You can solve most of your writing problems if you stop after every sentence and ask: what does the reader need to know next?

Scholarship hath no fury like that of a language purist faced with sludge.

Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill rode to glory on the back of the strong declarative sentence.

Make a habit of reading what is being written today and what has been written before. Writing is learned by imitation.

Never hesitate to imitate another writer - every person learning a craft or an art needs models. Eventually you'll find your own voice and will shed the skin of the writer you imitated.

As a writer I try to operate within a framework of Christian principles, and the words that are important to me are religious words: witness, pilgrimage, intention.

Every time you look at a blank piece of paper, you're doing something new. You have to step onto that blank territory and remind yourself the sky didn't fall in the last time you wrote. Writing is a question of overcoming your fears-and everybody has them.