7. Be a generous storyteller

“You don’t need to be a ‘good’ person to be a good writer – I think that can be disproven many times over. But I think a good writer is generous, both to their characters and to their readers. Being generous to your readers means treating them as their most intelligent, wonderful selves: not over-explaining references or jokes, or feeding them thoughts. When a writer is telling me what to think, I always trust them a little less.

“Being generous to your characters is about presenting them in the best possible way, even with all their flaws and faults. For example, one of the specifics I’m asked about often is dialogue, which can be tricky. In Come And Get It, I use the exact vernacular that students at my university would use, but real people include hundreds more ‘Ohmygods’ and ‘likes’ than you could ever put on the page, it would just overload the reader. So a generous representation of that toes the line between writing like people really speak, and not stripping out the idiosyncrasies completely.”

8. Get strict with time-boxing

“The concept of time-boxing has become very helpful for managing a life that’s built around writing. A lot of writing is working other jobs to make sure that you can continue to write, and I think learning how to compartmentalise the other things you have to do – and want to do, like hanging out with friends – is really important so you can have pure, unfiltered writing time. Saying firmly, ‘OK, I’m going to work on this thing for half an hour and then it’s writing time for two hours.’ Learning how to put stuff down even if it’s not perfect so that you can go and give quality time to your writing – that is a skill that I had to get used to but which has been invaluable.

“The final thing I will say on time is that we need to understand that our brains almost always work better in the morning. I know we all want to be that romantic, enigmatic writer typing away at night, but it’s not good for us, our minds are winding down. Unfortunately, writers need to embrace the morning.”

Come And Get It by Kiley Reid (£16.99, Bloomsbury) is out now

“Likeable characters are a waste of time”: 8 need-to-know writing tips from bestselling author Kiley Reid