Exercise the writing muscle every day, even if it is only a letter, notes, a title list, a character sketch, a journal entry. Writers are like dancers, like athletes. Without that exercise, the muscles seize up.

Fiction is like wrestling with angels-you do not expect to win, but you do expect to come away from the experience changed.

1. Write every day2. Write what interests you.3. Write for the child inside of you. (Or the adult, if you are writing adult books.)4. Write with honest emotion5. Be careful of being facile6. Be wary of preaching7. Be prepared for serendipityFinally I would remind you of something that Churchill told a group of school boys: "Never give up. Never give up. Never, never, never give up.

We write not just to show off, not just to tell, or only to have written. We write to know ourselves.

Write, write, & write some more. Think of writing as a muscle that needs lots of exercise.

The only duty of the dreamer is to tell the truth about the dream.

Love the writing, love the writing, love the writing... the rest will follow.

A good story is [a] kind of irritant. You read it, then you cannot stop thinking about it. Eventually, your mind and heart encyst about it, and what occurs is a pearl of the soul.

I contend that good children's stories are always about the Getting of Wisdom. That's another way of saying, "Let your characters grow. Up." And good stories for adults are about the Holding of Wisdom. Another way of saying, "Recognize you are grown up.