Everyone has a book inside them. That’s the popular maxim. So should you or should you not, write that novel? Please see advice below….

If you – like most of us – suffer from crises of confidence and wonder whether your novel is worth writing, then I want to give you a sense of balance. A few years ago, I began a book that had sold thousands of copies. It was so popular it was made into a film. I won’t name it, because, in my humble opinion, it was dreadful. The story went: an impossibly beautifully young girl meets an impossibly rich and good looking man, and they have lots and lots of a certain type of sex. There’s more to it than that, but not much.

I’m not really sure what I was expecting when I started, but what I got was an opening chapter written for a YA indiscriminate reader. I put the book down and never finished it. But it made the writer a shed load of money.

My thoughts were, if you want to write for money, ignore reality. In the real world, Melania, an impossibly beautiful woman, marries an orange, overweight billionaire. So throw plausibility to the winds, and write something with bags of sex. You will find an audience.

If you want prizes, then swallow a dictionary and a thesaurus, and create an unsung character with plenty of current day angst. Like an eco-warrier’s tyrant’s offspring. The love child of Putin and Greta. Something that has yet to be articulated.

If you just want to write your story… a) because you’ve thought of an idea and you like it. b) because it’s a good story and you enjoy writing. c) because you are passionate about finishing your story and you know, someone, somewhere will read it and enjoy it. d) because you can write. In that case, Just Write. Write to the best of your ability. Write in the sure-fire knowledge, that others have published and made money from books that are Definitely Worse than yours. And even those wonderful authors who have won prizes, who are academically worthy and intrinsically gifted – even those writers, wouldn’t begrudge you your story.

Just Write.