Avoid neg­a­tive peo­ple and habits, but don’t con­fuse those who make you feel bad about neg­a­tive habits for neg­a­tive peo­ple, for those who call shenani­gans on your shenani­gans are more valu­able than gold.

Believe in your­self. But don’t fall to pre­ten­tious­ness or hubris. But believe in your­self. But don’t fall to pre­ten­tious­ness or hubris. But believe in your­self…

Consid­er things from every angle. Your char­ac­ters can’t all be you.

Don’t give up. Don’t give in. Don’t stop.

Empa­thy goes beyond intel­lec­tu­al under­stand­ing. You must have both.

Fail. Fail again. Fail bet­ter! Life is not defined by your suc­cess­es. It is defined by how you cope with your fail­ures.

Give every­thing you have to every­thing you write. Don’t hold back. The well of cre­ativ­i­ty isn’t a finite resource to be rationed. The more you use it, the fuller it becomes.

Hang on to your dreams.

If oppor­tu­ni­ty does­n’t knock, cre­ate a door… with a chain­saw.

Just keep writ­ing. Just keep writ­ing. Just keep writ­ing writ­ing writ­ing. What do we do? We write write.

Keep going no mat­ter how long and hard the road seems. Some­thing won­der­ful might be just around the next bend.

Learn your craft. You’re nev­er too good to be bet­ter.

Make it hap­pen.

Never cheat. Steal, of course, for that’s what artists do. Lie, cer­tain­ly, as long as your lies tell the truth. But nev­er cheat.

Open your arms to oppor­tu­ni­ties, but don’t become so enam­ored with writ­ing for a liv­ing that you for­get the kind of writ­ing you want to be doing.

Prac­tice makes per­fect. Though in the words of Hem­ing­way: “We are all appren­tices in a craft where no one ever becomes a mas­ter.”

Qual­i­ty or quan­ti­ty. The answer is yes. Write pro­lif­i­cal­ly. Try lots of things. Throw a lot of it away. (Writ­ing is one of the only arts where no one seems to think most of the work will end up in the bin.) But take the time to put your very best into every­thing you put out in the world.

Read! Revise! Read! Revise! These two parts of a writer’s life are the most for­got­ten by new writ­ers and can’t be under­scored enough.

Stop pro­cras­ti­nat­ing.

Take crit­i­cism well… and ALL that that implies.

Under­stand as much as you pos­si­bly can of the world, but do not sat­is­fy your­self with a sim­ple intel­lec­tu­al grasp.

Visu­al­ize exact­ly what suc­cess looks like to you with as much con­crete detail as pos­si­ble. It is impos­si­ble to hit a tar­get that you can­not see.

When you meet with tri­umph or dis­as­ter, treat those two impos­tors just the same.

X words are hard to weave into moti­va­tion­al mes­sages. Make a bad pun if you ever do a list like this, like: “Xcel­lence in all you write to be read.”

Your ideas are not com­plete­ly unique, but you are. You will bring that which is unique­ly you to your projects. Don’t be delib­er­ate­ly deriv­a­tive, but don’t wor­ry so much about orig­i­nal­i­ty that you par­a­lyze your­self. It’s all been done before. But not by YOU.

Zero in on what you real­ly want and what real­ly makes you hap­py. You may find that a reward­ing and ful­fill­ing hob­by along with a real pay­check will make you a hap­pi­er per­son than strug­gling as an artist for years. That’s okay. Do what makes you smile. Chase your bliss.