The biggest pitfall to avoid is not writing. Not writing is really, really easy to do, especially if you're a young writer. The hope that elves will come in the night and finish it for you, is a very common one to have. That is my main recommendation - you have to write, and you have to finish what you write and beyond that, it's all detail.

As a teenager I wrote to R.A. Lafferty. And he responded, too, with letters that were like R.A. Lafferty short stories, filled with elliptical answers to straight questions and simple answers to complicated ones.

Love me when I least deserve it, because that’s when I really need it.

If you only write when inspired, you may be a fairly decent poet, but you'll never be a novelist.

Because if you don't stand up for the stuff you don't like, when they come for the stuff you do like, you've already lost.

When you dream, sometimes you remember. When you wake, you always forget.

You see, the outcome of the battle is unimportant. What matters is the chaos, and the slaughter.