True, everyone has a story to tell: we all carry around the narrative of our lives. But very few of those narratives would make a good book and, more to the point, no matter how rich the material, very few of us will be able to turn it into successful entertainment or art. Writing is painful, lonely and often, when the words won’t come, excruciatingly boring. As the brilliant poet Sean O’Brien (winner of this year’s Forward Prize for an unprecedented third time) recently said, writing is more ‘an affliction’ than a career. It requires a level of self-discipline that few of us possess and a strong tolerance for solitude. Years ago, when I was working at Penguin, a young author whose first novel was the sensation of its time, making him, theoretically, Penguin’s highest paid ‘employee’, was finding the experience of producing his second book so miserable that he asked if he could come into the office to do work experience, such was his craving for human contact.

And of course you also need to have talent. The degree to which this matters is much debated. Certainly some with a small measure of talent have worked hard and taken it a long way, while others, prodigiously gifted, have squandered it. How do you measure writing talent anyway? It’s probably impossible to do so. The one constant I have observed though – in every successful writer I’ve had contact with – is that, before they began to learn how to write, they learned how to read. Wonderful writers they all may be, but they first became the world’s best readers. When I meet would-be writers and ask them about their reading, it is their answer that most reveals their chances.

Whatever one decides – to keep pursuing the dream, or to embrace, and be liberated by, the fact that you probably don’t have a book in you – what we can all become, and what we always need more of, is great readers. And that’s something that is its own reward.

[Andrew Kidd works at Picador]