Cut and paste

    Here's what sounds like a very good tip for writers courtesy of Susan Fletcher, author of the marvellous Witch Light (also known as Corrag ), gleaned at the event she shared with Lian Hearn at the Book Festival today:

    Susan said that she is ruthless when it comes to cutting sections of her novels which she feels slow the narrative or otherwise don't work as well as they might, but she admits that that is very difficult to do as most writers become attached to bits of the text which they particularly like or feel have some merit. What she does is paste the excised passages into a folder she calls 'stuff' - a ragbag of lines, a repository for that which may yet be utilised - and then she'll come back to them later and "strip them for parts", she says, using what she can when she finds another, more suitable position for that material elsewhere.

    More on today's event later.