Did I ever mention that I love editing? Some people (apparently) love ironing, and it’s probably for similar reasons: the satisfaction in taking something a bit rough and crumpled and smoothing it out until it’s clean and beautiful. A couple of days ago, someone asked me how I could bear to spend ‘all that time immersed in an author’s creativity whilst using none of your own’?' That’s a very interesting premise, one that’s stayed in my mind, because I think editing – development or structural editing, for sure, and yes, even line editing (honestly) – really is creative. It’s about tuning in to the author’s intentions, the novel’s intention, and creating an end product. An end product that’s often quite different to the original. That aside, it got me thinking about the times I haven’t tuned in very well with potential clients – mercifully  few, and I hope, not at all...

Vicky Newham’s debut novel, Turn a Blind Eye, is out at large!

Since signing with Peters, Fraser & Dunlop in July 2016, with agent, Adam Gauntlett, subsequently getting a deal with publisher HQ and working alongside editor, Clio Cornish, Vicky is at the hugely exciting point of publication day.

Writers and editors may share a love of words but one does not necessarily make the other.  For every author who loves editing, I'll show you three or four who shudder at the thought, and even those in the 'love' camp - especially those - soon realise that's it nigh on impossible to edit their own work.

Who would have thought that a tattered, much-touted and talked-about (by me) little manuscript like A Blonde Bengali Wife would be seeing Bhola’s Children enter its eleventh year?

I’m always unsettled by a new year. It’s something to do with the overt marking of time passing, a reminder that life isn’t infinite. In several fundamental ways, 2017 has been a challenge, but then again, dig deep and there’s always so much good in the minutiae. What better way forward than to reflect on that and use it as a springboard to 2018?