Read your work out loud. Don't give me that look. Read your work aloud. Don't argue. Don't fight. It will help. I promise. I promise. I guarantee it. If you find it didn't help you, lemme know. I will let you Taser me in the face. And by "me," I mean, some other guy who will be my stand-in. Probably some real estate agent or tollbooth attendant.

Write til your fingers bleed.

Speed is not an indicator of quality in terms of fiction. That's true of one's relative slowness or swiftness - taking 10 years to write a book or taking 10 days to write a book (or a comic or a film or an angry postcard) guarantees nothing in terms of how good or how bad that story is.

You can feel good about failure. Failure means you did something. You finished the story even if it wasn't what you'd hoped. Failure means you're learning. Growing. Doing.

Writing advice is not the product of an equation. "If you do X, then Y will occur" is false in this instance. "If you name a character John Q. Hymenbreaker, your book will be an instant bestseller" is crazy-talk. Writing advice is not about providing certifiable answers. It is about making suggestions.

The easiest way to separate yourself from the unformed blobby mass of "aspiring" writers is to a) actually write and b) actually finish. That's how easy it is to clamber up the ladder to the second echelon. Write. And finish what you write. That's how you break away from the pack and leave the rest of the sickly herd for the hungry wolves of shame and self-doubt. And for all I know, actual wolves.

Nobody becomes a writer overnight. Well, I'm sure somebody did, but that person's head probably went all asplodey from paroxysms of joy, fear, paranoia, guilt and uncertainty. Celebrities can be born overnight. Writer's can't. Writers are made - forged, really, in a kiln of their own madness and insecurities - over the course of many, many moons. The writer you are when you begin is not the same writer you become.