Have a working spouse, because you won't earn a living from writing - not at first, if ever. My wife worked for years to support us.

Polishing: a useful lesson for the hopeful writer. You say your tormented prose doesn't read as well as mine? Neither does mine, at first!

When one person makes an accusation, check to be sure he himself is not the guilty one. Sometimes it is those whose case is weak who make the most clamour.

If every editor turns you down, maybe you should take a second look at your text, however, just in case.

As for collaboration - I have done a lot, 26 books, and found publishers increasingly resistive to them. It's not that the books are bad; editors won't even read them.

What I like least is dealing with publishers who simply don't want collaborations regardless of their merit.

At the time I wrote Xone I had never been on the Internet.