Redrafts are hard.

Straight up. Simple as that. I could just not write anymore. The statement alone does it all. I won’t stop there though, because you’re already hanging on my every word.

I’ve established the reason I don’t ever redraft anything is that you’re basically accepting that you didn’t get it right initially. I’m one of those incredibly annoying trivial people who like to be right about everything (and to be right in the first instance). I hope there’s a bit of that in you as well or you will have already been turned irreversibly from me.

Last night I started redrafting my novel, a task I have simultaneously put off myself and been told to put on hold by others. Everyone says you should give it some space before you start in on it again but I can’t sit still. In the three weeks since I finished my novel I have drafted no less than five short stories for a compilation due by the end of the year, in the words of Led Zeppelin: ‘I gotta roll, can’t stand still, got a flaming heart, can’t get my fill’ – yeah, that works quite nicely.

It turns out that an appropriate amount of time has passed because in the four pages (of one hundred and sixty eight) I managed to read through last night there were bits that jarred or just should have and could have been written better, and that’s just what the process is for, I know it’s going to cause me many a sleepless night but the whole thing is a true labour of love, and therefore something I want to get exactly right.

For those asking when they can read it start an orderly queue outside your local bookstore, I’ll be right with you.