Dawn Meredith - Author

Brian Selznick's sumptuously beautiful graphic novel for children, The Invention of Hugo Cabret  (2007) ticks all the boxes for a truly great story of all time. It's protagonist, the mild, earnest, mechanically-minded Hugo is an orphan who lives between the walls of a Paris train station, circa early 1900's. After his drunkard uncle disappears, Hugo continues to wind all the station clocks, keeping them in perfect working order, so as to remain living in a forgotten corner room, high up among the giant cogs and wheels. But the station master has other ideas. He means to catch Hugo and send him to the orphanage - a tidy solution to his problem of who should look after this child. Hugo has one love - clockwork. He is not only fascinated, obsessed, but has the skill to repair anything. After all, he maintains all the station's clocks. But his one passion is to repair the automaton sitting in his room; a forgotten relic saved from the museum fire which killed...

So, you have this dream, a beautiful, sparkly dream where you sit down at the keyboard and the words flow from a pristine font deep inside, stories fully formed... Ah! Seems a world away from the dishevelled form slumped in front of the computer struggling through bleary eyes and a headache to skid in to a deadline, hitting 'send' at two minutes to midnight. So, when we chat to each other, as writers, do we lie? Gloss it up? Tell the truth? Cos doesn't everyone else seem to be doing so well, churning out books, gathering piles of publishing contracts, smiling blissfully at their bank statement? Er, no. A select few may have this experience, occasionally. I've known writers who struggled for YEARS before getting a single contract and then had their career take off, when they are in their fifties. The vast majority of writers in my circle of acquaintance struggle with the exact same issues I do: Constructing a bubble of time in which to work that is separate fro...