Jami Attenberg, Roxane Gay, Alex Chee, and other novelists explain how to write a book. The first trick is: You have to write a 1000 words every day. The second trick is: You have to have fun.

Over the decades that I’ve been a professional writer, dozens of people have told me they want to write a book about their inner and outer lives as cabbies, baristas, pet sitters, pizza ...

However, if you really want to write a bestseller, then ignore Ms Steel and other novelists. Because the book that sold the most copies in America in the past ten years was by none of them.