Think of it as the Doorway of No Return. The feeling must be that your lead character, once she passes through, cannot go home again until the major problem of the plot is solved.

Write like you're in love. Edit like you're in charge.

The semi-colon is a burp, a hiccup. It's a drunk staggering out of the saloon at 2 a.m., grabbing your lapels on the way and asking you to listen to one more story.

Every hour you spend writing is an hour you don't spend worrying about your writing.

The thing I do at the beginning is a "voice journal," a free form doc that is the character speaking to me. I just work on it until I start to hear different from my own, or the other characters.

The most important rule: Do not, I repeat, do not censor yourself in any way. Leave your editorial mind out of the loop. Just let the ideas come pouring out in any way, shape, or form they want to. Do not judge anything.

In fact, one could argue that the skill of the fiction writer boils down to the ability to exploit intensity.