Am I weird? I enjoy the editing part of writing a novel. Creating a draft is either a feverish affair, as my brain and fingers struggle to keep up with my ideas, or else a painful slog when the ideas seem buried deep, encased in concrete, under a motorway bridge.

With editing, you've got something tangible to knock into shape, like bashing a baggy slab of dough. OK, so whole sentences, paragaphs and chapters may end up deleted, but somehow, magically, even though they're gone, they helped you on your way towards finding the words you were looking for. 

I even enjoy proof-reading, seeking out and pouncing on typos and grammatical howlers. Not that I'm good at it. Not with my own work, that is. It takes an objective eye, I think, to spot them. When you're close to a piece or writing, your eye slides over the mistakes, your brain corrects them. I like to think that's what happened to this unfortunate jam-maker. Wreathed in fruity steam and entranced by the deliciousness of the conserve he/she had just created, they didn't pay attention to the labelling. 

How embarrassing! A lesson for us all.