I have a question for both of you: with your writing, what is the most difficult thing and has it evolved as you’ve grown?
Most difficult for me was to learn how to revise. I was not a natural reviser, and my books didn’t start getting to publishable level until I learned actually how to do that. I didn’t know how to take something good and make it better.
You know, I would say a lot the same. The other thing for me, early on was realizing that it’s like any other thing that you do, that you have to practice. If you’re a musician, you don’t just sit down and play a concerto, and it’s okay to do things badly. I like to tell people that you need to dare to fail spectacularly. I was told early on: don’t try and write great big epic stuff. Don’t try to write best— because bestsellers, when you get into the depths of publishing, ‘bestseller’ exists as its own genre. There are elements of what make a bestseller. And I’ve been told: don’t try and write that kind of a book. And I ignored all of that. And what it meant was, I wrote a lot of stuff that I threw away. And that was the other thing that I learned: it’s okay. You can write stuff and put it away. I think it’s Heinlen that said, “The first million words don’t count.” It’s all practice.
He just gave you very, very good advice.
So write a million words and then it’s okay to feel like you should be publishing something. Till you hit a million words, it’s okay.
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