Anne Fine “I’m madly keen on competitions for unpublished writers. My very first children’s book was runner-up in a competition sponsored by a major newspaper. That’s how it ended up being published. And so many other authors tell the same story. So do what you’ve always promised yourself you’ll find the time for some day. Sort out some hours for yourself, and get cracking. Somebody has to win!”

The Stone Menagerie is published by Corgi

Meg Rosoff “I procrastinated about writing a book for about 35 years, always sure I’d never write one good enough. When I finally tried to write a novel, I was inspired by some really bad books I’d read, thinking, ‘at least I can do better than that’. I wrote a genre novel, a kind of teenage horse book with sex in it, and managed to get my wonderful agent with it, despite her suggestion that I write another book. A better one, by implication. Which I guess I did.”

Her latest book, Jumpy Jack and Googily, is illustrated by Sophie Blackall and published by Puffin

Melvin Burgess “I was 35 before I got any breaks in writing at all. My first children’s book, The Cry of the Wolf, was accepted in a letter from Audrey Adams of Andersen Press, read out to me by my mum on the phone. And that was the one that felt like a breakthough — I always wanted to write novels. After 15 years of writing stuff no one read and many rejections, my first reaction was one of relief. ‘Well, there you go,’ I said. I might have added, ‘Thank God for that,’ because at 35, I had no other skills.”

Nicholas Dane is published by Andersen Press

Jacqueline Wilson “When I was 17 I saw an advert in the newspaper saying ‘Wanted: Teenage writers’. I was a teenager and I very much wanted to be a writer so I sent them a story — and that was the start of my writing career.”

Cookie, illustrated by Nick Sharratt, is published by Corgi

Daniel Finn “A long time ago a wonderful, old-style publisher, Marjorie Villiers, one of the founders of Harvill Press, knew exactly the right things to say to me as a young writer to give me confidence that I could be a novelist. Then I needed only two things: the first was time, so I got sacked from my day-job for going on strike; and the second was the luck needed to find a good agent; and I got lucky.”

Two Good Thieves is published by Macmillan

Anthony Horowitz “No writer ever forgets the thrill of being published for the first time. It’s like discovering a new world, though one that you yourself have created ... and from that moment nothing is ever quite the same again. This is a wonderful opportunity for a new writer and I wish them every success.”

Necropolis, the fourth in his Power of Five series, is published by Walker Books

Ian Beck “Throughout my long illustrating career I had also been secretly writing, mostly abandoned adult novels and short stories, I never seemed to have the confidence to complete anything beyond a few pages. I verbally pitched the idea for my first novel, The Secret History of Tom Trueheart, to one of my publishers and tried to make the pitch into a storytelling experience in itself. This luckily led to a contract, and two other novels have followed.”

Tom Trueheart and the Land of Dark Stories is out in paperback with OUP

Malorie Blackman “After I’d decided that I wanted to be a published writer rather than just someone who wrote for their own amusement, I started writing picture books and early reader texts and sending them out. The response was always a polite but firm “not suitable for our list”. My first encouraging sign came about 18 months (and seven or eight stories) later when I had a short story accepted for an anthology. It gave me a real confidence boost. But it then took me another six months to get a collection of stories accepted for publication by the now defunct Women’s Press, by which time I had enough rejection letters to paper at least two walls!”

Double Cross (Noughts and Crosses trilogy) is out in paperback, published by Corgi

Darren Shan “You have to be tenacious and determined to succeed as a writer. Creating the best stories you can must be the first step, and that is something you can control completely. But getting published is usually a fight too, and one you have to throw yourself into tooth and claw — and with your fingers crossed.”

The Vampire’s Assistant is published by HarperCollins

Cornelia Funke “Well, I got started because I was a very bored illustrator and was tired of drawing children in a schoolyard instead of dragons and mermaids, so I came up with my first story. And then it took another few years until I noticed that I am actually much more passionate about writing!”

Inkdeath, the last in her Inkheart trilogy, is published by Chicken House

Joseph Delaney “As an unpublished, much-rejected writer I always kept a notebook from which I plucked an 18-year-old idea that eventually became The Spook’s Apprentice — so never throw your jottings away!”

The Spook’s Sacrifice, the latest in the Wardstone Chronicles, is published by The Bodley Head

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