Prefer the familiar word to the far-fetched. Prefer the concrete word to the abstract. Prefer the single word to the circumlocution. Prefer the short word to the long. Prefer the Saxon word to the Romance.

Love the work: the grind, the dreaming, the distracted not-sleep, all of it. It’s the one thing in the job that will always be there, and the real pleasure in the profession. Everything else is luck.

Don’t start right off writing the ‘Great American Novel’, that's too much pressure and you'll get disappointed; start with porn, it’s fun and a good way to get your feet wet.

Writers, that deep dark secret is not something you should hide from the world. It is your gift. Take it from memory and illuminate it in literature,shake the dust from it, unless it will get you arrested, lol.

Keep working. Keep trying. Keep believing. You still might not make it, but at least you gave it your best shot. If you don’t have calluses on your soul, this isn’t for you. Take up knitting instead.

Stay within the confines of your chosen topic. If you start to stray away from your topic and find an urge to showcase everything that you know, resist that urge. Remember that you are writing a book, not the book.

...writing allows us to reposition ourselves so we can see what is otherwise in our mental blind spots or those things about oneself and the world that we neither can see nor understand from the spot where we stand.

Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.

You can swap the message around, and whatever the particular norm is, or whatever the particular message is, when you put your pet-peeve message before story, odds are you are going to bore the shit out of your reader.

If you wish to be a writer– then write, and don’t allow anyone to tell you that you’re on the ‘wrong’ path. You know where you’re going, and each word you write gets you a step closer.

Do you think you’re not ‘ready’ to start that big story idea/project you’ve been thinking about forever?Jump in. Write anyway. The only way to make the impossible a reality is to take a leap of faith.

You cherry-pick events that are relevant to the story question and construct a gauntlet of challenge (read: the plot) that will force the protagonist to put his money where his mouth is. Think baptism by ever-escalating fire.

Personally, I am always more impressed by simplicity, clarity; it is the mark of a writer who knows his subject well and is secure enough not to 'lay it on' in the telling. Aim for complexity of thought, not expression.

The solution to entrapment in the narcissistic hothouse of self is to not relinquish autobiographical writing, but to expand the self by bringing one's curiosity to interface with more and more history and the present world.

In quickness is truth. The more swiftly you write, the more honest you are. In hesitation is thought. In delay comes the effort for a style, instead of leaping upon truth which is the only style worth deadfalling or tiger-trapping.