Wannabe a Writer? [Paperback]

Excellent. A must-have book for every budding writer --New Writing Magazine

Practical and funny... packed with information and advice for new writers. --Woman's Weekly

I wish it had been on the shelves when I started out. --Katie Fforde - bestselling author

Practical and funny...packed with information and advice

Tremendously informative. I wish it had been on the shelves when I started out.

Practical, personal and honest advice on how to get published with contributions from over a hundred authors, agents, publishers and journalists. Hear from the professionals on how to sell your articles, write a synopsis, find an agent, get your novel accepted and much, much more. With insights, anecdotes and hot tips from Frederick Forsyth, Jilly Cooper, Ian Rankin, Katie Fforde, Jill Mansell, Adele Parks, Lesley Pearse, Michael Buerk, Carole Matthews, Erica James, Mil Millington, Miles Kington, Michael Bywater, Rosie Millard, Robert Crampton, Richard Morrison, Simon Trewin, Jonathan Lloyd, Teresa Chris and Jane Judd as well as publishers Harper Collins, Hodder Headline, Transworld, Orion and Simon & Schuster. A must-have handbook for anyone who's ever wanted to write or just wants to hear how others to do it... Where do you start? How do you finish? And will anyone ever publish it when you have? Drawing on her own experiences as a novelist and journalist, Writing Magazine's agony aunt Jane Wenham-Jones takes you through the minefield of the writing process, giving advice on everything from how to avoid Writers' Bottom to what to wear to your launch party. Wannabe a Writer? tells you everything you ever wanted to know about the book world - and a few things you didn't...

Jane Wenham-Jones is the author of three novels and writes a monthly column for several newspapers and magazines including Writing Magazine

I vowed, when I was a much much-rejected wannabe, that when I was published I would tell the truth about how long it took and how difficult it was.

Nobody fought over my manuscript. Rather, they unplugged their phones, switched email addresses, took long sabbaticals on the other side of the world and instructed their assistants to tell me they'd died of a rare and sudden tropical disease.
I wept, wailed, got horribly drunk and spent £156.98 on postage. I did strange spells, took up chanting, consulted psychics, threatened to hang myself from the shower-rail if I didn't get a book deal and took to stalking. What I didn't do was give up. I was determined to get that book published even if it meant rolling up to my launch party with no teeth and a colostomy bag. I think we can safely say I was obsessed.

And published it was. I did sell my book in the end, on a gloriously ecstatic champagne-soaked day in August 2000 but it was by a long, circuitous and torturous route...