Now for a bonus question: From your experience teaching creative writing, what is some advice you give your students?
The biggest piece of advice I would give them is: You just gotta finish stuff. A lot of people want to be writers. And a lot of people have really great ideas. And get their great ideas together and say, “Wow! I think this could be a book.” Then they start on it and for various reasons, they stop. One of the main reasons is they get discouraged because it’s not turning out as they want it to turn out, or they get distracted by another really great idea they’ve just had, or they want to go back and keep revising this initial stuff that they’ve written. And you’ve got to finish. You won’t understand how to be a writer until you actually finish a book. And you’ve got to remember that nobody starts off being perfect. And it’s that process of writing books that aren’t so good that teaches you how to write books that are good. No one expects to sit down and play the piano perfectly the first time. Yet a lot of people sit down and try to write the perfect book the first time. So, my biggest piece of advice to them is: Sit down, write, finish a book. And that will teach you how to write a good book.
Ah. That’s some good advice.
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