Sort Your Life Out!

 We're big fans of Stacey Solomon and her programme 'Sort Your Life Out'. Stacey and her team go to people's houses who are in desperate need of decluttering their homes. My kids have threatened to put us forward for the show! So, we've started to go through our belongings - particularly toys - to see what we no longer need. Unfortunately, we don't have the big warehouse or Stacey's team to help us so we're not necessarily doing this the best way. We took lots of toys, games and books to a car boot sale last weekend and brought a lot back again! Putting some photos up on Facebook has allowed a few more things to go to good homes. My daughter has made good use of Vinted and sold a few bits. We've booked a charity collection next week and are getting bags and boxes ready to go. We're on a partial deadline as we're having a party with our neighbours soon so have to have a tidy downstairs at least! At the moment, we can't see the woods for the trees and that's when you need Stacey to say, 'Do you really need all these toy cars?'

Sometimes, when we're writing, we can't see the woods for the trees either. It's hard to know what to cut and what to keep, and maybe even, what new things can be introduced. Editors are the Stacey Solomons of the publishing world. They can see the end result you're after. They spot the things that are important and need to be kept, and they're not afraid to leave a little comment next to a paragraph saying, 'Are you sure about this bit?' I've been blessed in having two fabulous editors in the past and both have challenged me on what's really needed in the story. With my second DI Bernie Noel book, 'Broken Girls', after a long conversation with my editor, we agreed that the middle part of the book wasn't working. It seemed at first glance that only a few chapters needed changing but by the time I wrote new chapters, rewrote others and threaded new storylines through the rest of the manuscript, forty-four thousand words were affected - roughly half the book. And I did it all in four weeks plus line edits. I couldn't see straight by the end of it all! But the result was a much better book, even though a lot of my favourite parts had to go.

Our next task is to go through the DVDs and CDs and decide which ones can go in the charity collection. And if anyone knows anything about how to get rid of VHS tapes, please let me know!