Read Online A Slip of the Keyboard by Terry Pratchett - Free Book Online
Authors: Terry Pratchett
Ads: Link
light on while I read.
I finished … and then I wrote more—and possibly began a work rate which has led to the fact that I am now on blood-pressure pills. I lived in dread of not having work in progress. And I developed the habit of starting a book on the same day as I’d finished the last one. There was one period where I had a schedule of four hundred finished words a day. If I could finish the book in three hundred words, I wrote a hundred words of the next book. No excuses. Granddad died, go to funeral, four hundred words. Christmas time, nip out after dinner, four hundred words. And I did that for years and years and years, because I was fixated on the idea that if you have not got work in progress, you are in fact not a writer at all, you are a bum. And somehow I thought that if I stopped writing, the magic would go away. And I was getting some successes. The books were selling very well.
Mort
got to no. 2 in the bestseller lists.
Sourcery
got to no. 1 and stayed in the list for three months. And that started a trend which has continued to this day. I’ve lost count of how many books I’ve sold. I’ve heard fifty million, I’m sure of forty-five million. It’s hard to keep track. There are so many books and translations and all the backlists and things.…
America turned out to be a problem. Some of you may have beenprivy to me begging on my knees for a Hugo last night. For a wannabe stand-up comedian like me, you’ll do anything for a laugh. Would I like a Hugo? I gather it’s unusual to be a WorldCon GoH without several. Well, I know that for most of my writing career I have been ineligible because my publishing history in the United States in the early days was marked by sliding publication dates, publishing out of sequence, publishing uncorrected, publishing with my name printed wrong. There were so many things … oh, and publishing and not telling anyone that you had done it, which is not uncommon. By 1998 I was so depressed about it all that I was quite prepared to officially hand over the U.S. publication rights to a U.K. publisher because some of you people, in fact many of you people, I suspect, were part of the new underground railroad by which tens of thousands of British hardcovers were being imported into the United States by the fans who didn’t like/didn’t want to wait for the U.S. versions. My publishers at the time didn’t seem to get their heads around this. You’d see me at a U.S. WorldCon signing U.K. hardcover after U.K. hardcover for a long, long queue; is there not something wrong with this picture? My editor tried to help, but without backup it all seemed an uphill struggle.
Then my American agent said, “No, wait a bit. I think things are going to change.” And what happened was that there was a big shake-up at HarperCollins and at last I had a publisher who thought “This guy is selling gazillions, but not here! Let’s do something about it!” And they gave me a publicist who actually knew my name, which is generally a good start. In 2000 they even asked me to tour.
Back in 1996 I did a signing tour which was miserable and horrible and I spent all my time flying backwards from hub to hub and living on lard balls and salt licks which is what you live on at airports. And it was a terrible tour and I didn’t want to do another one so when they asked me to this time I sent them a big list of demands, like:
I’m not going to do any radio station called Good Morning, City-I’ve-never-been-to-before-and-will-be-leaving-in-two-hours;
I’m not going to take any flight that gets me into a hotel later than about seven o’clock in the evening.…
Oh, yes … arriving at a hotel at midnight is not good. I think it was Rocky Frisco who saved me in Madison, Wisconsin, because the hotel did no food but he had some cold pizza. That’s life in the fast lane, folks. You get in at midnight, you get cold pizza. And you’re up at 6:30 to do Good Morning,
I finished … and then I wrote more—and possibly began a work rate which has led to the fact that I am now on blood-pressure pills. I lived in dread of not having work in progress. And I developed the habit of starting a book on the same day as I’d finished the last one. There was one period where I had a schedule of four hundred finished words a day. If I could finish the book in three hundred words, I wrote a hundred words of the next book. No excuses. Granddad died, go to funeral, four hundred words. Christmas time, nip out after dinner, four hundred words. And I did that for years and years and years, because I was fixated on the idea that if you have not got work in progress, you are in fact not a writer at all, you are a bum. And somehow I thought that if I stopped writing, the magic would go away. And I was getting some successes. The books were selling very well.
Mort
got to no. 2 in the bestseller lists.
Sourcery
got to no. 1 and stayed in the list for three months. And that started a trend which has continued to this day. I’ve lost count of how many books I’ve sold. I’ve heard fifty million, I’m sure of forty-five million. It’s hard to keep track. There are so many books and translations and all the backlists and things.…
America turned out to be a problem. Some of you may have beenprivy to me begging on my knees for a Hugo last night. For a wannabe stand-up comedian like me, you’ll do anything for a laugh. Would I like a Hugo? I gather it’s unusual to be a WorldCon GoH without several. Well, I know that for most of my writing career I have been ineligible because my publishing history in the United States in the early days was marked by sliding publication dates, publishing out of sequence, publishing uncorrected, publishing with my name printed wrong. There were so many things … oh, and publishing and not telling anyone that you had done it, which is not uncommon. By 1998 I was so depressed about it all that I was quite prepared to officially hand over the U.S. publication rights to a U.K. publisher because some of you people, in fact many of you people, I suspect, were part of the new underground railroad by which tens of thousands of British hardcovers were being imported into the United States by the fans who didn’t like/didn’t want to wait for the U.S. versions. My publishers at the time didn’t seem to get their heads around this. You’d see me at a U.S. WorldCon signing U.K. hardcover after U.K. hardcover for a long, long queue; is there not something wrong with this picture? My editor tried to help, but without backup it all seemed an uphill struggle.
Then my American agent said, “No, wait a bit. I think things are going to change.” And what happened was that there was a big shake-up at HarperCollins and at last I had a publisher who thought “This guy is selling gazillions, but not here! Let’s do something about it!” And they gave me a publicist who actually knew my name, which is generally a good start. In 2000 they even asked me to tour.
Back in 1996 I did a signing tour which was miserable and horrible and I spent all my time flying backwards from hub to hub and living on lard balls and salt licks which is what you live on at airports. And it was a terrible tour and I didn’t want to do another one so when they asked me to this time I sent them a big list of demands, like:
I’m not going to do any radio station called Good Morning, City-I’ve-never-been-to-before-and-will-be-leaving-in-two-hours;
I’m not going to take any flight that gets me into a hotel later than about seven o’clock in the evening.…
Oh, yes … arriving at a hotel at midnight is not good. I think it was Rocky Frisco who saved me in Madison, Wisconsin, because the hotel did no food but he had some cold pizza. That’s life in the fast lane, folks. You get in at midnight, you get cold pizza. And you’re up at 6:30 to do Good Morning,
Similar Books
