I have discovered the best tip for writing a book. The only tip you will ever need to write an awesome novel. You may ask yourself, just one? Yep, just one. Ready? Here it comes:

Write it.

Crazy, right? It’s way harder than it sounds. It’s going to take a lot of time and effort and creative energy and rewrites and rejection and edits and rewrites and joy and frustration and…  did I mention rewrites? Sometimes you’ll wonder what you’re doing. You’ll feel like a hack. Like an amateur. But the only way to get better is to keep practicing.

I wrote the story that came to me knowing very little about how to pen a novel, and for many years, I kept my writing to myself. I made a ton of mistakes (revealing a major plot point in the first act IN A FLASHBACK? Girl…) I did entire overhauls…