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On The Table Read, “The Best Book Reader Magazine in the UK“, author Sue Birley discusses her new book release, Travels With A Brompton, and her love of traveling.
Written by JJ Barnes
I interviewed author Sue Birley about her book of travel stories, Travels With A Brompton, what inspired her to write, and the work that went into it.
My name is Sue Birley and I recently started my 8th decade! I was born and brought up in the Lake District and now I live in Wanborough, a village near Swindon. In July my husband David and I will have been there 39 years.
I’ve done various things – nursing, piano teaching, opera singing, a degree at Oxford and an MA at Reading (I started uni at the age of 43). For 5 years I worked on a PhD about English and French politics and although I didn’t complete it, researching and writing it were all grist to the Travels with a Brompton book mill.
I’m not sure I did, although a PhD is about 100,000 words, and many of them are turned into books. The idea of turning my holiday diaries into a book came from a friend who was publishing at the time.
I must have done a fair bit of writing during my nursing training at St Thomas’s hospital, which was very academic. But during my Geography degree, which I started in 1993, I’d be writing one or two long essays a week, all by hand, can you imagine? And there were really long essays and a dissertation to be done for finals. So it went on during my MA. I think by then we were typing the essays (I learned to touch type in my 20s – one of the most useful things I ever did) and indeed computing was part of my Oxford course but we still had to sit handwritten exams!
Difficult to quantify but I suppose we can say from 2005, which is when my booklet about a local charity was published and my publisher friend read it, and a chapter made up from my diaries. I then started writing in earnest but could only do so much at a time because we needed to go on more holidays to write more diaries! So we can probably say 17 years!
I can’t say the writing was a challenge at all. I love writing and as long as I know what I’m writing about, it flows easily (thank heaven for computers!). Mind you, it hasn’t always been the case – one reason I gave up the PhD was a patch of writer’s block. There were also other problems and as soon as I gave up, the block went away…
Our holidays are known as ‘research trips’. Every chapter is based on a holiday taken. So that’s the primary research. I use the Michelin Green Guides for the local information, maps to check where we’ve been, and the good old internet. My husband is considered to have a hopeless memory but he can remember things about the holidays!
Every bit of writing should have an introduction and a conclusion, and the bit in between. I wrote a chapter about every trip taken, trying to make them roughly the same length, and stopped when I had enough words. I now have material left over for…see the question below.
Yes, Cranthorpe Millner assigned me an editor. I don’t think it needed too much but there is nothing like a new pair of eyes. I have done some editing and proofreading myself. David says I’m very pedantic which I take as a compliment, though I’m not sure it’s meant as one!
Mmm, tricky one. I suppose the classic reply is ‘don’t’! I don’t think I’d say that but it would depend on who it was. Some people write very badly – I have read self-published books that drive me potty in that way. If it was a friend, I’d offer to read some.
Perhaps the best advice would be to make a plan, have some structure to work round. And if it were someone allergic to social media, as I am, I’d warn them they’d have to sign up.
I am definitely going to write another but whether I submit it for publishing is another matter. I have further French chapters to use (the book finishes in 2013) and in 1980 we travelled back from Malawi, hopping to Kenya and the Seychelles (where bikes came with the B&B), then to Israel and then Greece, where we bought bikes and cycled much of the way home. Title: More Travels with a Brompton and Coming Home from Africa – or something.
Yes, I am, or certainly will be when I hold a real copy in my hand. It looks beautiful because of the cover design by my niece Becky Ripley who also drew the maps inside. How much effort was it? As I say, the writing was easy enough and I do think I have to thank the first Covid lockdown for giving me the time when I’d normally be doing something else, such as orchestral concerts. I was able to do continuous work on the book. Then I expected to have to expend lots of effort in finding a publisher and although I have a few rejections to my name (think Penguin and JK Rowling!), when I really got down to it and started at A, and C for Cranthorpe Millner beckoned cheerily, I can’t say that was much effort either. I was prepared to self-publish but it has been thrilling to work with a real publisher. They’re all so nice, too!
www.suebirleytravelwriter.co.uk
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