three articles a day, five days a week, for over three years. While this didn't help me in finding a quick way to structure and write the kind of novel-length story I want to tell, the sheer grind of it did teach me how to write to deadlines and how to produce something cohesive, with a beginning, a middle and an end, in one thousand words or less. Even all the years of self-doubt, it turns out, have not gone to waste. In the end, nothing in life is a waste, once you figure out what your real passion is and go for it. I am so glad you did just that, dear Meg. xxxs I was in illustration for 15 years before I found that words were fun too. All of the above are brilliant tips for writing, and the one it took me most time to embrace is the 'thinking'. I still catch myself only believing myself to be working when I am at the 'paper face', and yet I would say 90% of the time is thinking, or as my parents would say 'doing nothing'. George MacKay Brown described writing as an interrogation of silence. Hunting the silence these days is one of the things that I find hardest. First hunt down a silent space, then allow the mind to breathe, then chase the ideas. And always run with passion. My parents were part of the "Mad Men" advertising generation and, though it provided a living, it