‘The job of a children’s writer is to try to write a book that is so exciting and fast and wonderful that the child falls in love with it.’
Have you got what it takes to be an author? You might well have – it’s just that you don’t know it yet!
Believe it or not, Roald Dahl only found out he could write by accident. At the age of twenty-six he was ‘discovered’ by C. S. Forester, author of the Captain Horatio Hornblower stories. From that moment, he never stopped writing.
But it’s not easy. These are the qualities Roald Dahl suggested you will need if you are going to become a writer:
Point 4 is crucial. Roald Dahl spent many months writing Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and, as you know, there was a first draft, then a second, then a third, and so on. Some bits were added in, other bits taken
out. With each rewrite, the story would get better and better.