January and Editing Editing Editing.

January brings the snow, makes your feet and fingers glow. That's according to Flanders and Swan. But here in Shropshire it has bought cold slushy rain, following swiftly on the heels of a whole year of rain, and the little hamlet of Colehurst is awash with mud. Seriously though, don't you feel that January is always ... I don't know ... a little anti-climactic? We cheer the month in with a load of fireworks and communal singing, and then, well, it's back to work and the mornings are still dark and we're all spent out of cash.

Max Ponder is out in paperback. That cheered me up. I love the cover, and I do have to say that, for an author, walking into WHSmith's and seeing your book on the chart wall is a very guilty pleasure. Even if it is only at number 76. The Costa First Novel Award went to The Innocents by Francesca Segal. It is thoroughly well deserved for a beautifully written book. I've read all the shortlisted books, and quite frankly, I'd have been pushed to choose between them. Snake Ropes by Jessica Richards is delightfully quirky with a deliciously original voice, and The Bellwether Revivals by Benjamin Wood is a sinister and very erudite story of a damaged personality. I'm looking forward to meeting all three authors (I hope) at the awards bash on 29th Jan. I'll be cheering on Francesca. Of course. But if it has to be Hilary Mantel ... well I love Bring up the Bodies too.

I'm deep into edits for The Coincidence Authority right now. This is a humbling task. I can't believe the  number of elementary mistakes that my very brilliant editor, Kirsty, has spotted, and I groan as I turn each page to face a host of embarrassing bloopers on the next, every one clearly marked in black pen.  The writer Heinrich Heine wrote that, 'no author is a man of genius to his publisher.' Isn't that the truth. Still, you learn a lot about your bad writing habits in the editing process. I've discovered that I make far too much use of the dash - like that, and even, oddly ... the elipse. Most of these get converted to commas by my editor. She's right of course.  I'm addicted to unnecessary detail ('this isn't Max Ponder,' my editor writes in the margin, 'you don't need all this.' Right again.) And I'm blind to my own repetitions.  Worst of all, I tend to let my prose run away. It gets baggy. 'Tighten this!' Kirsty writes. 'Tighten' is now my mantra. It often seems that the passages my editor wants to strike out are the very ones that I was proudest of; I delete them with a heavy heart. 'These are only suggestions,' she has told me. 'Ignore them if you want.'  So sometimes I do. But there is an unexpected catharsis to taking editorial advice. I re-read each page with the changes complete, and damnit, the whole thing really does sound better. Now how did that happen?  Editors, I have decided, are the great unsung heroes (and heroines) of literature. I am lucky to have such a good one. But I still wish the process wasn't so painful.