Try to meet as many authors, agents, and editors as you can.

The mass-market paperback, for one, is too expensive.

That's why editors and publishers will never be obsolete: a reader wants someone with taste and authority to point them in the direction of the good stuff, and to keep the awful stuff away from their door.

Even if you only want to write science fiction, you should also read mysteries, poetry, mainstream literature, history, biography, philosophy, and science.

The Rift, which was well over a thousand pages of manuscript, took two years.

An SF author who reads only SF will have little new to contribute, but someone with a broader experience will bring more to the table.

Being a writer was never a choice, it was an irresistible compulsion.