Writer's block is real. It happens. Some days you sit down at the old typewriter, put your fingers on the keys, and nothing pops into your head. Blanko. Nada. El nothingissimo. What you do when this happens is what separates you from the one-of-thesedays- I'm-gonna-write-a-book crowd.

To set a forest on fire, you light a match. To set a character on fire, you put him in conflict.

Novel writing is like heroin addiction; it takes everything you've got.

All good plots come from well-orchestrated characters pitted against one another in a conflict of wills.

Fiction writers come up with some interesting metaphors when speaking of plot. Some say the plot is the highway and the characters are the automobiles. Others talk about stories that are "plot-driven," as if the plot were neither the highway nor the automobile, but the chauffeur. Others seem to have plot phobia and say they never plot. Still others turn up their noses at the very notion, as if there's something artificial, fraudulent, contrived.

It is possible to combine a story line and plot line in the same work. Usually the storylines comes first, serving as a background to the plot line, but not always.

For some it is harder to write a novel than to row a bathtub across the North Atlantic.