Are you a budding author?

You have a powerful literary imagination. You’ve probably dreamed about penning your own book, or writing down the stories you tell, and somewhere you still have all the English essays you wrote as a schoolchild.

● Start carrying around a literary notebook for jottings
● Listen to authors reading from their new works at bookshop events
● Visit literary festivals and book fairs run by the Provincial Book Fairs Association
● Take short breaks in locations that feed your imagination (the seaside, woodland retreats, cities)

Learn more
● Read up on how the authors in whom you are interested came to write their books
● Take a literary criticism or creative writing course
● Join a local book group
● Write pieces of reportage for the village website or the local parish newsletter. Any of these will add insight and enjoyment to reading – which, of course, is already your great hobby. But they may also spur you on to more ambitious thoughts…

Your hobby has become a passion when...

● You’ve written the first chapter of at least three world-beating, prize-winning novels
● Your ‘reading aloud’ kids’ club at the library is running five days a week and is still massively over-subscribed
● You are teaching yourself Latin so that you can appreciate fully the subtleties of The Iliad in its original language
● Your weekly book group has kicked you out for being too argumentative

Identify your area of interest

To expand your love of literature, you will need to work out how best to develop your particular literary talent and interest. Do you aspire, for instance:
● To have a novel published?
● To stand up on a stage and recite your own poetry?
● To get your articles published in the newspapers?
● To review books on local radio?

Broaden your options

Combined with other skills or qualities, you could perhaps:
● Acquire a serious book collection
● Teach literacy, English as a foreign language or literary appreciation
● Write and illustrate stories for your own or other children
● Devise a guided tour to introduce others to the work of a local author you admire.

Learn more, get practising
● Sign up for a long-term qualification or several courses
● Write something every day
● Join a writers’ group or performance poets’ circle
● Enter a writing competition
● Send your feature articles or poetry off to a local publisher
● Start trading first editions on specialist book websites
● Sell secondhand books at a car-boot fair or market.

Towards a literary business

Be warned: very few authors make a full-time living. And while freelance writing is often compatible with living far from a town, it is a lonely vocation. Consider having a second string – perhaps one of the occupations listed here – alongside your main ambition.
● Private language, literature or literacy tutor
● Collector or trader
● Bookstall or bookshop owner
● Author or poet
● Niche publisher
● Journalist or editor
● Scriptwriter
● Illustrator-author
● Reviewer
● Organiser of literary holidays.

Resources for bookworms

Booktrust www.booktrust.org.uk Details on various areas of publishing
Scottish Book Trust www.scottishbooktrust.com
National Literacy Trust  www.literacytrust.org.uk Literacy, literary and creative-writing information and links
National Association of Writers’ Groups www.nawg.co.uk Contacts, competitions, links
Open University www.open.ac.uk/start-writing Starter courses for writers
The Poetry Society www.poetrysociety.org.uk
Independent Booksellers’ Network www.ibooknet.co.uk
Bookseller World www.booksellerworld.com Learn the basics about collecting
The Literary Encyclopedia www.litencyc.com Specially commissioned articles written by scholars, enabling you to place literature within its historical context.
Provincial Book Fairs Association www.pbfa.org