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Samir Malik
Samir Malik asked Helena Coggan:

Omg it is amazing the young age you wrote this book! I can't wait to read it! I am also currently trying to write a book ( and failing ) and I'm thirteen, so do you have any advice for young writers like me?

Helena Coggan Hello Samiha- it's lovely to meet you, albeit virtually! You're very kind- I've never thought of it as amazing so much as lucky, but if you want my advice, and I'm flattered you do, well...

Firstly: I would not advise thinking of it as 'trying to write a book', because when you're starting from very little the concept of a full manuscript is very very daunting. I didn't start using the word 'book' in my head until I hit about 80,000 words, and even then it was tenuous. Your aims are, in order: an idea, a set of characters, a world they live in, the rudiments of a plot, a thousand words, five thousand, ten thousand, twenty thousand... and that's still not reason to get your hopes up that it will make it to a full finished book (sorry). I was trying to write a full story from about eight (yes, I know, I was weird), and very few of them ever passed the four-figure-word-count threshold. More recently, and in particular when writing the book I'm working on now (my third), I had about *counts silently* six ideas, in drafts that amounted to at least a hundred thousand words together, covering a span of an increasingly panicky eight months. And that was when I HAD to write a book. So yes, in terms of advice: enjoy writing when it's still a hobby and not a job; keep your sights low; don't think about the possibility that things might fail, because that's never helpful; DO YOUR HOMEWORK FIRST I MEAN IT (sorry); and know that, if it means anything, you have all my love and best wishes- you guys are my kindred.

If there's anything else I can help with (apart from actually reading your work, which I can't do for reasons that are mostly legal, sorry) or any more questions you'd like me to answer, please do ask- this is what I'm for. That and writing down the voices in my head for a living.

All the best,
H

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