Make sure you follow

the three AAAs

There is no quicker way to lose your reader or prospective publisher than to have inaccuracies and wrong facts punctuating your book. Write about a subject with which you feel comfortable and with which you are able to give the reader the impression you know more than they do.

Religiously follow the three AAAs: Accuracy, Accuracy, Accuracy. Make sure you are thorough with your research. It is so easy these days thanks to the emergence of the Internet, which is the biggest library in the universe. You can find details on virtually every subject by being diligent with your searching. Do not plagiarise phrases or ideas, but do filch facts.

When I joined the Daily Express back in the early 1960s the banners put up by Editor of Editors Arthur Christiansen were still stretched across the office that screamed in 18-inch high letters: "Check your facts and then check them again". Judging by the errors I see in many modern newspapers, broadsheets as well as tabloids, the standards of accuracy have dropped. But as an author you cannot afford to make sloppy mistakes, otherwise you will quickly lose your publisher.

Research can be an enjoyable exercise, but mind it does not eat up your creative juices before you start writing. I often find that on the Internet I start out researching a certain subject and then go off on tangents because my attention has been taken by another topic. You must be disciplined when researching.

When the inevitable writer's block (I prefer to call it mind-resting) hits you, accept that nothing is going to come into your head during that session and turn instead to further research. This can have the effect of breaking the block and starting the words flowing again.

My advice is that when you feel yourself getting tired take a break and go for a brisk walk or into another room. Even a twenty minute break can be enough to get your brain back into full working order. To be honest, I do not practice what I preach because I often find myself falling asleep in front of the computer. But I know it makes sense to take the occasional break.

It is common and acceptable to take real-life people and events and put them between the covers of a book in novel form, but be ultra careful to ensure that the characters cannot in any way be recognised, otherwise you could have a libel battle on your hands (see Golden Rule No 18, the legal minefield).

A certain way to improve yourself as a writer is to read, read and read all the major authors, whether or not they are writing about your particular subject. Read them on two levels: one for the joy of accompanying a master through his/her paces; two, to study the technique, the characterisation, the plotting, the scene setting, the use of dialogue, the linking of scenes, the mood changes and all the ploys used to hold your attention. Whether it is the punch of Hemingway, the panache of Steinbeck, the phraseology of Dickens or the polish of Wodehouse there is something to be learned.

I deliberately say "polish" when referring to Wodehouse because few writers have matched him as a perfectionist. He would write, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite and rewrite again to get each chapter just so. Often, to produce a chapter of 4,000 words, he would write 10,000 words and ditch six thousand of them in the final analysis.

Plum Wodehouse said with typical humour: "I believe that I have stumbled on the secret of writing. You simply go through your stuff till you come on something that is particularly good, and then cut it out. Curiously, my finished work always reads as if I had written it straight off without a pause."

The truth is there is no secret to successful writing. Everybody has their own style, their own technique, their own timetable. The one thing they must all have is ... accuracy. A knowledge of the marketplace also helps as I pinpoint in Golden Rule No 11.

Golden Rule No 10 is to make sure you get your facts right and be thorough with your research.