The offspring at the top of Paris. Well, not the Eiffel Tower top. That would be scary.

So, several weeks ago lovely T who lives in Paris said, rashly: “I’ll be in the South of France for the summer. So my apartment will be empty, if you want to use it.”
Now, the words ‘Paris’ and ‘apartment’ have the same effect on me as the furry cushion had on our Border terrier before he had his bits cut off. Conveniently ignoring the fact that taking three children to Paris means less strolling elegantly along the Left Bank, than being sworn at in French McDonald’s for mis-ordering, and trying to find somewhere the littlest can do an emergency wee that will not involve being smacked by a Parisian matron, I said ooh, yes, please. And then invited a fourth child, just for fun.

The evening before, as I packed duvets, suitcases and picnics for five into a bulging car, I began to see that this might be folly. As I calculated the miles to Paris – 400! And counting! – I wobbled. As I hyperventilated in a traffic jam at 7.30am, calculating the minutes until the ferry departed, I thought wistfully of the joys of spending school holidays in pyjamas comatose in front of CBeebies. But we made onto the ferry with less than 2 mins to spare (a personal best – the children particularly enjoyed my screaming: “Move! MOVE! There are NO ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS IN THEIR BOOT!” in the passport queue). And then, following the worst Americano I have ever drunk in my life (£2.51 – why, thanks, Costa Coffee!) we were off the ferry and onto the right side. The French side. The side where traffic moves and motorways are roadwork-free. The side where I weep with gratitude.

T’s apartment is glorious. Set in a particularly lovely part of Paris, around a courtyard and next to formal gardens, it is furnished with the kind of effortless chic that causes me to pre-order a skip for my arrival home, in which to throw all our belongings.

T has four children, but no crates of Lego here; no fetid little underpants or mouldering piles of other people’s plastic toys picked up at school fetes (“it’s a bargain, Mum! 89 bits of Transformer for 10p!”). It has carefully chosen, lovely things. And herringbone wood floors. And views over the whole of Paris. It took ten minutes for the 13 year old, with the breathy certainty of someone meeting their biological parents for the first time, to announce that THIS was how she wanted to live. Yeah, babe. Me too.

Day 2 – and here I adopt my smug parent face – I took the children to a science park. Yup, an actual French Science Park. Admittedly I wouldn’t have attempted this without Emma, who was also staying with her boys, and who speaks fluent French (I just make gutteral noises, and shrug apologetically). But yes, we crossed Paris and did the science park. We did interactive stuff. The children learned what happens to a constricted blood vessel, their exact height in digital centimetres, and that yes, you will cry if French children poke holes in the wings of butterflies in the Butterfly House. Mummy probably will too.

I learned that it is possible to shepherd four children the entire width of Paris without losing one, even through the extended circle of hell that is Chatelet les Halles in rush hour, and the teenage girls learned how to growl “Touche pas!” at over-friendly violinists on the underground train. (Yeah. Next time, Monsieur. I’ll show you how to make a really interesting sound with that fiddle). Emma learned that it is impossible for her to visit Paris without getting physically assaulted by pensioners. She is basically Old Lady Reverse Catnip. Her littlest wasn’t even doing an emergency wee.

We arrived home that evening bearing the fixed, slightly manic smiles of parents who have done their educational duty, and got away without re-mortgaging their houses in the gift shop. Good parents. Parents who have just paid €17 for a round of ice creams.

And yes, it is possible that E and I had a glass of wine. Don’t judge me. It’s all part of the French cultural experience.

So, four days ago I took the decision to cut 70,000 words out of my finished book, and rewrite them. Yup, I’ll say that again. Seventy thousand words. Or, to put it another way, a shortish novel.

I didn’t do it lightly; even now, a few days on, it feels a bit like an amputation. The most I have ever cut at one time is around 5,000 words (a chapter). When I talked about it to friends this weekend I found myself saying the words with a slightly-too-giddy laugh “I’ve just deleted 70,000 words of my latest! I know! hahaha!” and using the kind of voice that suggests an imminent lurch towards a gin bottle.

But I had handed the manuscript over to my agent in June, and a month’s distance – and a barely perceptible edge to her words which told me that while she loved it, she didn’t love it as much as the last two – meant that something had to give. In today’s unforgiving publishing landscape, you can’t afford to put out a book that you – or your agent – doesn’t believe is not just good, but the best darn thing you have ever written.

And here is the galling thing. I think I knew. The book – The Girl You Left Behind – is a dual timeframe epic about love, betrayal and nazi-looted art. Half of it is set in German-occupied France in 1916 – a subject I thought I would struggle with. But no, that part of the book flew; it was the modern plot-line that refused to take off.
And from 20,000 words on, a little voice at the back of my head kept whispering that it wasn’t quite working. I tinkered. I rewrote. I told myself that it was a huge subject, a complex plot. I reassured myself that I had often felt ambivalent about finished work. As writer Debi Alper tweeted me afterwards: “It’s hard to draw the line between clever gut and inner critic.”

By the time I handed it over, I knew I had done a good job. But that little voice was still there, muffled but insistent. And then I sat down and checked the proofs of my finished book, Me Before You, which will be published in January, and I made a horrible realisation. The Girl You Left Behind was just not as good.

So here I am, 2000 words in to a 70000 word rewrite. I have no idea how I will get it done in time. I suspect a return to the 6am writing stints will follow (bleurgh). It will be stressful and, as a freelance, it will cost me money.

The good news is this (and believe me, I need some good news): even 2000 words in, the new plot feels right. (I’m going to assume that’s my clever gut talking. And not an ulcer.)

But it has taught me a valuable lesson. Firstly, that buying yourself a month away from your work in progress is a really useful thing. And, secondly, that if a little nagging voice is repeatedly telling you something is wrong, then, guess what? It probably is. And the sooner you can accept that, take a step back and re-work it, the less likely you are to be working out how to rewrite an entire novel during your summer holidays.

Just call me Ser Jojo

So, like half the Western World, I have been mildly obsessed by George R R Martin’s A Game Of Thrones, with its politicking, bloodthirsty battles and – ahem – fruitiness. So when I heard that the Iron Throne of King’s Landing – the very seat ascended by Prince Joffrey at the end of Series 1 – was resting temporarily in Waterstones Piccadilly, it was obviously sheer coincidence that I found myself with an hour in between meetings to, you know, take a look.

Who am I kidding? I was meeting a friend who was even more obsessed with GoT than I was, but she got waylaid. So I found myself wandering the ground floor of London’s greatest bookstore wearing the same furtive expression as a teenage boy waiting for everyone else to leave the newsagent so he can swipe a copy of Big Blondes off the top shelf.

I am a 41 year old mother of three children. One of whom is a teenager with a great line in withering looks. A Game of Thrones is a fantasy series. Fantasy – the kind of thing adored by young men who keep nocturnal hours and think Pizza qualifies as one of their five a day. These are the things I told myself as I circled the empty chair, picking up and pretending to closely examine books from the 3 for 2 table.

Two young boys came in, took each others’ picture in the throne in a desultory fashion, and disappeared upstairs. An old man stopped and stared at it for some time, as if trying to work out what it was doing there. Another man came in but he looked like he might nick my camera. Or laugh at me.

I could feel my resolve ebbing away. This was pretty daft, after all. And I had a meeting at five. A proper grown up meeting where I was meant to be giving a talk to people about my grown up job. And then I sidled up to a tall Japanese man, who was engrossed in the blurb for A Dance With Dragons, glanced behind me, and I said: “Excusemebutcouldyoupossiblytakemypictureplease?”

There was a split second of excruciating awkwardness. Then he leapt upon me like a Dothraki on a blonde virgin. “Yes!” he said, looking around him and dropping the book like a hot dragon’s egg. “If you’ll take mine.” Two minutes we each exited the shop beaming and went our separate ways, our cameraphones clutched to our chest.
And yes I do know that my feet don’t touch the floor. But it made me happy. Just don’t show my daughter, okay?

Me with Sam Dent and Aroma the stunt horse. Whose smile is bigger?

So last week the lovely Daily Telegraph contacted me to ask: would I be interested in going to meet the stunt horses from Spielberg’s new War Horse film?

I managed a whole nanosecond before gulping “YES” and doing a celebratory air-punching dance around the living room. It’s not just that I’ve been watching the Spielberg War Horse trailer pretty much on a loop since I found it (it makes me cry from about seven seconds in, every time). It’s that my fourteen year old self – the city girl who loved horses so much she once persuaded her mother to fill her bedroom with straw – would have viewed life very differently if she’d known the kinds of things she would get to do in a a few years’ time. And in the name of work, too.

The piece went into the newspaper today – and gives you some of the factual stuff about training horses for film work. I particularly enjoyed finding out how they dye horses with Japanese women’s hair dye and give them little toupee markings. But unlike most assignments, the day left me wearing a goofy smile like a teenager who has just met their teen idol. Walking around the stables of R and S Dent, with its tiny two day old foals and impossibly huge 18hh Shire horses was, frankly, magical.

Watching the stunt horses lie down on command, the Spanish horses, with their great cresty necks, and their impossibly balanced gaits; the bare-headed European trainers working the horses, their wind dried faces set into lines of concentration – it felt a little like being on a set in itself. I could have stayed there forever, stroking the noses of the horses in their stalls. I found myself growing secretly envious of eighteen year old Sam who took me round, as she told me of organising 150 horses for a beach charge for the Russell Crowe film Robin Hood, or showed me Rusty, the angelic horse who carried him. What a job! She said her friends often got exasperated at her lack of a social life – but what a life she gets in return; long hours in the filming bubble, as she calls it, the chance to work with some of the world’s greatest directors, a world where life is different every day. And those horses.

I think I’ve been very lucky. I do the job I dreamt of; my home and family exceed what I ever hoped for. But last Friday I envied Sam Dent her job. Well, my fourteen year old self certainly did.