I can't change overnight into a serious literary author. You can't compare apples to oranges. William Faulkner was a great literary genius. I am not.

Some people have more guts than brains.

My decision to become a lawyer was irrevocably sealed when I realized my father hated the legal profession.

She was pondering the option of law school, the great American baby-sitter for directionless postgrads.

How could homosexuals possibly srew up the sanctity of marriage any worse than heterosexuals?

The two mistakes that come to mind are people who introduce a flood of characters in the first few pages. Where the reader has to stop and get out a flow chart and has to figure out who is who. And you just can't do that - introduce the first four generations of a character's family in the first chapter. You can introduce four or five characters at the most in the first chapter. Another mistake is to use big words that are not normally used in conversation to try to impress folks with your vocabulary.

One thing that drives me nuts... well, let me ask you, when writers write do they not use quotation marks anymore?