For many years writers wrote their manuscripts by hand, and it was an incredibly tedious process. They had to write each draft out separately, because they had no choice. Then the typewriter came along, and the manuscript looked nicer when it was finished, but each draft had to be completely typed again.

Now we have the personal computer, the PC. Practically every PC has a word-processor installed on it. It is one of the great applications of the PC. Now everyone can print off a letter or a story or a brochure that just over ten years ago would have required a trip to a printshop. But no more.

These days PC word-processors are WYSIWYG (wizzy-wig) which stands for What You See Is What You Get. This means that if you change your typeface on the screen, then that's what it will look like when you print the document out. Same goes for formatting and layout and all that groovy stuff you can do now.

But this poses a problem for writers. When you've finished your first draft, you see it there on the screen, nicely formatted and looking ever so finished, and it becomes very hard to make changes. I don't mean simple changes like giving a character a different name or adding a comma or rearranging a sentence a little. No, I mean big changes, like completely rewriting a scene or a conversation, or changing the way a character reacts to a situation. Once you see your story up there looking published, it becomes very hard to change it. It's very difficult to be ruthless and savage with your edit. Because you're not really rewriting at all, are you? You're just fiddling with cosmetics without allowing yourself to cut deeply into your actual story.

Cutting and pasting is another convenient but potentially dangerous feature of the modern word-processor. How easy is it to move an entire passage from one part of your document to another. But this can really affect the flow of your story, and I find there is often a ripple effect throughout, once you start moving bits around willy-nilly (or wizzy-wiggy!) You do need to be very careful with cutting and pasting.

So should we all be going back to typewriters, then? Is that my advice? I hope not. No, but in a sense what I'm going to suggest is borrowed from the era of the typewriter. Here's what I do when I've finished my first draft. I go through it a couple of times on my screen, just to iron out a few of the more obvious problems, and a few of the grammatical problems that are always there to begin with. Then I print it off, all 200 pages or whatever the length of the manuscript is.

When I've printed it off, then comes the brave bit. I open my Windows Explorer, select the name of the file I've been working on for months, and I hit the Delete key. My computer always checks, almost as if it can't believe that I would really want to do that. "Are you sure you want to delete this file?" Yes, I am. And then it's gone.

What then? Well then the hard work begins all over again, because I start typing at the very first line, reading from the pages I've printed off. Yes, it's tedious, but I find I can be much harder on myself this way. I'm not in love with what I see in front of me on the screen, and if a paragraph or an entire chapter really bites, then I can change it or get rid of it without feeling too guilty. I have been known to do this three times, for a full novel. It hurts, but I think it's worth it.

So don't throw your computer away. But do think about how you're going to edit your next story, and try rewriting it for real, by actually typing it in a second and even a third time. Believe me, it works.