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We're nearing the finish line now NaNoWriMo-ers! Darkmere author Helen Maslin is here to keep you motivated to the very end ... 

What would be your five top tips to budding writers?

1. Remove Twitter from your bookmarks bar.

2. Stop putting it off and write.

3. Keep going – one word after another.

4. FINISH IT.

5. Leave it for a reasonable length of time before you edit.

For those hoping to take part in NaNoWriMo or enter the Times/Chicken House Children's Fiction Competition, what would be your best tip for writing something every day?

Just do whatever you need to do to get it finished. While I love the idea of NaNoWriMo, it doesn’t suit me as a way of writing. I need to go backwards and forwards and edit (or just fiddle with) my writing as I go along. Otherwise I get slower and slower – until I’m too depressed about the giant messy tangle of words behind me to go any further.

And then there’s the build up of GUILT as I miss my word-count every day. That’s not fun for me (or those who have to live with me).

So – yes – try to write something every day, but remember that ‘thinking time’ is good too. Because writing twenty brilliant words is better than twenty pages of rubbish.

If you want to write – you will write. If you don’t want to write, nothing I say will persuade you to get on with it. I have a friend who maintains that she wants to be a writer and I have said encouraging things to her almost every day for the last five years. And every day she comes up with another excuse for why she hasn’t written anything. (*Whispers* I don’t think she really wants to be a writer!)

Enter the Times/Chicken House Children's Fiction Competition to be in with a chance of winning a £10k publishing contract!