Drive forward author's brief career (5)
I believe the answer is:
impel
'drive forward' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'author's brief career' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite understand how this works, but
'author's' could be 'im' ('I am' referring to the author of the crossword) and 'im' is present in the answer.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for impel that I've seen before include "Motivate" , "Press on - drive forward" , "Constrain" , "'Drive, force (5)'" , "Send or drive forward" .)