In 1957 John Braine was a Yorkshire librarian with an impressive collection of publishers' rejection slips. But then his first published novel was an instant best seller and Room at the Top launched him on a career as one of Britain's most successful novelists. Experiences like his are what keep Britain's 500,000 spare-time writers plugging away, hoping for publication and perhaps even a moment of fame. Few people understand as well as John Braine the torments of the hopeful unknown. For everyone who, as he did, faces the prospect of spare-time writing and the indifference of publishers, he wrote this book. It is not a treatise on the art of fiction. Braine calls it 'a tour of his workshop' - a practical manual which tells the aspiring writer everything about writing a publishable first novel.