The next step is to plan a programme of writing which might, with much hard work and a soupçon of luck, bring you the particular rewards that you have selected.

I can’t run through every scenario for you, and making a rational plan depends on having wide experience of the particular medium in which you choose to work. However, let’s suppose that you are a novelist, and you decide that money is your main objective. It follows that you must write commercial fiction.

The most commercial fiction is obviously that which appears on the various bestseller lists. But if you look at those lists you will find that first- or second-time novelists seldom appear there. Most of those who do feature on the lists are writers who have served a long apprenticeship. It is not reasonable to assume, or even hope, that you will achieve high sales with your first book, however commercial and appealing you try to make it.

The best plan, in my opinion, would be to learn your trade, and make useful contacts, by writing genre fiction for a few years. Genre fiction means romances, mysteries, science fiction. Down-to-earth stuff.

After you have written a number of these genre books, and seen them appear in print, you will have improved your narrative skills and will have gained in confidence. You are then more likely to be able to write what is known as a ‘break-through’ book. Just as important, you are more likely to have met the right people to bring the book to the public’s attention.

If, while writing genre fiction, you want to keep your own name clean and pure for the great literary future which undoubtedly lies ahead of you, then you can always use a pen-name for this early work.


Next extract.