In many ways, having a knack for transitions is naturally because it is about what feels right more than following a given formula. However, the more you read the work of good writers, taking note of how they treat transitions, the better you will approach the matter yourself.

However, you must try not to let the act of jotting the word down conclude your relationship with it. Try and use each new entry in the coming days. Familiarise yourself with its meaning and use it wherever opportunity allows – in an email, in your own writing, at work, in conversation or even in a game of scrabble.

It might seem strange to use these words in such contexts and no doubt you’ll have to explain yourself for more elaborate examples, but simple use is the best way to ingrain them in your mind so that you have them ready when you need them.

What these errors show you is just how important proofreading is. When your next step is to send material to agents or publishers, you cannot afford to let any errors undermine the quality of your work.

Burnout prevents you from proofreading effectively. This does not just refer to your state of mind at the time of editing, but also to the number of times you have been exposed to the same material. You need someone else to help with your proofreading to do justice to your ideas.

However, you should remember that the best training for writing a novel is to get the thing written. If you read it back and feel at all happy with it, then you’ll know that there is something to work on. Getting that first novel written is about working with what you have, so let your creative talent take centre stage and try and focus on the fact that some of the most famous names have produced work that isn’t ostensibly ‘about’ anything.

Flash fiction is good for writers who can’t face the idea of embarking upon or continuing with a major project. Writing little stories and vignettes as short as a single paragraph can be enough to stave off a chronic case of literary inertia.

It sounds strange, but even putting some creative flair into your emails, letters and notes can help tap into the imaginative reserves stored somewhere upstairs.

As a starter, find some pieces of literature that are esteemed because of the way they handle sex. Then find some that are derided for their approach to it. Reading through these and comparing the two sets will give you a good idea of what works and what doesn’t.

When you’ve written a sex scene, read it back to yourself out loud and then ask someone else to read it through. Even people who aren’t avid readers can recognise a cheesy sex scene when they read it. If yours has the desired effect then include it, but if there’s any doubt then set it aside for redrafting.

Perhaps the most important thing with sex in fiction is to write with confidence. The more confident and unabashed you are in your style, the more convincing and authoritative the scene ought to turn out.

When you are reading, make sure to keep your vocab book handy to write down any words you’ve never heard or you simply want to make a note of and remember. This is particularly important when getting to grips with wordier texts and very challenging pieces of writing.

Even if you don’t commit all these words to memory, at least you have a record of them so that you can refer to them when you can’t find the words to express a particular thing.

Clichés might appear as sections of plot that use often-seen bits of action with characters that are too recognisable to feel original and exciting. However, they may also appear in a more granular sense.

Certain images and metaphors are considered very clichéd. If you feel you are using a term, phrase or image that you know you’ve seen before or that feels very familiar when you say it out loud then you might want to think of a new way of saying it.

The following stipulations usually come into play for all submissions:

• Double spacing
• Precise font and font size
• Page numbering
• Precise headings
• The inclusion of a synopsis, covering letter and CV
• Changing ‘justified’ margins to ‘left aligned’

Make sure you check the agent’s website so that you know their precise criteria beforehand. There’s no sense in ignoring these stipulations because they might count you out of the running before your work’s been looked at.

If you are trying to secure some work for a relatively high brow outfit, then it is no good submitting commercial writing or casual pieces of writing. You need to satisfy the organisation’s expectations or they will look somewhere else. The same goes for freelance work that is meant to have an academic vibe, an informal vibe or any other general style.

If you don’t have any samples of your work that fit the bill, then you should consider writing some. This will help you to expand your portfolio to cover all the bases.