I once wrote a pretty dreadful short story and most unfairly sent it to a successful writer friend, asking what he thought. "I think you wrote it for yourself," he astutely observed. It was a long time before I understood what he meant. Writing for one's self rather than for the reader is perhaps the biggest and easiest trap for the aspiring author to fall into, and one that must be avoided at all costs, for the inevitable result is that you will alienate and bore the reader. A writer is a storyteller first and last, and the story and the audience are all. Storytelling - and this applies as much to non-fiction as it does to fiction - is a skill like any other. Some people are naturally better at it than others, but even they need to practise it constantly in order to improve. So if at first you don't succeed...