Editing more Herrick Secrets...

Tuesday 10 April
Hi everyone. I hope you had a fabulous Easter, scoffed chocolate until it came out your ears and bit into toasted Hot Cross buns straight out of the oven! Me too! (I'll pay for the chocolate scoff later).

I have been busy editing my sequel to Too Many Secrets which carries on the story of Becs and her 'wild boy' friend Isaiah Herrick and his family. It was great to read through after a break of six months or so. When you've written a story, it helps enormously to leave it for as long as you can keep yourself away from it - write something new, read tons of books, or do something else for a while to put your story and characters out of your head.

I slashed and burned (chopped whole pages out!), chopped and changed and hopefully made it a much better story.
In my 10 years of writing for Tweens, I found the biggest change I always make; after leaving a story to 'marinate' - is with the beginning.

With Just Jack, I chopped a whole chunk off the start, and Too Many Secrets took lots of moving and shuffling to get it just right. Never be scared to edit. Although it's hard work - 99 times out of a 100, it will make your story better!