Well I’ve been doing it in secret, but finally it’s finished. Over the last three months I’ve spent much time doing a full update of the Money Diet, due to be published in December. I have to be honest with you I detest writing books. The Money Diet is the book I always wanted to write, but even the first edition was tough to do, updating even more so.
I’m an instant type of chap, when writing an article or doing a programme, the final result is always quite soon and obvious. With a book you can sit down and write 7,000 words in a day and still feel like you haven’t got anywhere. Then once its finished there’s endless re-reading to do.
Of course the final result is great. Seeing it in the bookshop is very cool (and this time the publishers want a big pic of me on the front which is going to be bizarre). Yet it really is a wrench to write it, the book never leaves you, I’m constantly scribbling and putting ideas in.
I thought a rewrite and update would be easy, but when I read it, I want to add to it, and ended up writing whole new sections I hadn’t planned to!
However now its handed to the publisher for it to edit, tweak and send back for my final read through. The major new bit is about ‘the adversarial consumer society’ which is more in-depth thoughts about MoneySaving and the philosophy behind it. I wrote it on a bright sunny day while on holiday two months ago – sat down and let it flow (ok so I admit, I did like writing that bit).
The rest of the book is an update of the first version, with lots of new ways to save, stories, and explanations, but more importantly the book was originally written to have a shelf-life of 18 months, its done that, and now its time to redo and review the recommendations on the back of that. I hope, when it comes out, people will like it.
Now I’ve just got the battle with the publishers to try and arrange ‘advanced and cheap’ copies that people from the site can get!
