Byline: Dave Simpson

It's early evening in Leeds and 200 young people are staring at a guitarist. But this isn't a gig. There's no lager, no dancing and no music. Stuart David, the bespectacled bass player from Belle & Sebastian, is reading from a novel. What's more, he wrote it.

Nalda Said is a work of fiction written by a pop star, and they're all at it. Not autobiographies full of glossy photos, but actual creative writing. Bono is preparing his magnum opus; Michael Stipe stays up late working on his; and the unlikely figure of Royal Trux rocker Neil Hagerty has penned a fantasy yarn called Victory Chimp. It's not just novels: the poetry compilation Oral features surprisingly readable prose from the likes of Nicky Wire of Manic Street Preachers, Robbie Williams, Jarvis Cocker, PJ Harvey, Shane MacGowan and many more. But it seems that fiction is where it's at. 'Any pop star who decides to take himself seriously wants to write fiction,' says the literary agent Cat Ledger. 'They think writing's cool.'

Their role models are the likes of Gil Scott-Heron, Leonard Cohen and Nick Cave, who have all written acclaimed novels. 'Cave's And the Ass Saw the Angel [published in 1988] was a superb book, truly exceptional,' says Mark Stanton of Edinburgh-based publishers Canongate. But can the new wave match it? 'I get scores of manuscripts,' says Ledger. 'Some of them are astonishingly bad , I mean unreadable. These are people whose writing career should fit through the middle of a Polo mint. Naming no names, of course, but as I see from my slush pile, most of them couldn't even write their own sleevenotes.'

Any pop star going into writing has the undoubted advantage of a 'name', something that should ensure that copies are sold. Stuart David sent three manuscripts unsuccessfully before the publishers IMP became aware that chapters of Nalda Said were appearing on his...