So what does non-conformity have to do with writing? Being willing to follow your own ideas and stay true to your own creative vision takes guts. Especially when it makes you different—in a good way—from the majority of writers.

If you are a novelist who finds the blank page a teensy bit terrifying, you are not alone. I think I would rather go to the dentist than stare at a blank page of a new novel.

When the news is horrible and only seems to get worse with each passing day, it can make us pause and wonder if writing fiction is worth the effort. Shouldn’t we instead be encouraging people to vote or writing our legislators or donating money to important causes?

On my own, I couldn’t figure out how fiction was made, though I thought I should be able to. Why? Because I had the persistent misbelief that “good” writers work alone.

We hold ourselves to unnecessarily high standards. We don’t cut ourselves slack when something happens—like experiencing illness or an injury or a time crunch from other responsibilities.

I love reading people’s stories about how they finally found a literary agent. I especially love it when the writer’s search was long and difficult. If a writer queried a dozen agents and then two weeks later—BAM—found themself with multiple offers, well, good for them.

That was definitely not my experience.