I wrote in a recent entry, called Writer’s Block, how I’d taken time to gather myself and work out the ideas for the new series I’ve just started work on. In the end I decided the best thing to do was write a first draft. Which I was very pleased with.

So pleased I went and wrote the first draft of the second story. All the way through I had a niggling feeling it wasn’t right, but still I thought it best to see it through to the end. The stories are about 3000 words – double my usual length for a story.

Yesterday I went to have lunch with my wonderful Editor, Sarah Lilly, who gently told me what I already knew! It’s quite hard to admit that something isn’t right. It’s also quite hard for writers to learn to trust their editors – especially when they are saying something you don’t want to hear!

During commissioning, the editor is the writer’s champion but once the book is commissioned they become the reader’s champion, trying to tease the best out of the author in a way that the reader is going to understand and want to read. There’s no point making a book that no one wants to read. Brilliant stories can be masked by inpenetrable writing or plotting.

The worst thing you can do is put off writing. It doesn’t matter how bad the first draft is, there will be elements there that form the basis of the second attempt. putting it off leads to more putting it off.

As I’m writing a series, I’m thinking about eight stories and how they and the characters fit together. It is so easy, sitting on your own in the attic or in the shed, to obsess about the minor, inconsequential aspects of the story and forget about the hero or the main drive of the plot. But by writing what’s in your head, you get it out of your system – then you can go back and look at the whole more objectively.

Editing doesn’t begin when the story is written. It begins at the moment the idea is first mooted. Great editors keep their writers on an even keel, nudging them back to the middle of the river, keeping them away from side creeks and eddies.

It can’t be easy dealing with authors. Most writers have fairly brittle egos. They don’t like to be criticised. Stories are like babies and no parent likes to be told their little darling is ugly or stupid.

Sometimes I don’t agree with an editor’s suggestion. Sometimes they are just plain wrong, then I take a deep breath and fight my corner, explain why I think I’m right. Often the banter will suggest a middle way which turns out to be much better the the two opposing views. I’ve learned this over time.

I don’t think any author has ever really produced a finished piece all on their own. It always needs someone to make sure any reader can make sense. We all have a “voice”. Once the reader hears that voice the story makes sense. If the voice is difficult to understand, the reader gives up. I have – many times. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin is a classic – everyone is told to keep going until page fifty. I remember wanting to throw the book at the wall. It was well over page fifty before I decided to finish the book. Seems a weird way of going about editing. I think there was a load of stuff that could have been cut and no one would have been the wiser.

So. I’m not back to square one but probably back to square two. I’ve got the characters forming nicely, a new way to approach the arch of the series and a new way of approaching the stories. All I have to do now is stop faffing about on this blog and get on with it!