Dear writer,

Welcome to Kickstart Your Novel. As an author and teacher of writing, I know the desire and passion to write is sometimes not enough to get a novel written; the road from idea to manuscript can be confusing and daunting. Kickstart Your Novel is a grassroots, simple-to-access, concise guide to the tools I find the most useful for getting first drafts on the page.

Every writer has their own set of tips and tricks that work for them, and I encourage you to take from here what's most useful for you and your writing habits, and then come back to the rest if and when you need to. Whether you're writing for therapy, to get published or just for fun, my mission is to help you lay the foundations of your work, so that you can then progress to the next phase of rewriting, editing and polishing your novel.

The important thing is to get your words on the page-then you've got something to work with. The expression 'you can't edit a blank page' is where we begin.

Julie Proudfoot