[Ian Scott]

I wrote a book. Loved writing it. I had no idea where it was going or what it would be about. Writing it was almost like reading someone else's book. It took on a life of it's own. And then, five hundred pages later, it was finished.

I knew it needed editing because it read horribly. It was full of dumb ideas, including my own likes, dislikes and prejudices. But I knew revising such a huge pile of words would be no picnic.

Thankfully I realised this while working on the initial draft and worked a nice location into the story that I fancied visiting. I decided that this would be where I'd do the first revision. It would be a reward for getting the first draft done, would lessen the pain of revision and allow me to do some proper research into the location, forcing a reason on myself to revise.

I rented a cottage on the coast of La Palma and had a great time telling everyone I met that I was a writer working on my latest novel. Since then, the bloody thing has had God knows how many rewrites, it's more than one hundred pages shorter and the opinions from test readers have gone from avoiding my calls to "Genius!" :-)

(As you can see, I write fiction).