Q: Have you always wanted to write?
A: Yep. Since I was 8.

Q: What kind of advice can you give to an aspiring fiction writer? 
A: First, I’d slap the aspiring fiction writer around and say, “Pull yourself together! Find another profession, something that pays, something that doesn’t have you daily wondering why you do this! Run—run far from this place!” Then I’d remember that I like what I do, and that I didn’t take such advice either. And then I’d say this: #1. Read. Read as many books as you can. Join a library book club, because you’ll read books outside your usual genres and find unexpected delights. Just read, and read voraciously, and don’t stop reading. Most importantly: read what you want to read. #2. Get Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, and On Writing, by Stephen King, and Write Tight, by William Brohaugh. You’ll have all the advice you’ll need. Well—mostly. For more, refer to #1.

Q: How do I get published?
A: Refer to #1 and #2 above.

Q: Anything else?
A: Yeah. Regarding #1: read great stuff. The foundation of writing is reading; if you want to stagger toward writing well, then for heaven’s sake, read well. And get an editor who won’t take your crap. And know when to not take his. And don’t be a slob. In the mythically transcendent words of Stephen King: “Only a slob leaves it to the editor.”

That’s about it.

Q: What? You have nothing else to offer on writing? That’s a little weird.
A: I used to have plenty to say. The more I write, or the older I get, the less I have in my pocket to chip into the kettle. I’m not sure why that is; maybe I’ve learned that no matter what any writer will tell you, you’re going to beat your own path. When you do, I think you’re in a better place for it. Yes, learn all you can about handling these language reins, become deft and fluid and confident; all I’m saying is that reading about Ernest Shackleton or Oliver Twist or Jane Eyre or Winston Churchill or Harry Potter or Hamlet or Raoul Wallenberg or Adam Trask or Jack Aubrey or Ender Wiggin or Elizabeth Bennett will do more for you than any conference or workshop or how-to book (despite my above #2 injunction); you’ll pick up dialogue, characterization, plotting, rhythm. You’ll pick up grammar. You’ll put two words together that didn’t seem a match before, and find yourself delighted. You’ll learn to write.

You’ll find unexpected catalyst for tricky plot problems. Their creativity, that of Tolkien, Steinbeck, C.S. Lewis and Card…Krakauer, King, Rowlings, and Bronte; Grisham and Patterson and Cornwell; Dickens, Austen, O’Brian, and Hardy; Homer, Shakespeare, Dumas, Dostoyevsky—their creativity will crash into your own and from the sparks will come something new; from the sparks will come answers.

These are your teachers. These are your professors. You’re learning a language, you’re learning it for life, and the best way to become fluent in that language is to read it.

So then…writing comes from reading. If you’re serious about writing, give yourself gracious heaps of permission to read. If you feel a little guilty about it at first, it’s because you were never certain that writing is all about reading. Sometimes, something so right doesn’t seem right at first, because as a whole, we are a mean people, unwilling to recognize joy in our own backyards, unwilling to participate in it.

Go back to your first love. Reading books made you want to write. Have yourself a ball.