ANDREW’S TOP TIPS
• If you have a great idea, start now. A few hundred words on the screen is more satisfying than a sheaf of notes. Once you’re in that fictional world, ever ything changes. Plot and characters are malleable. Go wherever your imagination suggests.
• Don’t worry about leaving chapters half-finished. When you come back you can dive straight into the action and push on to the next scene. Writing can be a sprint or an amble, but keeping the thought process going means you don’t grind to a halt.
• Finding an agent is tricky – you’re showing off your baby. Be openminded but aware that it’s only one person’s opinion. With a good writer/ agent partnership, you should be sparking off one another, not struggling to find common ground.
• Trends come and go, criticism is subjective. But putting down your words on a page and making it everything you’d want to read is an achievement. Anything else is a bonus.