If I have to describe my experience of Sally as an editor and mentor in just one word, that word would be honesty.

Now honesty, commendable as it may be, often holds hands with pain: being made to see the shortcomings in your creation, and especially those bits that you think of as ever so clever, and which Oscar Wild, I think it was, termed as your darlings, and advised you to kill.  However, Sally seems to cradle those darlings while she gently nudges you to kill them.

I also find Sally an amazing sniffer dog: sniffing out every little inconsistency and omission, highlighting issues that I have never even thought off, and which, when considered and worked upon, could make the whole story come across just so much more authentic – tiny little details that opens up and fleshes out the story, integrating what goes on inside the character with the broader environmental and political circumstances of that time.

Sally builds confidence.  She is quick to appreciate what is good in the work, and not shy to express it either.  So the focus is on the positive and a vision of what could be achieved by implementing her guidance.

I feel I have learned so much from working with Sally, and usually once I have mourned the loss of my ‘darlings’, I do really enjoy mending the script.  It is stimulating and creative.  I certainly can recommend Sally as an editor and mentor.