The second draft of the book is progressing well. My editor was genuinely surprised when I thanked him for his criticisms and ideas and emailed to say, "I wish more of my authors were like you." I replied, "Don't worry. I'll be a right cunt if you don't like the second draft."
But I was aware of the limitations of the slightly rushed first draft and it was great to get an outside eye on it, even if he did want me to take out my favourite joke about Jesus having sex with Mother Theresa. It came after a bit about the stress and tension of spending time in a tour van with my double act partner in which I said that even Jesus and Mother Theresa would come to blows in such a circumstance. I then added, "Except that Jesus and Mother Theresa could take some of the strain out of the situation by having stress-busting sex. Something that wasn’t really an option for us. Not after Stewart knocked me back that time in Hull."
But I took it out as he requested, so when you get your copy in December 2010 (if all goes to plan) then please write it back in.
It is really hard, when you've written 90,000 + words to get a handle on how it all hangs together and I had pretty much written about everything that had happened in 2007, so it was great to have an experienced eye cast over the thing and some advice about what to leave out. Some editors might be glad to have loads of juicy personal info, but mine advised me to take one piece out because it made me look too bitter and another because he thought it sounded sleazy. "I am sure it wasn't sleazy in actuality," he added tactfully. But he was wrong, it was. And again when you read the book I think you might be surprised to find out that there was something too sleazy for inclusion, given what is in there, but I was glad that my editor is a benign and protective (if occasionally prudish) force.
Some great advice he gave, which might be useful for anyone writing a memoir of this kind, was to cover more of the events through dialogue. It helps things whizz along and give a sense of pace and action and is much better than exposition in prose.
Having worked in TV it makes rather a change to have someone making suggestions that actively improve a piece of writing and what I really enjoy about writing a book is the fact that it comes down to just you and your editor, without hundreds of other people interfering or screwing it up. I guess the blokes printing it might get it all upside down or something (but as long as it's ALL upside down then it doesn't really matter). I have a little under two weeks to pull it all together and there is still a long way to go, but really enjoyed working on it today and hopefully am making it better and funnier with every passing day.
Although it took me a while to get going with it, I have found it surprisingly easy once I have applied myself. Though Warming Up is a massive help in writing such an autobiographical book. Don't worry, there's plenty of stuff in there that you won't be familiar with, and like
Bye Bye Balham (which if you haven't bought yet, then you really should, it's good) the context of what else was going on behind the scenes, really adds a whole new dimension to things. I may reveal too much for your liking in the new book. It will be interesting to see.
After all the pain and sweat and tears that are produced in the weeks of not getting anything done and worrying that a project is impossibly complicated, it's a lot of fun to get to a point where you have the basic structure and material and now only have to shape it into something beautiful (and disgusting and sleazy).
