Nothing beats the joy of your first sale. You can plot, plan, market and dream all you want, but until you get that first sale, you're not sure that you're a "real" writer. It's 26 years since I sold my first book to an international publisher. I walked on air for days. To my mind, because real writers wrote books, I was real writer at last.

Your first sale legitimizes what you're doing to others, and not least to yourself. When you've got that sale, you get a lot more than money: you get confidence, feedback, and ideas on how you can make the next sale and the next.

How do you make that first sale? Here's how:

=> One: Give yourself a deadline

Although I'd made writing sales I didn