1. Great writ­ing involves great risk—the risk of ter­ri­ble writ­ing. Writ­ing that involves no risk is mere­ly forgettable—utterly.
   
2. When you fail—and you will total­ly fuck­ing fail—don’t fail to learn. Then you can’t real­ly fail at all. That’s the best way to approach writ­ing… and life.
   
3. Fol­low the three Rs: 1. Read 2. Revise 3. Rou­tine.
   
4. Remem­ber that being unknown is some­times a won­der­ful stroke of luck. Hav­ing your every move scru­ti­nized and being the one to take down when some­one’s feel­ing stompy isn’t always awe­some.
   
5. Yes, you should learn gram­mar rules. Not to be a pre­scrip­tive fuck­waf­fle, but so you know which ones you can bend and which ones you can break—and how and why some are so dang iron­clad. This also goes for rules of craft and process, espe­cial­ly the ones you hear from writ­ing pro­grams. In fact, this goes for the rules of life, too.
   
6. Actu­al­ly rewrite your drafts. Phys­i­cal­ly write them anoth­er time on sep­a­rate paper (or in a new file). Don’t just try to make a few tweaks to the doc­u­ment that exists. Don’t let a lit­tle prob­lem like hav­ing to rewrite an entire sto­ry from scratch destroy your moti­va­tion. (Seri­ous­ly, you were pret­ty much going to have to do it any­way.) The minute you let go of the idea that this is just going to be a few tweaks is the minute you can real­ly start to revise.
   
7. When you real­ize you’ve made a huge mis­take, don’t pan­ic. You can go back and fix it in the next draft. Would that life were like writ­ing in this way.
   
8. Spend some time com­plete­ly alone every day. Turn off Face­book. Put down your phone. Your qui­et thoughts are your most pow­er­ful cre­ative well­spring. Hear them.
   
9. Open your arms to con­struc­tive crit­i­cism, and in fact, seek it out from oth­er writ­ers who are as good or bet­ter than you, but don’t let go of your con­fi­dence in the process or that the world wants to hear what you have to say. This may mean hav­ing to fash­ion your con­fi­dence into a cloak, armor, or maybe some styl­ish capri pants.
   
10. Remem­ber that it is only in your silence that oth­ers will tell you their sto­ries. Lis­ten. You’ll be sur­prised what oth­ers will tell you about their lives when you stop telling them about their lives. You can have some­thing to say at the page. In the world, it may help you most to lis­ten.
    
11. Write with all your heart. Every time. Even if it’s a cere­al com­mer­cial.
    
12. In dis­agree­ments with the page, deal only with the sen­tence in front of you. Don’t fret about the huge changes you’ll have to make to the next draft, and how much work is yet to come, and how the task is huge and over­whelm­ing. Just the one sen­tence. Just the next right thing.
    
13. Share your knowl­edge. Teach­ing oth­ers to write is the sin­gle best way to learn. And it’s good for the soul and shit.
    
14. Be gen­tle. Be kind. (Unless you have a safe word.) Words are the jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for every hor­ri­fy­ing thing we’ve ever done as a species as well as every finest hour. Han­dle them with care.
    
15. It’s okay to keep a few irons in the fire—you don’t have to work on one thing at a time—but nev­er com­plete­ly aban­don some­thing you’re work­ing on to do anoth­er project. It will become habit faster than you real­ize. You’ll nev­er get any­thing fin­ished that way. Fin­ish your shit.
    
16. At least a few times a year, read some­thing you would­n’t nor­mal­ly read. A dif­fer­ent genre. An author you’re not fond of. Seek out new expe­ri­ences with words and be enriched by them.
    
17. Remem­ber that the best rela­tion­ship with writ­ing is as an activ­i­ty you love. Mon­ey, fame, fans… Even if they do come (and they prob­a­bly won’t), they will nev­er ful­fill you the way the writ­ing itself will. Ever.
    
18. Judge your suc­cess only against your­self from yes­ter­day. Any oth­er yard­stick will only harm your soul.

In the inter­est of full dis­clo­sure, this is heav­i­ly influ­enced by the Dalai Lama’s 18 Rules of Liv­ing.