Watching Adele making a mess of her first attempt to sing a tribute to George Michael, the other night, was a reminder of how professional she is. She stopped the performance, apologised to the audience and started the song again, from scratch. The second attempt was pitch-perfect. What a wonderful, talented and beautiful performer she is.

Writing is really quite similar. Good writers use the experience gleaned from reviews and feedback to make sure that their books are a perfect as possible. I know, as a writer that it is still quite possible to publish an edited book and discover, after the event, that there are errors in it. It happens. The mark of a professional writer and a good publisher is that these issues are addressed. Under the rules of ISBN registration there is a limit to what you can alter, in a book, before it needs a new ISBN number. However, most books have the flexibility for small changes to be made, providing the registered page count remains the same.

For me, part of this process involved some radical rethinking on how my books were presented. I moved from a pen-name to publishing under my real name. I moved from a miss-mash of titles to a coherent look to my books. My books were so radically altered that people who read them when they were first published, would see the difference – although the plots are unchanged and the bulk of the stories remain as first written, it would be disingenuous to suggest that they haven’t been influenced by the changes that I have gone through as an author. What was acceptable, when I started, is not acceptable to me now that I have four books behind me. Which I think is as it should be.

So, to watch an award winning singer with millions of best-selling disks to her name, stop, consider and retake is a reassurance that, maybe, it is OK for us all to be able to do the same.