David Almond, the award-winning author of children’s books, including Skellig, Kit’s Wilderness, The Fire-Eaters, and Clay, agreed to be our inaugural honorary chair and offered this brilliant advice to undiscovered voices everywhere about writing and the struggle to be “discovered”.

David writes:
It starts with need, passion, a good deal of mystification. Something (what?) drives us. It says, ‘Write! Get to that desk! Stay at that desk! Keep writing! Don’t stop! Write better!’ So we write and sometimes we write something that makes us say, ‘Yes, that’s not bad. That’s the kind of thing I want to do.’ And we’re satisfied for a fragile fleeting moment. But then we write things that are hopeless, that make us feel just stupid. ‘That’s not what I meant! Look how utterly useless I am!’ And we rip it up and walk away, but somehow we find ourselves at the desk again, pen in hand, notebook open, computer switched on, cursor flashing awaiting the next word. We keep on writing. We try again. We try again. And the pages accumulate. And we dare to start to send things out into the world, to publishers and magazines and agents, and back they start to come, all the rejections, thudding down onto the doormat. ‘Oh, no! It’s true. I am hopeless. I’ll never ever be published!’ But do we stop? Do we heck! The thing (what?) shoves us back to the desk. Take no notice! Write! Keep writing! Write better! And through it all, through all the doubts and humiliations, we have to open up a little space inside ourselves in which a little fragment of ourselves can sit still and whisper, ‘It’s OK.’

Write because you love it. Stay calm. Don’t get angry. Don’t get bitter. Believe in yourself. Write your own words, your own visions. The doubters are wrong. One day, the right person at the right moment will read your work and say, ‘Aha!’

All writers, unless they’re very fortunate, know how difficult it is to get noticed, to become ‘discovered’. I became an ‘overnight success’ (I clapped when I read the review that said it) after almost twenty years: stories in obscure little magazines; a couple of story collections published by a tiny northeastern press; a novel rejected by every single UK publisher; a couple of dozen readers who loved my work; a part of me that said it all would work out well; and another part that simply didn’t give a damn. I wrote because I loved to write, and I’d keep on writing no matter how much recognition I received.

An important thing to know is that the world of publishers and agents that can seem so distant, so elusive, so impenetrable isn’t really so. They, too, know how difficult it is. After all, they spend their days rejecting manuscripts; they gaze wearily at their ever-mounting slush piles. But they also know that there will be magical moments when the manuscript arrives from an unknown name that stops them in their tracks, that makes them say, ‘Aha!’ And a new writer is suddenly discovered. It happens, and it keeps on happening.

It’s wonderful to have this brilliant anthology of work by ‘undiscovered’ writers, and to have it going out into the world. Congratulations to those selected, and to those who received an honorary mention. And fingers crossed that the ‘Aha!’ moment follows. To those who didn’t quite make it this time, remember that voice: ‘Stay calm. Write. One day, the right person at the right moment…’