‘Write a proper second draft’. This piece of advice was given to me by my partner, Christopher Priest, soon after we met. He described his own method to me, which was to print out his first draft, then begin typing it out again, from the beginning, making necessary changes as he went. It sounded like hell to me and I privately swore I’d keep to my own method, which was to edit on the page, going over and over the draft as it existed until it felt right. Several months later I was having problems with a short story, and so I decided to give Chris’s method a try, experimenting with just the first page. The results were so instantaneous, and so dramatic, that I switched over to his method immediately and never looked back. 

Nina Allen