Smile. It gives your face something to do.

The beauty of word processing, God bless my word processor, is that it keeps the plotting very fluid. The prose becomes like a liquid that you can manipulate at will. In the old days, when I typed, every piece of typing paper was like cast in concrete.

There's nothing quite as irksome as someone else's mess.

Thinking is hard work, which is why you don't see many people doing it.

Writing is self-taught. Consulting other people only teaches you to depend on their reactions, which may or may not be legitimate. Quit looking for approval ... Learn to evaluate your own work with a dispassionate eye ... the lessons you acquire will be all the more valuable because you've mastered your craft from within.

You never know which people will affect your life.

Train yourself to listen to that small voice that tells us what's important and what's not.