My advice to young writers

You are, let us say, a “young writer” on the south side of 40, chastened by the findings of the latest industry survey — these show that the mean authorial salary is around £7,000 p.a. — but with your first book contract lying on the desk before you.

The Secret Author would like to congratulate you, whilst proffering a few tips on how you might be able to sustain the career on which you have so optimistically embarked.

Civility is all. The old adage about being polite to the people you meet on the way up as you may very probably meet them again on the way down was never truer than on Grub Street.

Have a smile ready for the shy girl checking the proofs at the Literary Review: she will doubtless end up editing Vogue. The junior assistant who brings in the tea at Front Row is almost guaranteed to be controller of Radio Four 30 years hence.

The same rule applies to book reviewing. The author of the feeble novel you trashed in 2019 will, inevitably, be judging the literary prize for which your darling work is entered in 2029; no slight is so mild that it won’t be repaid with interest decades down the line. The Secret Author is still having trouble with a woman whose book he made the mistake of mildly disliking back in 1995.

Watch your politics. Whatever your private ideological leanings, always publicly proclaim an attachment to the left-liberal Guardian/New Statesman/London Review of Books line. Nobody ever got anywhere in the modern literary world by saying that they voted for Brexit or claiming that Nigel Farage is unfairly maligned.

Similarly, make sure you return publishers’ diversity surveys with all the right boxes ticked. If you were privately educated and went to Oxbridge, either keep quiet about it, make wry, self-deprecating excuses, or say things like “at least at college you could meet real people for the first time”.

Notwithstanding the previous paragraph, always try to write for right-wing newspapers and magazines instead of left-wing ones. The former pay better, do so on time, tend not to muck you about editorially and give better parties.

To read the full article on thecritic.co.uk, click here