What’s your advice for aspiring writers?

Anna Banks I have plenty of advice for aspiring writers:

1.) Share your work. Not with your mom or with your friends who don't write. Seek out people in the writing community. Whether they are local or online, get your work critiqued by people who share your love for writing. It takes tough skin to do this, but you will need tough skin in the publishing industry. This is your first step.

2.) Never give up. You may have a lot of false starts for books. Lots of great opening chapters and then it kind of falls to pieces. You are not alone. Push through it. Finish the book.

3.) There is magic in revisions. Seriously. Your first draft is crap, no matter who you are. It's like you took dog poo and smeared it on the screen of your computer. Trust me on this. Let your book sit for a month before you reopen the document. Then reread it with fresh eyes. A favorite thing of mine to do before I send to my agent is that I finish the book. I print the whole thing, and let it sit for a month while I work on something else. After that month, I take a red pen to it and critique, revise, edit before I ever go in the document to make a single change.

4.) Never give up--in a different way. It's very difficult to break into the publishing industry. It's hard to get an agent. It's hard to get a book deal once you get an agent. Remember, when you go into a bookstore, all those books on the shelves? That represents only 1% of the people who are trying to get published but actually made it. The odds aren't good. Be better than the odds. But you can't be better if you give up.

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