Geoff Thompson: Writer – Teacher – Martial artist

I’d spent the best part of a year working on a new book, from conception right through to a bound copy in a display window at Waterstones, Oxford Street London. I was proud of my creation. Proud of the tenacity demanded to convert ephemeral thought into a lasting manifest. Sitting down for countless hours, pressing the wine of new words from the grape of sun ripened ideas, forming the visible from the purely metaphysical. I’d spent thousands of practice hours developing the ideas, hundreds more writing them into an order that pleased the senses and dozens on top of that taking notes from editors and re-writing. After no little industry the book found form and went out into the word of men and…I got a letter (or letters) from a reader(s) informing me (in a vexed undertone) that on page 9, paragraph 4, line 3 I missed a vital ampersand! The correspondence verily continued with a list of other typos and small (almost wafer thin) grammatical errors and the suggestion (patronising/angry) that you really aught to get a good editor before going to print. The presumption being of course that I don’t use an editor (or if I do, not a good one), and that I lack that professional edge.

Anyway, it happens. Not just on the one book, it happens on a lot of them. Articles too. And films! Well meaning (read angry) people are positively insulted by the fact that half a dozen words out of the 70,000 that I wrote were (are) spelt wrong, used wrong or completely unnecessary in the context that I employed them.

Everyone (it would seem) is a critic.

Everyone a budding part-time (aspiring) editor (or perhaps closet writer?).

I don’t mind (honestly!). I have produced and published 40 books. They have left my nest and they have gone on to fly solo in the world.

In the early days I did find it a little semantic, a tad tedious, a small part of me wanted to scream (via letter, I am English, let’s keep this respectable) it’s an ampersand for fucks sake! What about the life changing, bleeding edge words that I have cut a vein for?!

Of course I didn’t. You don’t do you. It would not be civilised. So I stood back from my angry (Freudian/defensive) riposte and thought hold on, I could learn something here. Something vital. And it is not the importance of the ampersand on page 9, line 3 or the misspelling on page 23, line 10. That’s the semantics of the situation, and if I can, if you are not offended I will leave the semantics to the pedantic. No my friends, my comrades, mon et meis what my erstwhile, eagle-eyed editors taught me more than that, much more, they schooled me in the beautiful art of finding without looking.

Let me elaborate.

Always, between my first draft and the final print ready copy, my book will literally be read , self edited, re-read, edited and then re-written dozens of times. Its pages will fall open before the eyes of, probably, three highly capable, completely credible professional editors who will spend eight hours a day scanning the manuscript at all its various stages for errors and amendments. Once the book is finally completed the sacred locked text will come back to me and the chief editor for once last look before going to print. Even at the print stage I will get sent proofs of the book to check and double check before signing off for the print proper. All of us, everyone, diligently checks for errors. But here lies the gist of my story; we look so hard that we don’t see. Because the moment the book comes out I can guarantee the mail and errors found messages that will land on my doorstep.

And this is the exciting bit. The people that spot the errors that we have so patently missed only spot them because they are not looking. They’re just reading the book for enjoyment, not for homework, and yet the errors stand proud from the page as though they are written in large type and underscored in bold. What I love about is was the fact that it draws startling similarities to life, to business and to success. All of my great ideas always come when I am not deliberately looking for them. All my sparks of inspiration occur when I take my mind away from the search.

In Taoism this would be called the art of searching without searching (or Wue Wei – doing without doing). Often we search so hard for the wood of a great idea that we fail to see the trees (and trees and trees) of amazing innovations right in front of our face.

Since this discovery I have stopped looking so hard for inspiration and genius in order to allow inspiration and genius to present them-selves to me when they are red and ripe and ready to fall off the tree.

So thank you all you goggle-eyes with your penchant for minutia, you have taught me nothing about grammar and spelling and the correct placement of the ampersand, but you have taught much about worthier endeavours that are awaiting my attention (or my non-attention as it were!)

Be well.

Geoff Thompson