THE NEXT BOOK - editing.

I had a meeting yesterday with my editor and my agent to discuss the edits to my next book. It's always a tad disheartening when the feedback you get isn't 'It's a masterpiece...DONT CHANGE A SINGLE WORD!!!!!'

Alas, some words do need to be changed. This being my 2nd novel up on the blocks, I'm a little more used to the editing process, and ready for the grind ahead of me. Yeah...it is a bit of a grind.

See, as a writer, you sort of have this rather naive notion that having typed 'The End', it's done...the book is written, and a kind of end of term... school's out mentality kicks in. You flood out of your study, arms waving in the air, looking forward to a few months of chill out time before having to start gestating the next book....

...when all of a sudden your euphoria evaporates, and an email laden with editor's notes arrives, and you realise there's another whole month or so of rewriting ahead of you.

It's a grind, but then I know the book that'll come out the other end of this process will be much, much better. And when it finally goes to print, I'll look back and be so bloody thankful it wasn't the first draft (the one I thought was absolutely faultless, and didn't require a single change) that Mr and Mrs J. Punter will eventually get to read.

So...it's time to head back to the coal face. I've got some ideas how to fix that plot loophole, and I think I know how to ratchet up the tension in the XYZ's race to get to XXXX.

Deep breath...okay here we go.