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We're over halfway through NaNoWriMo! Valentine Joe and Rose in the Blitz author Rebecca Stevens is here to keep you motivated right to the end ... 

What would be your five top tips to budding writers?

1. Invest in some really special notebooks, the best you can afford. Then you'll feel you have to fill them up to justify the expense.

2. Keep one of your notebooks (I like big hard-backed ones with blank pages so I can scrawl and scribble and not feel constrained by the mean blue lines that make you feel you're at school and someone is going to pass judgement on your work) beside your bed and write for as long as you can bear to the minute you wake up. Then have breakfast.

3. Make sure you know how your story's going to end before you start. It might change as you go along, but if you don’t have somewhere to go you'll feel overwhelmed by the infinite number of possibilities and never write a word.

4. Write fast, as fast as you can, so you don't over-think. If you're not a quick typist write longhand. You can always type it up later. Then you can pretend someone else wrote it and be impressed at how really quite good it is.

5. Look on writing as a job, not a hobby. Hobbies can always be postponed, nobody cares. But if you don't turn up to do your job, you'll get the sack, your relationship will break down, you'll lose your house and before you know it, you and the children will be out on the streets, living off cheap cider and unsold prawn sandwiches from Pret a Manger. Is that what you want, now? Is it?

6. That little voice in your head that goes, 'That's rubbish that is, no-one will ever want to read that'? Tell it to shut up.

Sorry, that was 6.

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?

Think about the person or people you love most in the world. Your darling husband, your lovely wife. Your precious child. Your cat, perhaps. Right. Now, imagine that they will die horribly if you don’t write something. It will be your fault, and you will never, ever be able to forgive yourself for as long as you live. Easy!

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