Harbouring a secret longing to be a published author? Dawn Mellowship asks three successful authors how they made their mark and throws in some tips from a top literary agent for good measure.

Bestselling author Veronica Henry is currently in the process of writing her sixth novel. Her most recent book is Love on the Rocks about a couple who turn a run down boarding house into a 'chic maritime retreat,' encountering numerous obstacles in the process!

Veronica Henry started out as a production secretary on the Archers in 1984, which eventually led to script editing work on programmes such as Cross Roads and Boon. After becoming pregnant with her first child she turned her hand to script writing on programmes such as Heartbeat and Doctors to pursue more amenable working hours. Then inspiration dawned,

"I decided what I really wanted to do was to write a novel. I sat and wrote 20,000 words. My TV agent gave it to a literary agent she worked with who said 'yes I'll take her on, tell her to write some more.' Then I got a publishing deal. Getting an agent is usually the hardest bit. I was fast tracked really but you still have to come up with the goods."

Veronica's TV scriptwriting days served as a valuable tool for her first book Honeycote…..

I wanted to write a soap in book form with lots of characters who were all quite interwoven so whatever A decided would impact on B. I had been on a visit to a brewery in the Cotswolds and thought it would be a perfect setting, a bit like the Ewing Oil family businesses, lots of back stabbing, different ambitions and people having affairs in a very pretty setting. It was a case of building an interesting family around that and all sorts of characters that made them misbehave. I still wanted to have a romantic happy ending though!

The hardest thing about being an author it is that you cannot delegate any of it. It all rests on you. You can be half way through it and thinking, 'I don't know if this is any good or not!'

The key to my success is the fact that there are a lot of different age ranges and stratas of society and I do write from a female and male point of view. I think this gives it an energy and pace that makes you want to keep reading. A lot of chick lit has just has one heroine and it's very linear."

Getting one big hit is all very well but it takes more than that to keep the inspirational juices flowing.

"It's a mixture of finding a setting or a way of life to base it all round. The book that came out this summer Love on the Rocks was a seaside novel set in North Devon, which was a departure for me because they had been quite rural up until then. I have a house by the sea now so I really wanted to write something about people that were giving up their lives and starting again, which a lot of people do. It's a question of looking for something that has story potential with lots the characters that pulls everyone together. Also there are always lots of handsome heart melting men to set the hearts fluttering!

For budding writers it's a question of building up your confidence. Keep writing. Get used to being able to write to order and making sure that you don't just have one idea. Reading helps and not just the sort of books you want to write, as a broad a palate as possible so you see how people create tension and characterisation. At the same time don't be daunted by what you read, you don't have to copycat genius writers. Find your own voice. It's about getting over the self-doubts and loving what you are doing because that will come through in the end."

Paul Bryers has written several novels as well as being a television and film director with credits such as the award winning Queen Victoria's Empire. His most recent book The Used Women's Book Club is a murder, mystery tale where the victims are all men.

Paul Bryers passion for writing began with inventing stories in his head as a small boy. One of his stories got him into a spot of bother as a child, when after an appendix operation still heavily anaesthetised he accosted a child in the bed opposite to him,

"I said: "We've got to get out of here, they're cutting people's throats" –he started screaming and the night nurse came running up. The next morning they told my parents I was a psycho – but it was just a story I had going in my head. It was only a small step from there to writing the stories down."

Various attempts at becoming a so-called 'New Man' led Paul to pen his first novel Coming First.

"It was supposed to be a novel that mocked men of a certain type and pretension who tried to appeal to women by being all the things they thought women wanted them to be and getting very confused about it. I got into an awful lot of trouble for it. Mainly from women who thought it was mocking them. But honestly, it wasn't."

A 'brilliant' literary agent by the name of Pat Kavanagh ensured that Paul got a book deal.

"The challenges of being an author are finding the ideas and getting them down on paper…  and then the really big challenge is whether anybody else thinks it was worth the bother.

I don't personally see myself as a success. For me success would be writing a book like "Atonement" or "Arthur and George". I love books that explore character in that kind of depth – but in a way that makes you feel you have come to your own conclusions about the characters. Books that are good – by writers that good – are a formidable barrier to other writers because you feel you can never do something as brilliant as that, so why bother. The key to my success is that for some reason this didn't put me off.

I write about whatever appeals to me at the time. However, four out of seven books have been on the same theme; Love Stories complicated by the fear of women; fear that a woman, the woman, is a killer. And I go into a parallel world of 'what if'…Like Hitchcock's The Birds – or I should say Daphne du Maurier's – which was a 'what if' story about birds who suddenly turned nasty and decide to kill people. That is what The Used Women's Book Club is about – except that it isn't birds, it's women.'

Some people would say that to incorporate writing into your life you have to exclude anyone and anything else. However, I'm not always writing. I also direct dramas and drama documentaries for television and at such times I mix with other people and I'm more or less human. But when I'm writing I do disappear up my own arse, so to speak. I've been writing my current book in Kerala and Paris.

"The best advice for anyone considering writing a book is, don't talk about it; just do it. Supplementary to that – and more practically, you might ask yourself 'what is this book about and why do I want to write it?' Ask yourself what books you like to read –analyse what it is you like about them – and make sure yours has some of the ingredients of those successful books. Write every day – even if just for a couple of hours.

As to getting it published – it probably helps to find out who might be interested in what. You really have to get an agent. Mix in the right circles. Get a job in the right place – media, publishing, universities – do a creative writing course. Get yourself a 'profile'. You need to look at the biogs of famous writers to discover what a good profile is and if you haven't got it, just write the book anyway and hope for the best. Don't give up!'

Lesley Pearse is one of the UK's favourite novelists, having sold over 2 million copies of her books to date. Her latest book, Hope is about an astonishing woman who will not let tragic circumstances dampen her spirit.

After winning £25 for a letter she sent to a woman's magazine, Lesley realised that her talent for letter writing could have potential.

"I wrote a funny thing about the contents or rather lack of contents of my fridge and it won the star letter of the week. Plus I was always a great reader and people said that I was a great storyteller by nature.

I wrote three fairly rubbish books prior to Georgia-the one that first got published. The last of those three I sent off to an agent, who is still my agent now and he asked to see me in London. He pushed it back across the table and said 'this is rubbish but you can actually write so go home and write another one.'

At the time I had a shop in Bristol and a girl working for me called Georgia who was a lovely bouncy character. On the way home on the train I was thinking about her and having been married to a musician called John Pritchard in the 60s, I knew an awful lot about the pop world at that time. The two things all came together and I ended up with the idea of Georgia becoming a rock star in the 60s.

When I finished it, although my agent loved it we couldn't sell it. We went to all the major publishers and it took 6 years. I re-wrote it eventually and then it finally got accepted.

You pay your dues writing short stories and getting hundreds of rejections and I think with everything you write you get a bit better. I was 33 when I started writing short stories and 48 by the time my book was published.

The subject matter is important, during the 80s it was sex and shopping books that were a popular genre like Lace and Scruples and my book Georgia was very gritty. I don't write about rich and famous people and they didn't want that kind of book then but when it ended up on the right desk, the tide had turned.

One of the main challenges for authors is sticking at it. You have to keep plodding on. The only way to really do it is just to sit down and start.

Ideas come to me all the time. Sometimes a story in the press makes you think of something. I may go out walking my dogs and my mind will wander around or I sometimes do a brainstorming session on my own. I am keen on history so there are various things that will grab me such as the story of Burke and Hare the grave robbers.

I do a lot of research. I can't do a historical book every year because the research takes too long so I do one historical book and then I do something more contemporary. For my current book I went to the Crimea.

To get your work published you have to be determined. I do believe that if you want something badly enough you can get it but you have to be prepared to put the work in. I think a short story course helps. You have to be able to make characters 3 dimensional. It's about trial and error."

Top Tips from a Literary Agent

Simon Trewin has been a literary agent for Peter, Fraser & Dunlop (PFD) since 1999.