indeed have copy/ies of your book
3. Experience the singular embarrassment of having the shopkeeper repeat your name five times, clearly never having heard it before, and then adopting the same blank, slightly despairing gaze they would if you had just asked for a copy of Adolf Hitler's collected love poems
4. On the way out see three (yes three) copies of Alex Barclay's (admittedly excellent) Darkhouse, despite having the same publisher and the same editor
5. Visit every other bookshop in town, including the one you saw at the motorway service station on the way in. Eventually find a copy being used to help prop up the latest Kathy Reichs (like she needs my help!)
6. Buy it, in the hope they'll reorder and that your Tyrolean sales will show a small spike

Oh yes, I've been there! And in retrospect, I think there are three main strategies for avoiding this type of scenario:

a) Before travelling, ring ahead a place a huge order for your own books with every bookshop in town so that when you get there the shelves are groaning, even if they all get returned a few weeks later
b) Get whatever distribution deal Alex Barclay has
c) Relax. Enjoy your holiday.

The preferred approach is of course either a) or b), maybe even both in combination. Going on holiday and not checking out every bookshop you come across, so that you can bitch and moan about how your book isn't on show but everyone else's is, is just not an option for any self-respecting insecure writer. Maybe that's why there's no instruction manual - the only way to be happy is to stress about absolutely everything!

PS - The irony is that while away, I heard from J-Lo (my agent) that I'd got into the German bestseller list! Who needs the Tyrol when the Fatherland beckons ....