Novelists tell us what they wish they’d known right at the start of their careers.
‘Time is finite. We all know that, but I wish I’d remembered it when I first started writing novels rather later in life than most. After having hundreds of short stories published, it struck me one day that a novel is only an extension of a short story, isn’t it? And I could write one (please take note of the use of the word one here) of those. So I had a go at a novel. I galloped fairly quickly towards the final page and with an italic flourish I wrote the end. I shall gloss over how long it took before a publisher agreed to take me on.