1. Don't give up the day job
I was a media officer for the police. It did help a bit - knowing how to write a press release, but it didn't help so much with writing the book! I didn't give up my day job until I'd signed a contract with Hodder & Stoughton.
It is such an up and down industry - you can be flavour of the month one minute and nothing the next, even when you have had a certain level of success. Until you've got enough money coming in to be able to justify it to yourself, don't give up the day job.
Everyone wants to live the dream and write full time, but it is a very difficult industry to get into and a very difficult industry to stay in. Learn to write around your day job in the beginning, that's what I did. Frankly it's what almost every successful author in history had to do with only a few exceptions.
