James Preller's Blog

PRO TIP: I am often asked — often at the end of a presentation — for any advice I’d offer to fellow writers. And this is certainly true in any writing classes I’ve taught. Aspiring writers seeking that golden nugget of advice. The key to the kingdom!

And though I’ve been asked hundreds of times in different contexts, it always stumps me. I yammer haltingly. I fall back on the tired cliches — read widely, write often — and conclude that no one is satisfied with my response, most especially myself.

But I do have one thing that I do think is true: If you wait until you know what you are doing, you’ll never write, because you’ll never get there. I see this a lot. You can take endless classes and seminars, read all the books, Save the Cat and all that jazz. And some of them will be enormously helpful.

But you will only learn how to write a book . . . by writing a book.

And that never stops being true, even after decades of determined effort. You are always confronting your limitations and shortcomings.

Don’t wait until you are ready. You’ll never be ready.

Dive in.

Trust me. Nobody really knows what they are doing.

And if you did know, by some miracle, it wouldn’t be fun anymore. The discovery is everything.

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