Not everyone has a novel in them

Mrs Secret Author, who knows her onions, recently drew her husband’s attention to a Facebook post that, or so she claimed, simultaneously epitomised all that was best and all that was worst about the modern literary marketplace.

In it a woman — thankfully unknown to us — had decided to file her new year’s resolutions. One of them was to write “a Romance novel”. Clearly this was going to take a bit of time, but the aspiring novelist was confident that if she started now it would be possible to plan for a pre-Christmas launch.

All this, it turned out, had gone down a storm with the poster’s friends. To a man — well, actually to a woman — they rushed to assure her what a terrific idea it was. Several of them confided that they, too, had always wanted to write “Romance novels” and it was great that at least one of their number was about to get on with it.

And who was lined up to publish the darling work? Naturally, in this age of limitless technological horizons and level playing fields, the author was going to publish it herself.

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