Why pretend to be something you're not? If you have to be someone, be someone no one else is.

A world in which elves exist and magic works offers greater opportunities to digress and explore.

Anyway, several rewrites later, Del Rey Books did publish my first novel, and it did become the first work of fiction on the New York Times trade paperback bestseller list.

Fiction writers are strange beasts. They are, like all writers, observers first and foremost. Everything that happens to and around them is potential material for a story, and they look at it that way.

Nothing is lost that we do not first see as lost. Visions born of fear give birth to our failing. Visions born of hope give birth to our success. What is possible lives within us, and it only remains for us to discover it.

What we have in life that we can count on is who we are and where we come from, she thought absently. For better or worse, that's what we have to sustain us in our endeavors, to buttress us in our darker moments, and to remind us of our identity. Without those things, we are adrift.

I would also argue that there is a good chance that an outline will help you stave off any onslaught of writer's block. Let me advise you right up front that I am not a big believer in writer's block. I think writer's block is God's way of telling you one of two things - that you failed to think your material through sufficiently before you started writing, or that you need a day or two off with your family and friends.