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| Diary of an Author |
This diary is being written to encourage other people to try writing. In my case I am writing my autobiography, but the basic principles wil apply to writing any sort of story. All through the years writing, and I started the manuscript five years ago, I kept notes. But it was only at a late stage that I realised that my experiences in attempting to get a book written and published could be of value to others either contemplating or already starting to write seriously. It also gives an opportunity to review exactly where I have got to and where I am going. I produced and have kept up, a similar Diary of a Watercolour Artist from when I started - almost every day now I get emails, mostly expressing thanks, from readers of that page.
It is more than 10 years since I retired from the British Civil Service and I have always joked that I wanted to write my version of the book and TV soaps "Yes, Minister". This is not quite true - my story is not fiction, but is a true record of my career working as a scientist in the Civil Service. I enjoyed my time employed in the Department of Trade and Industry and want to communicate the highlights of the work. "Choose a job you love. And you will never have to work a day in your life" said Confucius.
My autobiography describes the areas of policy making for which I was responsible, and the highlights of my career. Scientists do not spring from nowhere and women scientists are even rarer. I am unusual in having a full-time career for 20 years as a civil servant in parallel with 28 years working as a lecturer in the Open University. Even in the 1990s there was only a small percentage of women in the Senior Civil Service when I became Assistant Secretary in 1994. When I started my research for my memoirs I expected to find a lot of information on the Internet but I found there was very little which pre-dates 1996. It is still only on paper and in official files, and therefore difficult to obtain. On the other hand books offer continuity, copyright libraries are forced to hold them and publishing has never been easier or cheaper. I decided to write a traditional book, as well as making the information available on the Internet.
It began when my father wrote his memoirs. He would not let anyone read them while he was alive, and after his death I typed them so my mother could read them. Some of his memories from when he met my mother and then fought in the Second World War found their way into my story.
Having spent some 20 years writing in the Civil Service, I knew I could write well. Unfortunately being trained to write short sharp policy advice for Ministers was no training for writing an autobiography, where collecting all the facts and attention to detail mattered. I purchased a number of autobiographies by people I admired or who were active in Government in my time. It is a good idea to obtain books of a similar topic to that which you are writing, and to read widely. Mostly the books were bought cheaply and I became a regular visitor to my local charity shops. Retired politicians always seemed to write their autobiography and I struggled my way through the forest of information which their researchers had mined from the official files. I bought many other autobiographies, including Gandhi's autobiography when I visited his home in Mumbai. Most influential on me was the autobiography by Lord Young. He became Secretary of State for Trade and Industry in the late 1980s, and also had a successful business career. Most importantly, his writing style was very similar to mine.
I was aware that few civil servants had published their memoirs, the most interesting being Stella Rimington, the former Director General of MI5, who published her story in 2001. Although she worked in a very different area, and at a much more senior level, my story was comparable to hers in many ways. Like Stella Rimington, mine is just a recollection of what seem to me to be the personal highlights of my career. Like her, it has been written without any access to any official files and I have never kept a diary. But there the similarity ends. My work was generally aimed at improving industrial competitiveness and much of what was done was made freely available to companies, and the policy implications were analysed widely and published in academic journals. There were published comparisons of UK industrial policy compared with other European countries, as well as comparisons with the USA, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. I have been able to incorporate a selection of that information. I continually updated my c.v. while I was working, and this gave me a firm timeline on which to hang the various pieces of my story. I have tried my best to write the facts about what truly happened, yet time passes and memories can become rosier. I deliberately sought out senior colleagues and asked them to read my manuscript and make their own inputs from their memories. I collected a few extra anecdotes, not all of which were able to be included, but it was all very interesting.
The original idea was to just write one book. Most people seem to start writing at the beginning whereas I started in the middle, with my first job as a research scientist at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL). Having completed that chapter I decided to write the earlier chapters, including my school days, my studies at Oxford University, and my short time at CERN in Geneva. My father's story, and the memories of my mother who is still alive, gave me lots of material about my early years. When I was writing I aimed for 1,000 words each day, and kept a word count so that I could see progress. There were also many days when I just sat reading and making notes, or browsing the Internet, and wrote nothing. This early story quickly grew to be some 55,000 words and is the size of a small paperback novel - with 300 words to each page there are over 180 pages. So at the end of 2006 I decided to divide my autobiography into two pieces and to give the title 'Quiet Quadrangles and Ivory Towers' to this first part. It is as ready as it ever will be to being printed and covers my time up to 1981 when I left the NPL.
One day, on my way home from Oxford I went into the Oxford University Press building and enquired who I should contact with an interest in publishing my manuscript. At that time I was still thinking of writing one book, not two. I was given a name and went home to email her with a summary and short extract. The friendly rejection letter arrived a week later. I realised I needed to learn how to get it published, so looked for suitable advice in Blackwell's Bookshop. I found just one book, called 'Getting it Published', which I purchased. Through an ex-DTI friend I heard about the Writers' and Artists' Yearbook, which I looked at in the library and then ordered my own copy.
I decided that my next step would be to find a printer, not a publisher. I decided to self-publish 'Quiet Quadrangles and Ivory Towers', because it was clear to me that there was no significant commercial market for the story. Each autobiography I have read always begins with the famous person as a child, and that part is always so boring. I am not famous, so my story is extremely boring, except to people who know me. No publisher will want to take a manuscript which will only sell a few hundred copies.
Another ex-DTI senior colleague told me that she was self-publishing, and recommended an excellent chap, Jon Carpenter, who lived in the village of Charlbury. I visited him and he asked to see a sample of my writing in order to check whether it needed a copy editor, an extra expense. Copy editing is a filtering process designed to catch all the errors and inconsistencies in the written text. I was advised that it all read very well. The only changes suggested were:
Changing all double quotes to single, except within quotes.
Using lower case for e.g. civil servant, government, minister etc.
Using words rather than numerals below, say, twenty
Spelling out WWI, 6th etc
Being consistent with punctuation in relation to quotation marks. 'I think the minister is a silly fool,' he said. But you might think the minister a 'silly fool'.
Not indenting paragraphs.
I did all this, except for the use of lower case for Government, Minister and the Civil Service. Having always used capital letters I was not going to change now. And if Secretary of State is in capital letters, so equally should be Minister of State.
When I started to read the manuscript carefully I noticed inconsistencies in my use of dates and times. I wondered what was the proper notation and reached for John Simpson's autobiography. He is a professional writer and should know. I quickly found he had a time which was 5.30 in the morning, and his date notation was 19 November. I started again reading my manuscript and making the necessary changes.
I had to seek formal permission from the Department of Trade and Industry to self-publish. NPL is a research laboratory which was then part of the DTI. Although it is 25 years since I left the NPL and my research work there has all been published, I was told that my manuscript had to be approved by the DTI Permanent Secretary. Having sent the manuscript in May 2007 I received formal permission to publish on 21 August. I added the proper form of words to the book 'These memoirs are published with the permission of the Permanent Secretary of the Department of Trade and Industry and the Cabinet Office'. In July 2007 the Department of Trade and Industry was suddenly divided, and the Permanent Secretary, Sir Brian Bender, moved to the Department for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR). They will be dealing with the second set of memoirs.
Having received permission on 21 August I emailed the text to Jon Carpenter on 22 August as a Word .doc file and waited to hear of any problems. Instead of simply typing the Chapter titles I had used Headings. This had the benefit for me of automatically making the contents Table, but was a problem for him for typesetting. I had also included two small tables which had to be typed again. Jon had given me an estimate of the cost but this was extra effort on his part. Fortunately I had decided to omit any photographs, and this then reduced the work for him and the costs for me. He would have scanned my photographs himself, although we have our own scanner. I also added the front cover verso, the page with all the ISBN numbers and publishing information, as well as a dedication page. On 15 October I received the proof by email, and sat down to read it. There were a few little corrections, mostly layout, and I printed the offending pages and marked up the corrections. On 25 October I had the second proof arrive, which was perfect.
Meanwhile I had to concentrate on the design of the book jacket. What did I want which would be both eye-catching and relevant? Again I went and looked at a number of books, and liked the jacket of a novel by Colin Dexter, Death is now my neighbour. I decided I would have a picture of Oxford on my front cover. I did not want to get involved with using professional photographs and making payments for their use. Instead I went to Oxford and took some of my own photographs. At St Hilda's College they gladly gave permission for me to use any of my photographs with no charge. I still had not achieved the image I wanted, so decided to take up my watercolour paints. I painted a picture of the Oxford skyline which was the same size as the book and then scanned it and emailed it. Jon asked to have the original painting so he could do work on the colours, and it was delivered by hand to Charlbury. For comparison here is the original watercolour picture, and the final front cover of the book. The front cover was a .pdf file which we cnverted to a standard .jpg file so it could be sent to a photograph processiong lab and made into a T-shirt. I wanted to have something eyecatching to wear for when I did the book launch. I also made postcards by taking the image and adding a few lines of text with my details, the ISBN number and an email address for book enquiries.
 "Original Painting © Pauline Curtis") |
 "Book Cover © Pauline Curtis") |
 "Postcard of front cover © Pauline Curtis") |
The Writers' and Artists' Yearbook explains about self-publishing. For a book to be genuinely self-published, a name designated by the author as her publishing house must appear on the copyright page of the book as 'publisher' and the book's International Standard Book Number, the ISBN, must be registered by the ISBN Agency to that author as publisher. I initially saw no benefit in applying for the minimum set of 10 ISBNs, although I collected the application form from the Internet www.isbn.nielsenbookdata.co.uk. With the first book from a new publisher, it is necessary to send the copyright page of the book with the completed application form. Should I just have my name and home address on the copyright page as publisher or should I set up PCurtis Press, or even a limited company ? I was not very comfortable with using my own name and address, and I can see why author's try so hard to find a publisher to deal with sales marketing and distribution. I finally decided to post off my form and purchase 10 ISBNs. It cost £84 + VAT, which was not expensive. I will need an ISBN if I wish to try and sell my publications through bookselling chains or Internet booksellers. The ISBN also provides access to Bibliographic Databases.
Each new title has to be described on a Title Information Form, which should ideally be submitted some 6 months before the publication date. Fortunately the form can be downloaded and then submitted by email. The book jacket is also submitted separately by email It will take 4 to 6 weeks for titles to be fully listed on the Nielsen database and I will be alerted to new orders by email, and I can then collect orders online.
I received my set of ISBNs in an Excel spreadsheet on 31 August and wondered what to do with the numbers. My publisher prefix is 978-0-9557163 and so the ISBN for my first book was 978-0-9557163-0-0. The second book will be the same prefix followed by 1-7 and so on for the set of ten ISBNs. I knew that the numbers had to be converted into a bar code, and so the following explanation of how he produced this is extracted from Pete's diary notes at www.pcurtis.com/diary12.htm
All books now have the ISBN number in barcode form on the back cover and I was tasked with making one. I did some research on the Internet and found out that it was not as simple as one might expect. I found after many searches a few demonstration barcode programs capable of generating the new ISBN 13 format barcodes and some explanations of what is required and useful background. An example of an ISBN 13 barcode is on the left.
The references and programs I have found useful are:
Barcode Blitz which has a free demonstration program which produces ISBN 13 barcodes. When saved they have the word demo across the bars. The download is a small zip file and the program does not need to be installed and can be run from the zip archive. The help file is a font of information. It is expensive to buy a licence but very simple to use. It runs under Microsoft XP service pack 2 and Vista. I have it partially running under Wine on Linux after adding a .dll from XP but it only produces the stripes and does not yet produce any text - a font problem but at least the demo text is also missing! Produces .png .jpg .bmp .tiff and .eps files
Barcode Maker 5 - the first program I found with a free 30 day trial and very comprehensive. A big download and needs to be installed with a reboot. Again a pile of text is put across the file if saved as a .tiff file but there are many options including a lower resolution .bmp without added text. If you want to buy the registered version it is cheaper than Barcode Blitz.
Yaquinapress - a site covering use of the Lulu.com printing service which has a number of useful pages including the one linked here which covers making barcodes suitable for Lulu and hence any other book. It references a free online barcode maker which is referenced below.
Bookland - has a free online barcode maker which produces an .eps format file with few adjustments possible.
When one looks at the back cover of a few books it is rapidly apparent that every barcode is different in size, aspect ratio and the associated text and numbers. My research has led me to believe that there are ISO standards defining much of this and that there are 10 standard scaling factors with the default height of the barcode being 24.5 mm (not 25.4 or one inch) - the guard 'characters' at either end and in the middle are higher. The scaling allowed is from approx 82% to 180% .
First some acronyms
The ISBN 13 barcodes are to the same underlying standards as EAN 13. These days the ISBNs are almost always scanned using the barcode but the standards say that the character set should be one of the Optical Character Reader friendly sets ie OCR-B see Matthew Skala
The barcodes produced need to be saved and scaled in a way that they remain sharp ie they should not be in a compressed format such as .jpg . Bitmap files and .png files should be OK. The .eps files are vector graphics which have to be converted to work on in Windows. It is far better to get the size right at the start which can be done best in Barcode Blitz. If the files are too big reduce the colour depth in a graphics program such as the free IrfanView or the OpenSource GIMP.
The final result as it appears on the back cover is below. Having produced the barcode ourselves we then found that Jon would have produced it for me.
It also seemed to be important to have a good author photograph, and a short career summary. The short career summary was going to be easy, but I had no photographs of myself when I was young. There were lots of family photographs but they were faded and tattered. As an alternative I did have a cartoon, drawn in Tenerife in 1982. This was the right vintage, but far too large to fit on my scanner, or Jon's. So we took a photograph and then reduced it to the correct quality for an image which was approximately passport photo size.
 "Original 1982 cartoon © Pauline Curtis") |
 "Book Back Cover © Pauline Curtis") |
I collected my three boxes of brand new books from Jon on 26 November, and to my delight the cost was slightly less than he originally estimated. It was time to fill in the new title information form, downloaded as a Word document from www.nielsenbookdata.co.uk and sent by email to newtitles.book@nielsen.com. I should have really sent in the form 20 weeks ago. Most of the information was straightforward except for the BIC classification which I had to find by visiting www.bic.org.uk. My book is memoirs, not a full autobiography, and so my classification is BM BGTA. BM is for memoirs and BGTA is for autobiography in technology, science and engineering. The jacket cover was reduced to the required size, 648 pixels high and 100 dpi, and then sent as a .jpg file.
Under the Copyright Acts the British Library, the Bodleian Library at Oxford, the University Library at Cambridge, the National Library of Scotland, the Library of Trinity College Dublin and the National Library of Wales are all entitled to a free copy of the book which must be sent to them within one month of publication. The British Library legal deposit office is in Yorkshire whereas the Agency for the other legal deposit libraries is in London. Now I have to start posting out their free copies. I have recently been researching in the British Library in London, so plan to deliver the copies by hand. I have a list of others who should receive free copies with their Xmas cards. The book weighed in at 275 grams, and is within the dimensions for a large letter, so will cost 75p each copy to post.
One of my priorities is to let readers have access to my material, hence the text is also available below. While I have tried to be accurate in my recollections, I welcome any corrections or additions. I would especially like to hear from anyone who was with me at school or University, or worked with me at the NPL. The book is available from me for purchase at £8.99 and I am giving a share of the proceeds from each copy to the Association of Senior Members Fund at St Hilda's College, Oxford. To purchase a copy, or simply make contact, please email me at
1 Introduction
2 My Parents
3 I Finally Arrived
4 Starting at School
5 Going to Cannock Grammar School
6 Holidays in England
7 Going Abroad for the First Time - Paris
8 The Sixth Form
9 Foreign Students stay with us
10 Will it be Oxford or Cambridge ?
11 More Studying in the Third Year Sixth Form
12 Starting Three Years at Oxford
13 Enjoying the Second Year
14 Finals Looming, and Plans for the Future
15 Working at CERN, the Best Research Lab in the World
16 The First Year of Research Life at Oxford
17 A Last Family Holiday Together in Switzerland
18 Marriage and Settling down in Witney
19 Working towards my Doctorate
20 Summer Holidays
21 Starting my Career
22 Moving House from Witney to Didcot
23 Starting Research at the NPL
24 Getting to know NPL colleagues
25 Moving House from Didcot to Farnborough
26 Research Contracts
27 Teaching with the Open University
28 Impatient for Promotion
29 At Last – Promotion to Senior Scientific Officer
30 Moving from Farnborough
31 Staff Reductions mean I can Finally Leave
32 Last Link with NPL – Completing the DASL Library
33 The End – but it was really only the beginning
Internet References
When I first started writing the second manuscript I spent a lot of time in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. I was fortunate that past Alumni of the University are able to have a Readers card and the library contains a full set of HMSO Official Papers, Hansards, as well as many other useful Government publications. In dusty cardboard boxes underground I found leaflets and brochures describing some of the schemes which I had initiated. There is also a complete set of the annual Civil Service Yearbook, although it is of limited practical use because, like any book, it is hopelessly out of date by the time it is published. It does however give a historic window on who was doing what, and gives accurate names for the various Divisions, Branches and Sections into which the DTI was divided.
My second manuscript, dealing with my career from 1981 to 1996, gained its initial title 'Working with Ministers' because of a glossy colour booklet I have which was produced by the DTI. The book was completed on 20 November and was sent by email to BERR to obtain permission to publish.It is almost twice the size of the first book, at 105,500 words. I hope I might eventually find a publisher for this, but if not then I will know how to go about self-publishing. 'Working with Ministers' was written for a more academic audience, mainly colleagues within the Open University, and is of a more factual and technical style, with no apologies for the technical jargon. There are many extracts from publications and information leaflets, and like all academic writing I have an extensive list of references, mostly HMSO and DTI publications. I retired from the DTI in 1996, so for my whole policy career I was working only with Conservative Ministers. So the final title of the manuscript has become 'Working with Conservative Ministers'.
Here I have a book jacket in mind; it is a pastel drawing of a snowman carrying a civil service briefcase with a red double decker bus and the Houses of Parliament in the background. It was the DTI Christmas card in 1987 and when I asked BERR about permission and copyright I was told that there was no evidence of the ownership of the copyright so I would be unable to use the drawing. In any case, the snowman is obviously male and I would want to change it so she is wearing a skirt.
1 Introduction
2 Starting work in the Corridors of Power
3 Setting up the Small Firms Technical Enquiry Service
4 Expanding the Teaching Company Scheme
5 Celebrating Professor Fox’s Contribution to Numerical Analysis
6 Three weeks of meetings with French civil servants
7 DTI is given its Central Aims by Norman Tebbit
8 Hoorah - Promotion to Principal
9 What are the competencies of a DTI Senior Manager ?
10 Brussels: Meetings of the Senior Officials Group on Advanced Manufacturing Equipment
11 Setting up Practical Demonstrations of Industrial Networking Technology
12 Meeting Key Policy Makers in the USA
13 Lord Young makes the DTI the Department for Enterprise
14 Enterprise Networking Event, Baltimore USA
15 Relaxing on the River Thames
16 Fitting out our new narrowboat
17 Secondment to Kewill Systems plc
18 The Death of a Senior Colleague
19 Software Quality and Safety Critical Systems
20 Promotion to Grade 6 in Engineering Markets Division
21 Education and Training Policy
22 Longer Term Studies
23 Six Countries Programme
24 Business Futures Network
25 Developing a Longer Term Strategy
26 Emerging Technologies and Technology Foresight
27 Disaster in Stratford-on-Avon, while boating
28 Managing the budget for the National Measurement System
29 Searching for Promotion to Grade 5
30 Promotion to Branch Head in Management and Technology Services Division
31 Striving for Excellence
32 The Competitiveness White Papers 1994, 1995 and 1996
33 The new Senior Civil Service structure in 1996
34 Celebrating the start of our retirement
35 Epiloque
Appendix A The Civil Service Grades in 1982
Appendix B The Structure of DOI and RTP in 1981
Appendix C List of Secretary of State at the DOI/DTI
Appendix D Studies published by the LTSU
Appendix E Nine Core Criteria for the Senior Open Structure
Appendix F DTI Pay and Grading Review 1995
Appendix G The Civil Service Code 2006
Appendix H My Open University teaching and consultancy
List of photographs
Further Reading
Official and technical papers
Internet References (current at November 2007)
Abbreviations and acronyms
The Complete Yes, Minister by Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn. ISBN 0-563-20665-9
The Complete Yes, Prime Minister by Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn. ISBN 0-563-20773-6
Upwardly Mobile - An Autobiography by Norman Tebbit. Published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson in 1988. ISBN 0-297-79427-2
The Enterprise Years - A Businessman in the Cabinet by Lord Young of Graffham. Published by Headline Book Publishing in 1990. ISBN 0-7472-0275-3
Strange Places, Questionable People by John Simpson. Published by Pan Books in 1999. ISBN 0-330-35566-X
Open Secret The Autobiography of the Former Director-General of MI5 by Stella Rimington and published in 2001 by Hutchinson. ISBN 0-09-179435-8 and 0-09-179360-2
Betty Boothroyd - The Autobiography Published by Arrow Books in 2002. ISBN 0-09-942704-4
An Autobiography or The Story of my experiments with truth by M K Gandhi, originally published in 1927 then translated by Mahadev Desai and published in 2007. ISBN 81-7229-081-0
Getting It Published - A Guide for Scholars and Anyone Else Serious about Serious Books. Written by William Germano and published by the University of Chicago Press in 2001. ISBN 0-226-28844-7
Writers' & Artists' Yearbook 2007. Published by A & C Black of London. ISBN 0-7136-7712-0
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Copyright ©
Pauline Curtis Most recent significant revision: 28th November, 2007 |
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