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I’ve spent the last couple of weeks proof-reading my book. This has been my final chance to make some tweaks to the text before it goes off to the printer.
Unfortunately, it has needed more than a few ‘tweaks’ – and I found I had to rewrite a few chunks of text that simply didn’t make any sense. Not ideal, but necessary.
My favourite quote about writing is from George Bernard Shaw (yes, that’s him on the right), who advised any writer to go back over their work to find the bit they were most proud of, and then instantly delete it.
My book falls loosely into three types of content: some theory [this is what the internet has done to businesses], case histories [examples of what businesses have done to survive disruption] and advice [this is what you should do].
Ultimately, others will decide whether or not anything I’ve written is actually any good, but I thought I’d be pretty good on the theory, not bad on the case-histories, and I should tread very carefully on actually offering advice.
On re-reading, I think I should be trodden much more carefully on the theory, the case histories are – on the whole – actually not bad – and my advice, or rather insight into the reality of transformation, is much better than I thought. I’m not going to pretend I’m some kind of management guru, but clearly a decade an a half and the Guardian and constant conversations with those going through similar things obviously taught me something.
The other shock has been that the final half of the book, which was actually written quite quickly, and after I had really cracked the structure is a much better read. Anyway, now the book is pretty much wrapped up, I can start blogging, which is, frankly, much much more fun!
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