Everyone loves editing, don’t they? No? I’m astonished. What could be more enjoyable than giving yourself the opportunity to reread your wonderful prose and to hone it into an even more compellingly readable piece of writing?

Well, a nice holiday obviously, or a trip to the shops perhaps, or sitting in the garden with a cup of tea, or doing the ironing, or even cleaning out the dog bowls.

Because the truth is that most people actually hate editing. I know this a) because people have told me, and b) because so many books are so badly edited.

There are two key components to successful editing. The first is the relatively easy one of correcting spelling errors, punctuation and typos. The second is the much more difficult one of deciding whether certain sentences, paragraphs, sections, even chapters, are really necessary and as good as they can be in their current…