"I always read when I'm writing - Stephen King calls it "refilling the word well" - and I often re-read my favorite authors and my favorite books. Finding a chapter or scene I love and really analysing how the author put their sentences and descriptions and paragraphs...
"Revision is your friend. Nobody writes a perfect first draft. It's in the rewrites where you turn an ordinary story into something special. Don't be so in love with your words that you're afraid to cut them. If they don't serve the story, they have to go. It doesn't...
"One of the most important things I've learned during my years trying to get published is that things in publishing happen very fast or very, very slowly. Sometimes I was so keen to follow up on a lead or a request that I'd forget to take a deep breath, read through...
"Figure out what kind of story you want to tell and stick to it. Cross too many genre barriers and the booksellers won't know where to shelve you. Begin as you mean to continue. If you start out with snarky comedy, don't end up with a chainsaw toting serial killer....
"Don't worry about the distractions. I don't mean telling the kids not to interrupt your writing time unless there is fire or blood. I mean the writing-borne distractions. Don't spend your time worrying about the perfect opening line or scene, the perfect title, the...
"Celebrate everything. Probably seems like a strange writing tip, but in this business we take a lot of knocks and hard hits. It’s important to keep your spirits up, and one way to do that is to keep a bottle of champagne (or whatever you celebrate with) handy at all...
"The best tip given to me when I started my writing career is…BE PROFESSIONAL. From your first query letter to your follow-up thank you that you send after receiving a rejection. Publishers, editors, and reviewers will remember how professional you acted. You want...
"My advice is to give yourself permission to suck when you're generating the first draft. You can worry about making it beautiful and flawless in revisions, but the first draft isn't meant to be perfect. I know if I don't give myself permission to write dreck, my...
"My best advice if you're starting out is sit down and write a whole book from page one to the end. That will teach you more than anything else, wonderful as the resources available to a writer are. Don't listen to the siren call of a new idea when you hit the...
