Aspiring Novelists, Take Hope!

Let Stuart Hill inspire you:

Surrounded by best-sellers in the bookshop where he works, Stuart Hill spent years trying in vain to write his own masterpiece. Forever encircled by the literary triumphs of others, the frustrated novelist was on the point of giving up. Then, after staging a ceremonial burning of all his rejection slips from unimpressed publishers, the soft-spoken Hill decided on one last throw of the literary dice. Now, after two years spent tapping out a children's fantasy on the bookshop computer when there were no customers around, he has hit the jackpot. In a publishing industry revelling in hype, Hill is being hailed as the new JK Rowling and Hollywood is eager to film "The Cry of the Icemark", a page-turning tale of werewolves and vampires being published on Monday. Determined to keep his feet on the ground, the 46-year-old plans to retain his 11,000 pounds a year job as bookshop assistant in the provincial English town of Leicester.

(link via Bookninja) And he has even gone and won a prize And then there is Helen Oyeyemi who didn't even know she was writing a book