My Voice - Or Something Like It...

I've really enjoyed reading the other Girlfriends' posts on how they learned their craft of writing.

Isn't it funny (annoying) when someone tells you, "Oh, you write novels? I always thought that was easy. I could do it in a weekend?" On the outside, I'm reasonably courteous and say things like, "You should give it a shot," instead of, "Well, once you grow a pair and decide you can write a plot that lasts 300 pages - something people actually want to read, and then have the dedication to spend several months working on it - let me know."

What was I talking about? Oh yeah, writing. I think the hardest part of learning to write for me was finding my voice. I tried the usual rookie move - writing to sound like other published writers - because hey, that's what sells, right? Okay, so you probably know the result - I failed big time. Turns out I can't write a historical like Johanna Lindsey or a Harlequin Intrigue like BJ Daniels.

I could string sentence together and spell like a demon. But until I found my true voice, I had no idea what I was doing. It wasn't until my fourth manuscript that I started writing like, well, like me.

I'm not sure why this is such a difficult lesson to learn. And maybe I'm the only one who had trouble with it. When they say "write what you know," I think they might be wrong. It should be, "write like you are." At least, that's how I see it.

How about you? Did you find your voice easily?

Leslie Langtry

Say Cheese!!! by Jenny Gardiner

All I wanted was a family picture. Seemed a simple enough concept. All the kids were home for the summer for the first time in years; the time was right. So I contacted a photographer friend, who does wonderful work, and set up a date. In hindsight, two things for which I am grateful regarding this photo session: that this photographer is a miracle worker, and that we didn't bring the rabbit. More on that later.

With my family's complicated schedules, we could fix on exactly one time that would work for all. Because I also needed a promo shot of me with my dogs for a dog anthology in which I am a contributor, I suggested we bring the dogs along. After all, how much trouble could they be?

The last time I had the kids' pictures taken together, my then-middle school-aged son sported straggly long hair à la Leif Garrett in Tiger Beat Magazine, circa 1977, only straighter. Our warnings he'd one day regret that hairstyle (like his father had his) fell on deaf ears. Don’t you know that he's never forgiven us for photographically preserving (on the living room wall, no less) the world's lamest hairdo?

This year he returned home after living overseas for half a year with a buzz cut. Argh. Meantime everyone was worried about coordinating outfits. Now, I'm no fashionista. I have the design sense of a toddler and would be best left with matching Garanimals clothing on a good day. So for me to be at the helm of matching the clothes for my gang was downright laughable. Yet they (daughters in particular) kept pressing me for what to wear. What to wear? For me, when all else fails, throw on a sweatshirt or something pink. Works for slopping around the house, but not so much for a family portrait (or for the guys in the group). Plus, not like we could all have donned pink and been done with it--we'd have looked like a bad attempt at resurrecting the Partridge Family.

So rather than commit, I stalled, thus generating more stress than making a choice would have caused. As the appointment grew nearer my older daughter got downright ornery with my lack of command of the situation. It wasn't till I had one foot in the car to go to the shoot that we finalized our "look", if you can call it that: A mishmash of near-clashing colors that could possibly coordinate if people wearing them stood far, far away from each other. If I didn't look so dreadfully bad in a t-shirt I'd have made an executive decision for us all to wear Hanes white T's. Thank goodness I saw a family doing this at the beach only a week earlier; they looked downright ridiculous.

Which brings me to the beach. We'd just returned from a last-minute seashore respite. Long days in the ocean meant we were all tanned, me in particular. Mayhaps too tan? My husband called me Magda, the overfried, leather-fleshed old gal from the movie There's Something About Mary. If you've not seen this flick, just know that this was not said with flattery in mind. Despite my vigilant application of #50 sunscreen, I looked like one of those decrepit Florida trailer park retirees who sprawl out in rusty-hinged nylon-webbed chaise lounges holding a reflector pan beneath their chin to assure even sun coverage. I imagined someone unearthing our family picture in 100 years and wondering what was wrong with me. Or why the photographer screwed up the coloring on just one person.

Okay, so the over-tan was a done deal, nothing I could do about it. Yet another thing I hadn't considered was I'd be at work all day, not having time to shower and fix myself up again. Which meant I had that end-of-the-day life-sag working against me. Plus my mascara seeped in rivulets from the rims of my eyes just from the sweaty trek to my parked car, some six blocks from work. I tried to do the half-baked make-up repair job to no avail, only succeeding in stabbing my brow with tweezers, leaving a bleeding red mark behind.

Next, my son and husband neglected to mention they needed to have clothes ironed at the last minute. Which meant me ironing in a Hades-esque sewing room (on a 100-degree day), causing the sheen of perspiration on my face to turn into a stream. Sweat dripped into my eyes, and my clothes wilted like a dead bouquet. I felt much like the dehydrated stink bug I kept staring at, which had clearly taken its last dying gasp stuck in a piece of fabric hanging from the wall of my sewing room.
In our race to get out the door, we forgot to feed the dogs. Bad idea. The only good idea was nixing my daughter's pleas to bring her pet rabbit. I could only imagine the trauma that would have ensued if that skittish creature had fled her clutches for the danger of a giant open field. He'd have been a Twinkie treat for a hovering hawk.

When we arrived at Jen's gorgeous farm, she reminded Kyle of his previous 'do. "Weren't you the one with the bad Tom Petty hair?" she asked. He was not amused, though we all laughed. From Tom Petty to Sargeant Carter (Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.) in one fell swoop. At least the buzz looked way better than the old Irish Setter look. Speaking of dogs…

As luck would have it, both dogs were blowing their coats, meaning they were shedding enough fur to make up two more complete dogs. You could barely see the black in my shorts through the haze of dog fur left on me.

The dogs loved the farm. Especially the photographer's cat, which they only wanted to chase to kill. That is when they weren't pulling at their leashes to get at any other number of exciting things a farm offers unfamiliar canines. And cooperation wasn't at its finest with the two of them starving for that kibble they wanted. A hungry dog is not a compliant dog, I've learned. So we jammed together as best we could for various shots, dogs climbing over us, drooling, pausing to leave, um, deposits, nearby (forcing us to shift further away). One dog pointed one way, the other pointed the other. At one point I had dog fur in my mouth and eyes.
And yet when we got the proofs back, miracle of miracles, there were hundreds of lovely photographs. And the great thing is, we'll end up laughing for years to come about the fiasco of a photo shoot that turned out well after all.

Please join me in celebrating the launch of Wade Rouse's humorous dog anthology I'M NOT THE BIGGEST BITCH IN THIS RELATIONSHIP, a fundraiser for which 50% goes to the Humane Society of the US. It features a top-tier list of author-humorists and a foreword by Chelsea Handler's dog Chunk.

Threads between my toes, teeth and fingers

by Michele Young-Stone

author of The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors

Do you need a degree in creative writing to write and publish a novel?

Probably not. But I did. I’ve been writing stories since I was in the second grade, but quitting my full-time job as an English teacher and returning to school at age 31, was exactly what I needed. This was a huge risk. When I told people, “I’m going back to school full time so I can write and publish a novel,” they thought I was bonkers.

I thought I was bonkers! But I also thought, This is my dream. This has been my dream since I was in the second grade: to write and publish a novel. If I don’t go for it now, when am I going to do it?

I have endless ideas. My brain has always been wonky and wobbly and full of wonderful tangents and tendencies toward alliteration. What I lacked were craft basics and nuances. I knew well-enough how to put my ideas on paper. I just didn’t know how to keep going (faith) past page 100. I didn’t know how to set the tone of a work (practice) or how to examine each sentence and each word, line by line for effectiveness and aesthetics (more practice). Nor did I fully comprehend or execute the time-tested SHOW DON’T TELL (now permanently tattooed on my brain).

All that said, the best part about learning craft and learning rules is gaining the freedom to break those rules. It’s like painting. Picasso and Van Gogh had to learn form. They painted nudes, still-lifes and landscapes. They learned their craft. Only after learning craft were they free to experiment and find their own visions. It’s no different with writing.

You have to learn the rules, whether it’s through an MFA program or reading voraciously, before you can find your own style, which may or may not include breaking the rules. For example, I do not write linearly. It’s not how my brain works. It’s not how I perceive the world. It’s not my style. I write like a weaver. I have threads between my teeth, fingers and toes and then I have to figure out how they fit together. Time is not linear. It’s about relationships. Who do you tie yourself to? How do you fit?

I worked HARD when I was getting my MFA. The more criticism I received, the harder I worked. I listened; paid attention; volunteered to produce and critique whenever possible. In other words, I was not fucking around. I wasn't there to just get a degree. I was there to learn craft and discipline. And after school finished, I had my beautiful son. Well, I had my son in March, 2005 and graduated in May. I wore my baby Bjorn to graduation.

I spent the next four years raising my son and trying to publish The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors, my debut novel. All that criticism from my MFA served me well.

When they knock you down, you get back up. You revise and revise and revise because it's never perfect. I revised and revised and revised. It will never be perfect. There will always be one line or one word or one brush stroke that can be better.

But that's enough about me! What’s your style? What have you learned about writing? Did you get an MFA? Did it serve you well? Are you self-taught? Are you happy, published or not, putting your ideas on paper?

That's the main thing: If you don't love the act of writing for the sake of doing it, you should find a new line of work. The glory is in the act.

Thank you for reading. Shout out to Bill Tester for helping me to understand the beauty of the act. There is nothing more important.

*My next two novels, Perfect Birds and The Saints of Los Vientos are under contract with Simon and Schuster.

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Becoming A Pro

by Maggie Marr



'There is a big difference between playing the piano at home and being a concert pianist much like there is a large difference between writing because you love it and being paid to write.' --Monica Poole

This cycle on The Girlfriends Book Club we're discussing learning to write. Who, what, when, where and HOW we learned to become professional writers. The above piece of wisdom was given to me many years ago by the moderator of the first critique group I joined. A brilliant bit of pith that I clung to along the arduous path up the mountain to publication.

The thing about writing is that anyone can write but very few write well. We are taught to write as children. We create stories, book reports, research papers, term papers, and essays. A great portion of our academic career is dedicated to the conveyance of ideas through the written word.

And yet...after college and graduate school I found I knew very little about writing.

There are certain rules to writing a novel. There will be characters. These characters will embark on some kind of journey (plot) whether it be interior (literary fiction) or exterior (genre fiction) or a bit of both. This story will take place somewhere (setting) and the characters will discuss what takes place (dialogue). Now as all readers and writers know there are exceptions to all these rules. I get it. I am sure each of you could point out great works that stray from these elements but you would admit that generally these are the elements present in most works of fiction.

The tricky bit is knowing how to fit all these elements together to formulate a cohesive story that not only readers want to read but that they will shell out dollars for. Because, that, the shelling out of hard-earned cold cash for your creative endeavors, (at least in our capitalist society) is what makes you a pro.

To put the puzzle together isn't easy. In fact it takes most of us years of practice and *ahem* multiple failed attempts before we actually have a piece of writing that anyone (other than our mom) would want to read. I've been a fiction writer since second grade (don't make me tell you how many years). I won awards for my prose throughout my years in school. It wasn't until after law school that I began a serious pursuit of writing a novel. It was in fact 11 years, one marriage, two children, and three careers later that I finally could call myself a published novelist.

How did I get there? First hard work. You can not call yourself a writer unless you write. Seems so simple, yes? You must put your butt in the chair and tippity-tap (or for you old schoolers scribble) the words onto the page. The professional writers I know write on a consistent ie daily basis. You must be willing to be critiqued. As much as I fall in love with my own words (and believe me this is a curse not a blessing) time has taught me they aren't nearly as beauteous as my eyes believe (more like odious in the first draft). You have to take the criticism to get better. And you have to take the criticism to get pubbed. What a shock when the editor that loved your manuscript enough to buy it sends you a ten page editorial letter telling you all the things that must be changed in your manuscript. Remember you and your editor and your critique partners have the same goal: To make your manuscript better. Take their advice. (Especially the editor.) I've found that editors are right about changes and edits 99.9% of the time.

Finally, realize that writing is a craft. Which means you will never master the art of writing. You will craft a piece of work. You will hopefully get better with each piece and your readership will grow. The true challenge of this profession is that you realize there is no guarantee. Each time you sit down to craft a new piece of fiction you earn your audience, you earn the sales of your book, you earn your contract, and you earn your paycheck. A blank page one is the first day of a new job, but what an exciting job it is.

What about you? How did (or do) you pursue your dream job?


Maggie Marr is a full time writer. She is the author of Hollywood Girls Club and Secrets of The Hollywood Girls Club. Her short story 'Dashing Through The Snow' will appear in Sleigh Ride: A Winter Anthology 11/11/11. Her first classic romance Can't Buy Me Love fka The Billionaire's Proud Mistress (runner up in the 2009 Harlequin Presents contest) will publish March 2012. She also writes for film and tv. Maggie is currently at work on a new book. You can follow her and her pursuit of the perfect book at www.maggiemarr.com, facebook, twitter, and any other place writers may be found.

Goodnight Irene, an American Standard & New England Blues

By Laura Spinella

I should have listened to Mother. She’s waited 40 plus years for those words, so I’m guessing this is a banner day for her. My mother is 80 plus, sharper than most people half her age, and spends a lot of time keeping vigil over the weather. Mother is particularly tuned into areas of the country where her children and grandchildren live. She can give you up to the minute forecasts on expected spikes in humidity, as well as the wind shears you might experience at your local airport.
Last Saturday, she warned me. She said Irene was headed north with a projected path that would, in fact, encompass my stretch of Massachusetts. She was not alone in this prediction with any Boston weather person and state-of-the-art computer models backing her up. But living in New England, a place where the last hint of snow departed the Stop & Shop parking lot around Memorial Day, I was not impressed. Hurricanes, when they arrived this far north, wreaked havoc on Martha’s Vineyard and Cape Cod, maybe the South Shore. Past experience said the big story would be four inches of Tom Nevers private beachfront lost, a place I will never visit. Of course, there’d be a human interest piece centering on some idiot who thought it would be fun to outwit Mother Nature and ride the wave. He’d wash ashore a few days after the storm, and that would be the brunt of Irene’s wrath. While I didn’t plan on taking a swim, I also couldn’t be bothered. I was knee deep in revisions for THE IT FACTOR, and I had Red Sox tickets for Saturday’s game—an entire day before Irene was set to arrive. I didn’t take it as a hint, but more of an inconvenience when they cancelled Sunday’s game, squishing mine into a doubleheader. Mother was not pleased, positive that I should be making preparations, stocking up on batteries, if not powdered milk.
“It will be a little wind and rain, Mother, here and gone five or ten years before I am desperate enough to drink powdered milk.”
“Fine,” she replied. “Have a nice time at your baseball game.”
Mother never did care much for sports.
Everything was fine. We were amused by the band on Yawkey Way, replacing Sweet Caroline with a one-time rendition of Goodnight Irene. We had seats under the grandstand, so when 7th inning sprinkles began to fall we were content and dry. Come the 8th inning, they called a rain delay. The score being nine to three, we decided to head home. Somewhere along Boylston Street, the sprinkle turned into a downpour, and I did mention to my husband that I had no idea the left lane of the Mass Pike could flood so quickly. But it was just rain, a lot of rain far into Sunday morning. I was actually pleased when I got up, glad to see a pesky kitchen ceiling leak was finally conquered. “Would you look at that!” I said to Matt. “Not even Irene could infiltrate your patch job!” Satisfied, I retreated to the bedroom, laptop in hand. It was raining harder and the wind took on the look of a real Nor’easter, which was fine with me. Writing in bad weather is my zone. I had just settled into that elusive place, the one where words morph into some sort of original and cohesive order, when cohesiveness became a problem. From the corner of my eye, a wall of black flapped against the window and disappeared. While the Grim Reaper jumped to mind, I dismissed it. Surely that would include searing pain or the telltale life flashing before your eyes. Neither was present. The wind gusted again, this time in less of a Nor’easter fashion and more like pre Oz. The rising wall of black was the flat roof that topped our sunroom, visible from the bedroom window. Still, I wasn’t particularly disturbed. It’s an old house—vintage—it’s a vintage house if you’re looking buy. Anyway, a few minutes later, Matt was on the roof with a cement block, pinning down the corner. It was fine.
With all decent concentration lost, I headed downstairs. Passing by a window, I did stop to marvel at the flexibility of oak trees; I’d no idea they could bend at a forty-degree angle. For another twenty minutes we went about our business while Irene went about hers. Pissed off bitch, that was my conclusion as a violent swish shuddered through the house. Everybody looked in different directions, thinking downed tree or flying porch furniture. It could have been anything, but it turned out to be the sunroom roof, now a projectile, landing on the front patio. And what did I hear next? I heard the one thing any dismissive daughter would. I heard Mother. “I told you so!” We spent the next hour communing with Irene via our sunroom roof, or what was left of it. A fast layer of tarpaper was no match, eventually dragging the pool cover to the roof and securing it with cement blocks. Human flagpoles, that’s what we were, standing twenty feet off the ground in seventy mile an hour winds. Forget the rain, I now have an inkling of what it is to be lost at sea, water slapping from every direction, so much so that you couldn’t see a rescue chopper if it hovered overhead. As it was, I expected our giant pine tree to impale us with one of its many jagged branches. Eventually, we secured the roof and congratulated each other on how we braved Irene and won—or at least managed. What we didn’t consider was that, by then, Irene had made her way into the sunroom. Aptly renamed the rain-room, we proceeded to gather towels and buckets, sopping up the mess. An hour into that, just as we sliced the last hole in blistered ceiling paint, like draining an abscess, the lights went out. Okay, not totally unexpected at this point. My sister, on Long Island, also lost power and we played cell tag, betting who might get theirs back first. I thought it would be a slam dunk win for me. It was not to be. On Monday she phoned to gloat, standing in her well lit kitchen, cooking at her stove, making use of the cold items in her refrigerator. Power here only came by way of prayer, the National Grid variety unavailable for another four days. So what was the lesson in the wake of Irene? Well, as people like say after mid-grade car accidents and weather like this, “Just be glad everyone was okay.” I suppose that’s true, but I think my message was more personal: If you’re not going to listen to your weather person, at least listen to your mother.

Why Life Should Be More Like Hockey

by Susan McBride

I’ve been going to hockey games ever since my first date with Ed six years ago (that's a picture of him playing in his league's tournament last year!). I used to think of the sport the same way Carla Moss does in The Cougar Club:

“You’re equating hockey with fun?” Carla looked at Kat like she’d lost her mind. “Watching a bunch of overgrown boys pummel each other with sticks? Do any of them still have their own teeth? How does that saying go, ‘I went to a fight and a hockey game broke out’?”

Since Ed gets season tickets to the St. Louis Blues games and since he plays in a local league, I’ve witnessed an abundance of hockey since I met him. I still don’t understand the rules completely, but now I can see why so many love the sport. And the better I grasp the finesse involved, the more I realize that the world might be a much nicer place if it borrowed a few rules from ice hockey. I know, I know, that sounds bizarre, but stick with me. Listen to my suggestions, and I think you’ll see the logic, too.

First things first, dealing with other human beings can be tough as not everyone’s on the up and up. Think of life as a playground where bullies thrive on ruining everyone else’s fun and plenty of folks try to skirt the rules. I don’t believe that all adults are grown-ups any more than I believe Alexander Ovechtkin is a choir boy (he’s a forward for the Washington Senators and, last season, he earned a two game suspension for checking a Chicago player against the boards and breaking his ribs and his clavicle). Two politicians from opposing parties can’t stand within spitting distance without name-calling these days. I’ve watched parents fight over hard to come by Christmas gifts in Target.

Although at least hockey players are outfitted for the rough stuff, unlike the rest of us who don’t suit up before we get in our cars and deal with idiots on cell-phones behind the wheel who seem determined to run us off the road. Or the ladies in the supermarket who seemed to have learned cart etiquette from bumper cars and seem intent on running over our feet or banging into us. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a ref on the road or in the produce department who could blow a whistle and call a foul when appropriate?

Instead of hearing that so-and-so lied about you or whispered nasty gossip behind your back, wouldn’t it be great to just throw down your gloves and start pummeling each other until there’s blood drawn or someone ends up on the ice…er, the floor? Wouldn’t it feel better just to man-up and take care of business face to face; then, once you’re finished, you get up, shake it off, and go back to the rat race?

And for times when folks are just taking the game of life too danged seriously and need to lighten up, how about a little intermission, like in hockey when the Pee Wees appear on the ice and skate around to “Peanuts” music? Maybe we should all be forced to run around the playground for five minutes with pre-school kids who haven’t realized how stressful their lives are going to get once they graduate, get jobs, get married, have kids, get fired, lose their house, et al. A couple quick games of hopscotch or a few times across the monkey bars, and perhaps we’ll remember that life should be FUN sometimes. It isn’t all about working and struggling and trying to prove ourselves. We can listen to their laughter and remind ourselves what joy and passion feel like and vow never to lose them.

See what I mean? If the real world were more like a hockey game, we might all have less angst to carry around in our over-sized purses. Just remember to dress appropriately and, if you break any rules or just plain don’t cooperate, you will be tied to the middle of the ice and flattened by the Zamboni.

Susan McBride is the author of Little Black Dress, a tale of two sisters, one daughter, and the magical black dress that changes all their lives forever (William Morrow Paperbacks, August 23, 2011). She has also penned The Cougar Club, a mystery series, and several novels for young adults. Visit her web site at http://SusanMcBride.com for more info.

How I Learned to Be a Writer

By Sandra Novack

1) I copied.

I never aspired to be a writer until my late twenties. But during teen years when I seemed to always be tucked away in my bedroom, I developed a love affair with poetry. The words were so precise, so sublime, that it wasn't enough to simply read the poems. That was too passive. I had to write them down, obsessively. I'd pen the poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay ("I knew her for a little ghost that in my garden walked"), Thomas Hardy ("We stood by a pond that winter day/And the sun was white as though chidden of God"), Walt Whitman ("I wandered lonely as a cloud"), Robert Frost ("Tree at my window, window tree"), until I had a book of poetry that I'd copied, until the lines and rhythms and worlds of other writers were part of my mind, heart, and fingers.

Now I think, What a great idea. Copy a few stories, poems, pages, word for word. Get a feel for form, language, rhythm, without all the obsessing and worrying (they aren't your stories, after all, but others). All writers agree that reading is essential in order to write, yet few think about actual copying. Still most art forms take advantage of it. Line by line, novice painters sketch the work of established ones to better understand the possibilities inherent in shape, form, and color. Composers study masters. Yet many writers cling to the idea of the "original" voice, style, and plot. This is also true in terms of finding influences and inspiration. For example, the stories of Richard Bausch owe influence to Carver. If we look at Carver, we can find Hemingway and Anderson. Eudora Welty's "No Place for You, My Love" clearly borrows techniques from Virginia Woolf. Cormac McCarthy's sentences and plots owe at least an influence to Faulkner. All writing aspires to, or pushes against, other works of literature. Nothing takes place in isolation.

2) For a long while I wrote in the direction opposite my bad habits.

I still have bad habits. All writers do. But during my MFA, I had no concept of what made a story. Despite this, I'd inflict upon my adviser thirty page 'short' stories that fell apart by page four. My adviser was not happy about this. He gave me this little two-page story by Grace Paley called "Wants." Surprise, he wanted me to COPY it, word for word, to get a feel for what she was doing. For how clean her sentences were, how direct, how very unlike my circuitous ones. Then he told me to write a two-page story in the same style as Grace's. Focus on a couple, an interaction. Stick to the present moment, dialogue, without relying on another bad habit, lapsing into back story and hoping that would carry the plot. Keep it simple. It's harder than it looks, he assured me. When I got that down, then he said I could start adding the three-to-six other narrative threads I wanted to. "By the way," he told me. "I predict you'll be a novelist."

So I wrote a hell of a lot of short, short stories--two to five pages. I wrote in the style of a whole lot of writers, most notably Carver. My first real short stories scream of his influence, so much so that my adviser eventually ended up telling me to cool it on Carver already. (Is there any way to make teachers happy? Geesh.) The practice, however, was useful. Writing in a style not natural to my own taught me cleaner lines, more direct thoughts, tighter plots. It gave me a solid base, from which I could eventually extend. And Carver is a master of repetition, rhythm--a thing I still cling to. Sometimes when I can't get my crap together on the page, I cut threads. I remind myself: Go back to basics. Present moment, conflict interaction, clean lines, dramatic action. I hear my adviser say, "Keep it simple." Simple is decidedly ambitious many times.

3) I developed a healthy balance between saying, "Great point! I'll revise for that" and "Fuck you. It's my story."

To be a writer, and more importantly to keep writing, a writer has to find a way to cut out a lot of noise. Despite how much you have studied and learned and written, readers, critics, and friends will always weigh in with their take on your work. Opinions are, as they say, plentiful. But at the end of the day, you have to trust yourself, your writing, and your vision. This doesn't mean you tune everything out. In one regard, a writer has to be open to criticisms and advice, or she'd never grow. But, on the other hand, if a writer revises and doubts her vision and craft every time someone says something remotely negative, she’d stop writing, or go nuts. Not everyone will love everything. And that's OK. And really, not everyone knows what's best. The Zen of a 'fuck you attitude' keeps writers alive in the game. It keeps them writing beyond the first book.

4) I never stopped being a person learning to write.

Obvious but true. Every single time I pick up a book, I am reading as a writer and learning new tricks. Time compression, narrative flow, point of view, image patterns, everything. My best mentors today are still other writers, and their books.

Credit image: Woman Writing Letters by Charles Dana Gibson