Let’s cut to the chase. Most literary fiction teachers have sold bugger-all books. They’re not in Premier League. They’re Leigh RMI or Farnsborough, languishing at the bottom of Third division.

And you want these people to help you write a novel? Get real.

In Australia, the only top shelf writing teacher is JM Coetzee at what’s left of Adelaide university.

In my old home town of Melbourne, there’s a sorry arsed coterie of failed literary fiction writers who earn a crust as parasites, by advising young and better writers, how to write.

For Christ’s sake kids, avoid them like the plague.

I knew one of these ‘writers’. He kept writing about Europe, maybe dreaming of his Eastern European homeland. Thought he was Proust. He was unreadable. He was also had a plasticine spine.

The young writers who sit at their feet are infected by the flaws of these Third division failures.

They repeat not only their mistakes but risk having their ‘baby’ shunted to the remainder pile, if it’s published at all.

This is called a non-virtuous circle. Believe it.