Writer's story

If children's author Gail Carson Levine were to have a motto it would surely be 'If at first you don't succeed, try again, and again, and again'.

For nearly a decade the New York State-based illustrator turned writer struggled to get her work published.

Back in the late 1980s, her first manuscript, an art appreciation book for children, was rejected.

This prompted her to join a class on writing and illustrating for children.

It was then she turned her back on illustration in pursuit of writing - a process she admits to enjoying far more than drawing.

For nine years everything she wrote was rejected until one day she received a frantic phone call from a literary agent to whom she had sent the manuscript for her first book Ella Enchanted.