When Megan Tudehope decided, aged 40, to write her first novel, she started reading and watching anything and everything that might teach her how, and she noticed a common theme: people talking about how they’d wanted to be authors their whole lives, and had been writing since childhood; who had written their first novels in their 20s, if not their teens. Tudehope, who grew up convinced she couldn’t draw or paint and therefore wasn’t a creative person, never thought to write a novel in her 20s—but she did have an idea for one.