A writer will do anything to avoid the act of writing.

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.

Never let anything go out into the world that you don't understand.

Many writers are paralyzed by the thought that they are competing with everybody else who is trying to write and presumably doing it better.... Forget the competition and go at your own pace. Your only contest is with yourself.

The best way to learn to write is to study the work of the men and women who are doing the kind of writing you want to do.

Clear thinking becomes clear writing; one can't exist without the other.

Writers who think THEY are being criticized when only that writing is being criticized are beyond a teacher's reach. Writing can only be learned when a writer coldly separates himself from what he has written and looks at it with the objectivity of a plumber examining a newly piped bathroom to see if he got all the joints tight.