Day 7

Today’s information is further advice, advice that I was given right back at the start when I was thinking about writing beyond the essays required at school.

The school librarian, yes our school had quite a large library of both fiction and non-fiction books, had a fully fledged librarian, and I quickly discovered was happy to teach those who were willing to learn, the tricks of the trade.

Her advice was that writers must read.

In a way, it was not until later that advice became more focussed, that writers of a particular genre must read books of that genre in order to get some idea as to what the readers are looking for.

I already had a passion for adventure, spy, thriller, and mysteries.

At that age, a lot of them were young adult books like The Secret Seven or The Famous Five, and others that kept you hanging on until the last page. For me, I had to read the book from cover to cover.

It was always on my Christmas request list to get as many books as possible to read.

That advice was also good for writing non-fiction books, if I ever decided to, which up till now was not a priority. But the non-fiction books I read back then were geographic and history.

These days I use the internet, but I still do a lot of reading.