I'm thrilled to have Sara Foster guest posting today. She is a former editor turned novelist. You can buy her latest book "Beneath the shadows" here

Before I became a full-time novelist I was gainfully employed as a freelance book editor, and I loved working with other authors and reading their books. Every job was different, and the variety kept it interesting. However, editing is an intense affair requiring lots of time and concentration, and when I ended up welcoming a baby and a book deal in the same year, I knew I had to cut back on my day job or risk my brain short-circuiting. 

I’ve written throughout my life – from arbitrary poems about green washing machines and my pet budgerigar when I was in primary school, to short stories and a fair bit of angst-ridden poetry in my teenage years, before finally tackling full-length novels in my twenties. I have boxes of my writing from over the years, and rereading these efforts is fascinating, hilarious and sometimes cringe-worthy, and shows that it has certainly taken me lots of practice to build up to a published book. I’ve always found the biggest thrill of writing is that I’m in complete control of my story, and have absolute freedom to let my imagination go. Plus it means I can tackle subjects I’m passionate about. And I thoroughly enjoy creating characters and their lives, as well as putting them in all sorts of tricky situations that I then spend heaps of time wondering how to get them out of. It’s quite a bizarre occupation really, isn’t it?!

I’ve found that, in many ways, editing and writing are similar: they are solitary, labour-intensive, creative, perfectionist occupations that demand a dedicated passion for the written word. They also complement one another – the subjectivity and all-encompassing engagement of the writer is nicely balanced by the objective assessment of an enthusiastic editor.

 My years of editorial experience have been invaluable to my writing development. By the time I’ve finished writing a book I’m exhausted, and I’ve gone over it so many times that I’m pretty much blind to what still needs doing. Editors do a vital job here, casting a critical eye over many different aspects of a manuscript. This can be somewhat confronting to a writer, who is often very emotionally attached to their project. I still find it disconcerting to see sweeping cuts across much-loved paragraphs, but, when I’ve had a chance to think about it, I have agreed with almost all of them.

Going through the lengthy editing process for Come Back to Me and Beneath the Shadows has given me a deeper appreciation of just how exhausting and demanding it is for an author to re-examine their book step by step. Nevertheless, in my experience the results are worth every minute of the process.