Any writer will tell you it’s hard work writing a novel.  What’s even harder is the final edit, when you have to trim and prune and polish until the damn thing shines so bright it’s blinding.

Unfortunately all that trimming and pruning and polishing means cutting stuff out.  Stuff you love.  “But it’s mine!” you howl.  “It’s mine and I love it and I don’t want to be parted from a single word of it.”  Sound familiar?

No matter how much you tell yourself that it’ll be a better book for it, you won’t believe it at first.  Then you’ll get to a point say 35% of the way through and you start to develop a bit of detachment and think yeah, I can do this–and what’s more, it’s fun. Continue reading