Walter Mason to appear in the Writers' Tent at the Newtown Festival Sunday 14th November

I'm very honoured to be appearing in the Writers' Tent at this year's Newtown Festival.
The Tent, sponsored by King St literary institution Better Read Than Dead, is THE hotspot of the Festival, featuring a really fascinating range of authors (including my good friend Geesche Jacobsen) talking about their books and their craft.
I'll be In Conversation with the terrific Maggie Hamilton, and I'm sure she'll drag insights, profundities and epiphanies aplenty out of me.



Please come along and hear me!


Newtown Festival - Writers' Tent
Sunday 14th November
3.15pm


Destination Saigon: Adventures in Vietnam with Walter Mason

From the crazy heat and colour of Saigon to the quieter splendour of Hanoi, Walter Mason gives us a rare, joyous, at times hilarious insight into contemporary Vietnam.
Seduced by the beauty and charm of its people, the rich variety of foods, travel off the beaten track to far-flung villages in overcrowded buses or perched perilously on motorbikes.

In conversation with publisher Maggie Hamilton.

How to Get Publicity

I managed to get the third draft in on Tuesday, which gave me an immense sense of achievement. Fingers crossed that will be the last major revision, and that it can at last go into editing. It's hard not to get a bit exasperated and bored at this point, because I'm tired of seeing those same 60-something thousand words over and over, changed and re-arranged only slightly. But I do need to remain positive about it, even in its most exasperating stage. This state of mind is personally important to me, and will also, I believe, affect the ultimate outcome of the project. My publisher, who is herself a popular author, re-assured me that this is by far the most challenging part of the whole process. After this it is all seamless ease.
I have become rather a convert to Morning Coach, a website and podcast that gives me a bit of good old fashioned motivation, and helps me to maintain some focus on the various projects in my life. I do recommend it.
Now I am also reading a book called How to Get Publicity, in an effort to stay focused on my ultimate goal - producing a bestselling book. Though it's a little outdated by now, the book is still helpful and filled with good ideas. I am busily compiling lists and making action plans that will fall into place once my book is released in March next year. I know from my own personal experience in the industry that a committed, energetic author who is also a tireless self-promoter makes a huge contribution to a book's success. I want to be just such a person.
How to Get Publicity, intended for an amateur audience, outlines a number of strategies for getting media publicity. It also goes a bit into presentation and interview skills, things that will (hopefully!) become increasingly important.
I guess that through making such preparations, and studying such material, I am really keeping my project alive in my own imagination, and keeping the energy up and out there. It is going to be a long, dull time between now and March 2010, so I really need to remain engaged with my book and what it means. And that means working consciously towards improving my chances at media coverage and other forms of attention that will lead to reviews and, ultimately, sales.

The Third Version

OK, I got the manuscript back today for the third revision. This one is much more nuanced - my publisher has been through it and made quite detailed notes, and though she cheerily said on the phone that there were just one or two simple changes to make before the whole thing is finally submitted for editing, it actually looks like an enormous amount of work. Oh well, all for the best, I suppose. It means that I will have to sacrifice my Friday night activities, though - this is going to take me all weekend, and I know they want it back asap.
In the last draft I was told to delete two chapters which didn't work on their own, and try to incorporate those stories elsewhere in the text. Well, I figured that if the chapters didn't work on their own (one was on Catholicism in Vietnam, the other was stories of my grandparents visiting me there) then the particular anecdotes must have sucked, so I just deleted them and forgot about them. A note on this new version of the manuscript asks, "can we have the grandparent stories back please?" So I have to try to find a place for them elsewhere in the book. Very risky work. But Maggie (my publisher) obviously DID hate the Catholic stories, because they remain un-resurrected.
I had a kind of fantasy that my book would be perfect on the first submission, and that my publisher would call me and say, "Genius - we're going straight to press as-is." Obviously, that must be the kind of fantasy that every first-time author has.
Admittedly it is a dull process, but there are worse things I could be doing. And I am confident that my publisher has my commercial interests at heart, and wants to release the best possible book she can. So I will continue to tweak and twist and re-arrange until I have produced a work of genius.