the-hard-way | Aliya Gulamani | undefined
The Hard Way is well on its way into becoming a proper physical book. Most of this work – editing, proofreading, checking quotes and so on – is necessary but not very exciting to hear about. But I am very pleased to have so many people making sure that the end result is as good as it can possibly be.
But there is one out of the ordinary part of the process. At the very beginning of the production process, Unbound suggested that readers might find it helpful to have a map and I thought this was a great idea. So they found a cartographer, Emily Faccini [link: https://www.emilyfaccini.com/], to make this happen.
So far, all good. And then they said to me, ‘So, can you just draw a sketch of where you went for Emily to work from’. To which there is only one answer, no. I would struggle to draw a dog in a way that other people might recognise, so the chances of me getting large chunks of the south of England down and in the correct relationship to each other were close to zero.
I panicked for a few days. And then I remembered that you can draw on Google Maps. So that’s what I did. This turned out to be quite fun. Not only could I find the paths and the roads and draw a line exactly where I had gone, I could add in an extra layer to show which parts I had done on foot or by bike, and which bits I had driven. (This isn’t cheating, some substantial chunks of the Harrow Way lie under the A303 and my walking that bit wouldn’t have been fun for anyone).
Then I marked the main places I mentioned – not just the towns and villages but henges and hillforts, the White Horse at Westbury and the ancient crossroads of St Joan a Gore where travellers used to pray before they traversed the emptiness of Salisbury Plain. Then oddities, like the Ancestor statue at the services at Amesbury and personal landmarks like the spot where I first saw the Harrow Way. And then it started to get silly, so I’ve put in the best cheese toast, where I was menaced by cows and the path where Thomas Hardy got me into trouble.
And from all this Emily is, miraculously, producing a map. Quite how many of my less cartographical observations she puts on it hasn’t yet been decided, but watch this space.
As this was being prepared to go out to you all, we had the news through - publication is now set for 6th June. I am very, very excited and can’t wait for the book to be with you.
But there is one out of the ordinary part of the process. At the very beginning of the production process, Unbound suggested that readers might find it helpful to have a map and I thought this was a great idea. So they found a cartographer, Emily Faccini [link: https://www.emilyfaccini.com/], to make this happen.
So far, all good. And then they said to me, ‘So, can you just draw a sketch of where you went for Emily to work from’. To which there is only one answer, no. I would struggle to draw a dog in a way that other people might recognise, so the chances of me getting large chunks of the south of England down and in the correct relationship to each other were close to zero.
I panicked for a few days. And then I remembered that you can draw on Google Maps. So that’s what I did. This turned out to be quite fun. Not only could I find the paths and the roads and draw a line exactly where I had gone, I could add in an extra layer to show which parts I had done on foot or by bike, and which bits I had driven. (This isn’t cheating, some substantial chunks of the Harrow Way lie under the A303 and my walking that bit wouldn’t have been fun for anyone).
Then I marked the main places I mentioned – not just the towns and villages but henges and hillforts, the White Horse at Westbury and the ancient crossroads of St Joan a Gore where travellers used to pray before they traversed the emptiness of Salisbury Plain. Then oddities, like the Ancestor statue at the services at Amesbury and personal landmarks like the spot where I first saw the Harrow Way. And then it started to get silly, so I’ve put in the best cheese toast, where I was menaced by cows and the path where Thomas Hardy got me into trouble.
And from all this Emily is, miraculously, producing a map. Quite how many of my less cartographical observations she puts on it hasn’t yet been decided, but watch this space.
As this was being prepared to go out to you all, we had the news through - publication is now set for 6th June. I am very, very excited and can’t wait for the book to be with you.
