Waste Not, Want Not.

As an aspiring writer, I know how it feels to spend hours, days and even weeks writing a chapter, finishing it then reading it over and thinking what a waste of time it was. How bland the words that string uninspired sentences together read. The same words which, when you wrote them, made you think you’d constructed something brilliant, profound even, are the ones that make you think that no matter how hard you try, you’ll never be as good as you want to be – so good that one day, someone somewhere will want to actually publish your book.  

Lee Weatherly, co-author with our very own Helen Corner of, WRITE A BLOCKBUSTER AND GET IT PUBLISHED, Hodder, has certainly succeeded in doing so by securing a six figure US deal for her ANGEL series, Candlewick Press. Lee’s story should be an inspiration for any author who’s been told several times over that their manuscript wasn’t ready for publication. Lee, years ago, wrote a book which despite securing a publisher, even 16 drafts later, didn’t go on to get published. Seven years later she took two of the characters from this book and used them for the ANGEL series, which is creating something of a storm in the children’s publishing world has also be published by Usborne this month, http://www.angelfever.com/.

Of course it goes to show that whilst talent is important when writing, so is the passion that drives you forward so that you don’t give up. I’m not sure how many of us write to become rich, (surely there are easier ways?) but of all the writers I’ve met one thing seems to be certain; they don’t just write because they love it, they write because they have to. It’s a compulsion. And it’s this compulsion that has brought Lee, thirty published books later, a success she has earned and very much deserves.

And so that first book you’ve hidden away in a drawer, in some obscure place in the house, may very well one day, in some way, turn out to be something quite brilliant. It just goes to show, nothing is ever wasted.